This study brought the contribution of Bengaluru waste pickers to the forefront
K Kumuda has operated her own Dry Waste Collection Centre (DWCC) in Bengaluru’s Jayanagar since 2017. She employs 14 people, who collect dry waste from over 3,000 households every day. Her day begins at 6.30 am with the first team meeting of the day and ends around 7 pm when the waste is sorted. “It’s hard work, but we don’t know how to do anything else,” she explains.
Kumuda and her team were part of a study done by Hasiru Dala (meaning ‘Green Force’ in Kannada), a Bengaluru-based organisation that has been working with waste pickers since 2011. The study revealed that the contribution of only seven DWCCs reduced 1,743 tonnes Co2 equivalent per year, which is equal to what it would take over 2,000 acres of forest to sequester or store, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency Carbon Calculator.
While Hasiru Dala primarily focuses on securing waste pickers’ social security and livelihood opportunities, Executive Director Nalini Shekar felt that it was time to understand the contribution of waste workers and the impact that progressive solid waste management policies can have on climate change mitigation. This is what the study aimed to find out.
Hasiru Dala worked closely with a global organisation called Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO) to use their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions calculator designed specifically to measure “emissions avoided through the following waste treatment methods: diversion of waste from decay in landfills and dumps; recycling; manual sorting and transportation; and diversion of materials from open burning.”
Hasiru Dala, which manages 40 DWCCs across eight divisions in Bengaluru, chose Jayanagar division for the pilot. In seven DWCC locations, the waste pickers sorted and weighed waste according to WIEGO guidelines. All the data was entered into the WIEGO calculator, which showed the offsets that waste pickers were contributing.
Bengaluru has a decentralised waste management system, which means that each ward tries to manage its own waste. One part of that system is the DWCCs where waste workers sort the dry waste they collect, recycling what they can. Right now, it is estimated that 30-40% of the waste gets recycled. Without the DWCCs it would be almost none. It helps that Bengaluru has made it mandatory to segregate at source, but even so there is mixed waste going to landfills. Waste workers are leading the mitigation; without them diligently sorting waste at the backend, more mixed waste will go to landfills. But they have yet to receive the title of climate workers.
Speaking to TNM, Nalini said, “DWCC operators and waste workers are the frontline in every way – financial risks, health risks, environmental risks.” She emphasised the need to incorporate the workers into a circular waste economy, echoing the call for a just transition during the recent UN Plastics Treaty meeting.
Adding that the focus of their study was to bring in the economic viability, climate justice, and historical contribution of waste workers to the forefront, Nalini said, “We partnered with the local government to carry out this study; it is with their help that we got access to part of the data. We hope they take the findings and measure the carbon abatement, and monetise the carbon credits from the DWCCs and pass on the monetary benefits to the workers to meet the cost of managing DWCCs. We need to move beyond only waste management and toward multiple waste economic streams. The city administration can use pollution tax, carbon credits, and extended producer responsibility to create those multiple waste economic streams.”
Shashikala TJ , an Assistant Executive Engineer with the local municipality, provided data to Hasiru Dala for their study. “We should be thinking about the long term and trying to do good work in waste management. Hasiru Dala has the technical skill for these studies and we were happy to help them. Actually all of our data is available to all citizens if they wish to check online. At BBMP, we are always looking for ways to decrease our landfill load. We all need to work together to reduce emissions and we ask citizens to continue to segregate their waste at home.”
Pinky Chandran, a trustee at Solid Waste Management Round Table in Bengaluru and a plastic policy expert, said, “Hasiru Dala’s study shows how dry waste needs better collection policies. For example, there’s no policy on textile waste but the GHG emissions from this industry are huge. There is fossil fuel use in every part of textiles and if we are able to send textile waste somewhere else, it will decrease local emissions.”
A paper published last year in Science Advances highlighted substantial opportunities for emission mitigation in the waste sector, attributing approximately 18% of global anthropogenic emissions to solid waste. The paper emphasised that solid waste emissions stem from the anaerobic decay of organic material in landfills. Furthermore, it projected a drastic rise in landfilled waste, primarily driven by tropical countries, highlighting the potential for emissions reduction through feasible strategies such as active landfill covers, energy recovery, and diverting organic waste from landfills.
Essentially, when dry waste gets diverted from landfills it mitigates GHGs because the items that can be composted have the chance to break down. It is in the mixed waste landfills that the most GHGs are emitted.
Kumuda, whose team spent three days taking part in the study, said that if she had to continue to sort the waste as per the abatement requirements, she would have to hire five more people, meaning it would create more jobs.
Having observed the climatic changes in Bengaluru, she said she was happy to be part of Hasiru Dala’s study. “With all the air pollution now, my eyes burn and there has been impact on my health,” she said. “It is difficult to do this work, but the more people who segregate at home, the easier our work is, so that is our request to citizens. To me, the most important thing is that other women waste workers know that they can become DWCC operators too.”
Sweta Daga is a freelance photojournalist based in Bengaluru. She writes at the intersection of climate, gender, and livelihoods.