“We are the ones who recycle tonnes of your waste but our contribution still goes unnoticed.”
Waste recyclers engage in the collection and recovery of reusable and recycle waste from homes, streets, bins, and waste disposal facilities playing an important role in promoting environmental sustainability.
Waste Recyclers
Waste Recycler refers to a person engaged in collection and recovery of reusable and recyclable waste from the home, streets, bins, processing and waste disposal facilities for MCD trucks or the top of dumping sites to then sell for earning their livelihood. The involvement of waste recyclers play an extremely important role in building a sustainable environment.
Waste pickers are among the most vulnerable groups of workers in informal employment and, like other workers, need institutional spaces to demand, protect and defend their labour and human rights
SEWA in Delhi only recently, in January 2023, intervened in this trade after realizing that several women are involved in this trade especially those with migratory status. The usage of the term recyclers as opposed to segregators is important because the trade community at the last stage of the value chain earns its livelihood off selling off the recycled waste to smaller contractors.
Role of SEWA in Delhi
- Organized women to achieve collective strength and help assert their identity and visibility as workers
- Foster a sense of social responsibility and participation in local governance within informal women workers which helps them play an active role in tackling waterlogging, achieve access to free drinkable water, sanitation, basic infrastructure and other social security measures
- Improvement in Occupational Safety and Health by creating awareness and arranging health camps that help with identification of health problems and associated recommendations for measures to be taken.
- There is an active mapping of the migration corridor to analyze safe migration of women waste recyclers.