Page 38 - Plastics News Issue October 2025
P. 38
ENVIRONMENT NEWS
waste, stricter compliance and regulatory action tion with minimal behaviour change campaigns
are required to meet the targets. Currently, not for segregation and enforcement. This trans-
all producers, importers, and brand owners fall lates to SWaCH waste-pickers recycling up to
under the ambit of EPR. 35%, which is the highest diversion to recycling
from source in the country, says Barde.
Silent sorters
Without a “formal employer-employee relation-
For years, the faceless, socially marginalised ship”, these workers have, in 2023-24, recovered
waste pickers have been informally doing the more than 82,000 tonnes of recyclables and di-
job of the citizenry and the municipal staff by verted over 80% of waste at the source, signifi-
sifting through and removing recyclables from cantly reducing CO2-equivalent greenhouse gas
dhalaos and dumpsites, reducing transportation emissions, apart from receiving `20 crore in user
costs and the burden on landfills. fees, a report by the Centre for Science and En-
vironment titled ‘Pathways to Inclusion of Waste
The MSW rules acknowledge their role and Pickers’ stated.
clearly define the procedure for engaging them
more justly. Local bodies must register them, is- Another potentially effective model, say ex-
sue identity cards, improve working conditions, perts, is Bengaluru’s network of Dry Waste Col-
allocate space for material recovery, and pay lection Centres (DWCC), which evolved from ex-
a reasonable honorarium from generator user periments in the 1980s, and got a more formal
charges. structure in 2012 when the villages near the Ma-
vallipura dumpsite on the city’s outskirts blocked
However, many civic bodies have subcontracted
doorstep collections to private concessionaires. trucks carrying the city’s untreated waste from
Waste pickers also work in the same space but being dumped in their backyards. After closing
informally. The waste belongs to the conces- the landfill, the city was compelled to look at
sionaire (which also controls access to transfer more decentralised models, including setting up
stations), making the waste picker an illegal en- collection centres for dry trash and bio-methane
tity, says Chaturvedi. units to treat organic waste.
In 2011, the Lok Adalat—an alternative dispute
However, with the right to recyclables, waste resolution mechanism under the purview of the
pickers are motivated to remove as much Legal Services Authorities Act—directed the
as possible, says Harshad Barde, director of Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP)
SWaCH (Solid Waste Collection and Handling to enumerate informal waste workers and issue
Pune Seva Cooperative Limited), India’s first fully them identity cards. It also asked the civic cor-
waste picker-owned cooperative authorised to poration to earmark space for DWCC in all mu-
provide municipal solid waste services in Pune nicipal wards.
since 2007.
But even after a decade, problems persist. Seg-
By giving SWaCH workers access to waste, so- regation at the source is not fully enforced, add-
cial benefits, and payment for the service pro- ing to the pressure on DWCCs. Not all wards
vided, Pune has achieved high levels of segrega-
38 PLASTICS NEWS October 2025
