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Every morning, while the city is still slowly waking up, a woman walks along a familiar route. She navigates through narrow lanes, moving past trash bins to collect items that can still be sold, like plastic bottles, scraps of metal, cardboard, and glass. After carefully sorting through these items, she bags them up and takes them to a kabadiwalla, a local recycler. On a good day, she can earn between Rs 200 and Rs 400.
You won’t find her in any official employment records or discussions about India’s circular economy, but her role is crucial in keeping that system alive.
India generates tens of millions of tonnes of solid waste every year, and a worrying amount of it ends up in landfills. The problem is that many of these aren’t properly engineered landfills; instead, they’re open dumps where waste simply piles up until it can’t fit anymore. This excess waste leaks harmful chemicals into the soil and water, and when organic materials break down without oxygen, they produce methane, a gas that’s even more harmful than carbon dioxide in the short-term climate picture.
A satellite analysis conducted in April 2026 by Carbon Mapper and the Stop Methane Project at UCLA found that India had two of the world’s largest methane-emitting landfill sites in 2025: one in Secunderabad, Telangana, and another in Mumbai, Maharashtra. These sites release significant amounts of methane hourly, contributing to the rapid increase in global temperatures.
Much of this issue relates back to how we manage our waste. Thanks to satellite imaging, identifying which landfill sites are emitting these gases has become clearer. Delhi’s landfills, Ghazipur and Bhalswa, have been pinpointed as major sources of methane emissions. Researchers using GHGSat data have detected notable methane plumes over both sites. Ghazipur, for instance, has been accepting waste since 1984 and has grown taller than 70 metres, even though it was meant to close back in 2002.
While there’s a clear connection between the mountains of garbage and the woman collecting recyclables at dawn, this connection rarely receives attention in policy discussions.
Estimates from the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group suggest there are between 1.5 million and 4 million informal waste pickers in India. These numbers vary widely due to poor counting methods. Most of these workers are women from marginalised communities like Dalit, Adivasi, or Muslim backgrounds. They often work without contracts, gloves, masks, or insurance, and many earn less than Rs 10,000 a month, according to research done in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme.
What these workers do isn’t a small part of India’s waste management; it’s actually a crucial element. Informal waste pickers manage around 60 to 70 per cent of urban recyclable waste, based on ILO and Chintan data. An estimated 70 per cent of plastic recycling in India depends on this informal sector. For example, in Bengaluru, research conducted by Hasiru Dala, an organisation formed by waste pickers, found that the municipality saves Rs 84 crore annually on collection and transportation costs due to the work of these informal workers, who don’t receive formal payment from the state.
The process goes like this: households throw away their waste. Waste pickers sift through and separate what can be sold from what is not. Kabadiwalas then purchase these sorted materials, and aggregators collect items from several kabadiwalas. Finally, recyclers process these materials into new products. Anything that remains unsellable ends up in the landfill. Informal waste pickers serve as the first and most crucial filter in this chain. If they weren’t there to do the initial sorting, much more would be wasted, leading to increased methane emissions.
However, this critical climate connection often gets overlooked in India’s waste policy.
When officials talk about waste, the focus is typically on cleaning up landfills, creating waste-to-energy plants, and enhancing mechanical processing. The Swachh Bharat Mission has made urban cleanliness a visible priority for governance. Additionally, the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) framework aims to hold manufacturers accountable for disposing of products at the end of their life cycles. The 2022 Plastic Waste Management Rules set ambitious recycling targets of 50 per cent by 2024-25 and eventually 100 per cent by 2027-28.
While these goals look impressive on paper, they fail to consider who will actually do the work.
India’s EPR rules largely overlook the essential role of informal waste pickers, the very individuals who contribute to and maintain the recycling system. Under the EPR compliance frameworks, producers can meet their obligations by working with formally registered recyclers and waste management agencies. But the informal waste picker, who has spent years retrieving plastic from the waste stream, isn’t guaranteed a place in this system.
The issue goes beyond fairness; it’s a practical flaw in policy design. If formalisation means replacing informal workers with machinery or private contractors without including these workers, it’s likely that recycling rates won’t improve, despite the accolades from the policy metrics. Informal workers possess knowledge that machinery and new contractors simply don’t have; they know their neighbourhoods, every household, and every available source. Their experience and hard work have built the recycling system we have today. Simply replacing them will likely lead to worse outcomes at higher costs for the city.
Pune’s SWaCH cooperative offers a clear example of successful integration. SWaCH, which stands for Solid Waste Collection and Handling, organises waste pickers as registered service providers under the Pune Municipal Corporation. As of 2024, over 4,000 waste pickers serve approximately 1 million households, reaching around 4 million residents. These workers often earn more than their informal counterparts, and they benefit from access to protective gear, health check-ups, insurance, and even childcare. According to SWaCH’s own data, Pune’s cost of waste management per person is significantly lower than that of similar cities with fully privatised collection systems.
This isn’t just a pilot program; it has been operational at scale for years, with documented results. It shows that the informal waste economy can be improved without tearing it down. Instead, it needs recognition and integration into the system.
What SWaCH demonstrates is reflected in the work of Hasiru Dala in Bengaluru, the Kagad Kach Patra Kashtakari Panchayat in Pune, and other similar organisations across India. Treating waste pickers as professionals providing a valuable public service, rather than as mere scavengers to be swept away, leads to better environmental outcomes.
This is not just a trial anymore. It’s been running for years and has proven results. What it shows is that we can actually enhance the informal waste economy without tearing it apart. Instead, what we really need is to acknowledge these workers, secure their rights, and properly integrate them into the system.
Take SWaCH, for instance. It’s a shining example of what organisations like Hasiru Dala in Bengaluru and Kagad Kach Patra Kashtakari Panchayat in Pune have been advocating for years. They argue that if we treat waste pickers as professionals providing a necessary public service, rather than as bothersome scavengers to be removed from sight, we can achieve better environmental outcomes and improve their livelihoods. These two goals aren’t opposites; they’re actually part of the same solution.
The big question now is whether our policies will catch up with this understanding.
At an official level, India is taking its climate promises seriously. The government is committed to reducing the emissions intensity of its GDP and increasing non-fossil electricity use. Part of this effort involves cutting methane emissions, including those from waste management.
However, the climate commitments discussed internationally haven’t translated into policies that recognise the vital role of informal workers. Often, discussions at climate conferences focus on landfill cleanup or methane capture, but they hardly ever include waste pickers—the folks who sort through the waste in our cities every day. When they are mentioned, it’s usually in a context that suggests they need to be ‘upgraded’ or ‘formalised,’ rather than appreciating their essential role in the recycling process.
A waste policy that overlooks these workers isn’t truly addressing climate issues. Sure, it might show reduced landfill emissions on paper, but it won’t actually enhance India’s recycling rates. In fact, it could make life even harder for millions of these workers who contribute significantly yet rarely receive recognition.
Most people might wake up to clean streets without realising who made that possible. This piece aims to highlight that unseen effort—not just to acknowledge it, but to encourage better climate governance. The informal waste worker isn’t a minor detail in India’s waste management story; she is, for many cities, a crucial part of the solution. Policies that begin without this recognition will struggle to solve the broader challenges effectively.
Utkarsh Mishra is a journalist based in Ranchi. He has worked with Aajeevika Bureau, an organisation working with migrant labour, and writes on labour, urban policy, law and climate. His work has appeared in Feminism in India, The India Forum, Countercurrents, Verdicto, and Zee News
Views expressed are the author’s own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth