Delhi’s waste crisis reveals a complex reality in which mountains of garbage conceal a deeply human dimension. Behind this accumulation are thousands of waste pickers, often rendered invisible, who nevertheless play an essential role in the city’s informal recyclable materials management system. This first part explores their living conditions on the margins of society, their daily struggles, and their place within Delhi’s informal economy.
Delhi’s Waste Crisis and the People Behind It
As India’s population continues to grow and urbanization expands, the production of municipal solid waste is inevitably increasing at an exponential rate across the country’s cities. Throughout India, this has become an unavoidable consequence of both demographic and economic growth. Indian cities are experiencing a significant rise in municipal solid waste (MSW) generation. In the capital city of New Delhi, the issue has reached a critical point. Rapid urban growth has increased consumer demand and, consequently, the amount of waste generated per capita. The metropolis now produces approximately 10,000 tons of municipal solid waste every day. The ever-expanding landfills of Okhla, Bhalswa, and Ghazipur serve as striking reminders of how the city manages and struggles with its waste. Behind these growing mountains of garbage lies a largely invisible workforce that supports the city’s daily sanitation system.
In Delhi alone, within the informal waste sector, waste pickers—often men, women, and children from highly marginalized backgrounds—collect recyclable materials from garbage bins, streets, and landfills. This difficult and physically demanding work is generally carried out by individuals with few other livelihood options and is widely regarded as one of the lowest-status occupations in society. Yet, through their daily efforts to recover reusable materials, they play an essential role in maintaining the city’s cleanliness by diverting large quantities of waste away from landfills while also allowing the government to save significant costs related to transportation, disposal, and waste management.
According to GlobalRec (2023), informal waste sorters in New Delhi can earn up to ₹10,000 per month (approximately CAD $150) through this activity, depending on the quantity and quality of the recyclable materials collected. However, many earn significantly less than this amount. In 2024, Delhi reached a staggering temperature of 52.3°C during what the World Meteorological Organization described as the hottest year in 175 years. The city also suffers from some of the worst air quality levels in the world. According to the World Air Quality Report 2024, 74 of the 100 cities with the poorest air quality are located in India. These economic and environmental pressures directly intersect with deeply rooted social hierarchies.
Many workers in the waste sector belong to Dalit communities (the lowest caste within India’s traditional social hierarchy), impoverished Muslim communities, and landless migrants. They occupy the lowest levels of the socio-economic hierarchy and must handle waste daily in order to earn a livelihood. In cities such as Delhi, there is a clear correlation: the lower the caste status, the more hazardous and unsanitary the assigned waste-related work tends to be. The majority of waste workers are women, who often live with their families in overcrowded settlements located near landfills and waste disposal sites. Women waste workers face additional forms of marginalization and earn less than men, who are generally involved in the more transactional aspects of recycling, such as purchasing and selling dry recyclable materials from households. In contrast, women and children are often relegated to the most labor-intensive tasks of collecting, recovering, and sorting waste.
Many child waste workers are also exposed to significant risks due to their limited understanding of the occupational and environmental hazards associated with their work. They are frequently subjected to hostility from adult waste pickers who perceive them as competitors threatening their income. In addition to enduring long working hours and minimal wages, these children face heightened risks of exploitation, physical and psychological abuse, and human trafficking. This represents a broad spectrum with many variations, as both men and women actively participate in waste collection and sorting at landfills and disposal sites, often working side by side under difficult and unsanitary conditions.
Beyond the daily labor of waste pickers, they play a crucial role as key actors within the circular economy. Through the collection, sorting, and sale of recyclable materials, they extend the lifespan of resources, reduce carbon emissions, and decrease the environmental burden of waste. Despite limited recognition, they form the foundation of a system that transforms the city’s discarded materials into economic value—an essential yet undervalued service that allows Delhi to function every day.The realities behind their work reveal deep inequalities, but also resilience, dignity, and a silent struggle for recognition. For many, this work is not only a means of survival but part of a longer struggle to be seen, protected, and respected, as they continue to fight for recognition and the right to live with dignity.
Lives on the Margins: Struggles and Survival in Delhi’s Informal Economy
Across India’s urban centers, informal waste pickers quietly sustain a significant portion of the country’s recycling system while remaining largely invisible and unrecognized. In Delhi alone, they are estimated to recover between 15 and 20% of the city’s total waste stream, a contribution that substantially reduces both the municipal workload and the volume of waste sent to landfills. Their work indirectly saves the city approximately six lakh rupees per day (around CAD $9,000/day), representing nearly one-quarter of municipal waste management costs. Yet, despite this economic and environmental value, waste pickers remain largely excluded from formal waste governance and continue to face significant social stigma. For every one hundred Delhi residents, approximately one person earns a livelihood through waste recycling, often under precarious and unregulated conditions. The informal sector supports the city’s formal economy, while those who form its foundation continue to be denied recognition, protection, and fair compensation. This exclusion is also directly reflected in the daily living conditions of waste pickers.
A survey conducted by UNDP India highlights the harsh social and economic realities faced by many waste workers across the country. Among 9,300 workers surveyed in 14 cities across 10 states, nearly 70% reported a monthly household income below ₹10,000 (approximately CAD $150), while around 6% earned less than ₹2,250 per month (CAD $33/month). Approximately two-thirds of respondents had never attended school, and many lived in small, overcrowded homes with an average of four or more household members. The study, conducted between October 2020 and February 2021, included both men and women engaged in waste collection activities.
Behind these difficult living conditions lies a highly organized informal recycling system that structures how waste is collected, exchanged, and transformed throughout the city. The organization of Delhi’s informal recycling system resembles a pyramid: at its base are waste pickers who collect materials from streets and landfills; above them are small and large scrap dealers who purchase, sort, and resell recovered materials; and at the top is the recycling industry, which transforms these materials into new products. This multi-level chain not only supports the livelihoods of thousands of low-income urban residents but also provides an essential public service by keeping the city clean and reducing environmental pressure through high rates of material recovery. Within this structure, however, the contrast between informal and formal working conditions remains deeply pronounced.
Informal waste recyclers in Delhi face numerous inequalities compared to workers in the formal sector. While most formal employees benefit from more stable wages, social security, and advantages such as health insurance or pensions, informal waste workers often earn below the daily minimum wage and depend on unpredictable incomes generated from recyclable materials. Only a small proportion of formal sanitation workers employed by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) receive genuine employment benefits. Some permanent MCD employees, known as safai karamcharis, receive fixed salaries, pensions, and limited medical coverage, but many workers are not permanent. Some are hired on a daily basis or through subcontractors, leaving them without job security, pension benefits, or stable health protection. In reality, informal waste workers operate with almost no institutional support, but even many of the city’s sanitation workers remain precarious and insufficiently protected, raising the question of whether the so-called “formal” sector is truly more secure.
Official MCD sanitation workers are often perceived as being in a better position than the informal workforce, but the reality is more complex. Although formal sanitation work is generally considered more stable, the reality reveals a continuum of precariousness across both systems. Contractual MCD employees face unstable wages and insufficient protections, blurring the boundary between the formal and informal sectors. Nevertheless, this apparent division between formality and informality is, in practice, far less clear-cut.
Despite these disparities, formal workers have better opportunities and remain significantly better positioned than informal waste pickers, who carry out their work without any legal or social protection. Few have access to education, adequate housing, or healthcare, and many lack government-issued identification documents that would allow them to benefit from social welfare programs. This absence of social protection makes them particularly vulnerable to illness and financial instability. The divide between formal and informal workers reflects a broader failure of urban planning and environmental justice, where those who keep the city clean remain excluded from the systems designed to protect them.
One of the main mechanisms through which this exclusion is reproduced is the lack of access to official identification documents and administrative recognition.
Most waste pickers do not possess government-issued identification documents, largely because they are unaware of the existence of these programs. Only a small proportion manage to obtain them, often after lengthy and complicated administrative processes. Basic government services remain out of reach, and although several social programs target marginalized groups, thousands of waste workers are still excluded from their benefits. This lack of inclusion in public policies and urban planning perpetuates cycles of poverty and invisibility within Delhi’s waste economy. It raises a deeper question: how long will those who keep Delhi clean remain invisible?
Where the City’s Waste Gains Value
At the neighborhood level, Delhi’s waste economy operates through a highly organized informal chain that mirrors the city’s official waste management infrastructure. While municipal agencies collect mixed household waste and transport it to landfills, informal actors extract value from the waste stream at different stages. Dhalaos, local collection points managed by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, have become hybrid spaces where formal and informal systems sometimes intersect. Waste pickers often sort recyclable materials directly at these sites before municipal trucks arrive.
From there, materials move up a chain of intermediaries: waste pickers sell their collected materials to thiawalas (mobile scrap buyers), who then sell them to small kabaris (neighborhood scrap dealers), followed by larger kabaris operating extensive warehouses, and finally to recyclers who transform these materials into reusable inputs. This upward-moving chain demonstrates the efficiency of the informal sector, as it provides essential environmental services such as waste diversion and resource recovery without adequate institutional support.
In contrast, the formal sector primarily operates as a collection and transportation system rather than one focused on recovery and reuse.
Unlike the informal network, which sorts and recovers materials at multiple stages, the formal sector is primarily limited to door-to-door waste collection and the transportation of mixed waste. In most cases, waste is not sorted at the source, as households dispose of organic, dry, and plastic waste together. Municipal trucks then transport these unsorted materials directly to transfer stations and subsequently to landfills such as Okhla, Bhalswa, and Ghazipur. Waste separation rarely occurs within formal systems due to weak policy enforcement, limited public awareness, insufficient household participation, and inadequate sorting infrastructure. Therefore, while the formal sector manages most of the city’s waste transportation logistics, it is the informal sector that provides the essential environmental service of diverting recyclable materials away from landfills and transforming what the city discards into valuable resources.
In Seemapuri, one of Delhi’s largest slum settlements, located in the city’s northeastern district near the border with Uttar Pradesh, many kabadiwalas (informal waste workers) live and work. The settlement is located near the banks of the Yamuna River, close to surrounding residential colonies. Most residents involved in waste picking are Muslim migrants who settled there with their families following the Bhola cyclone of the 1970s in West Bengal and then-East Pakistan. Nearly 60% of New Seemapuri’s residents work in the waste sector.
Their daily lives are marked by economic insecurity and social vulnerability, yet their informal collection networks play an essential role in the sorting and circulation of the city’s solid waste. Most families live in cramped housing with limited access to sanitation, clean water, and secure shelter—conditions that reflect their marginalized position within the urban informal economy. As one resident, Nilma Ji, expressed, without their work, “the city would not be able to breathe for a single day because of the smell of garbage” (PRC India, n.d.). This collective dependence on waste collection shapes the daily rhythm of life in the community.
Every morning, they begin door-to-door collection in nearby residential neighborhoods before sorting the waste they have gathered. They carefully separate materials into wet and dry categories and, within dry waste, are able to distinguish more than seventy types of recyclable materials, including eleven varieties of plastic. This sorting process requires dedicated spaces where waste can be stored and organized.
When parents carry out this sorting work on-site, their children are often present and learn by observing their actions. Waste collection and sorting frequently become a family activity, as the income generated by each individual is minimal, making every contribution essential. Most workers entered this occupation out of necessity when they arrived in the city. They possess extensive practical knowledge of materials and recycling processes, yet have limited access to alternative employment opportunities.
What takes place in Seemapuri reflects a much broader national reality. The precarious livelihoods observed in Seemapuri closely mirror nationwide trends, where most informal waste pickers earn less than ₹10,000 per month and remain excluded from basic social protection programs. Yet it is through these same informal networks that Delhi is able to remain clean. This serves as a reminder that the city’s visible order depends on the invisible labor of its most marginalized residents.
Women at Work: Gender Dynamics and the Invisible Workforce Behind Delhi’s Cleanliness
Women Safai Sathis in India experience the realities of waste picking through a deeply gendered lens. As highlighted by the United Nations Development Programme, more than 60% of women working in this sector have no formal education, and fewer than 5% have health insurance, despite performing essential environmental work. Their daily lives reflect a double burden: long and exhausting hours spent collecting and sorting waste are followed by unpaid domestic responsibilities at home. Many also lack an Aadhaar card or professional identification certificate, preventing them from accessing government support programs, credit services, or social security benefits. These structural disadvantages are further intensified by daily risks to their safety and dignity.
Beyond economic insecurity, women Safai Sathis face persistent threats to their physical and social safety. They often work in hazardous conditions without gloves, masks, or access to sanitation facilities, and they remain vulnerable to harassment in public spaces and at collection sites. The social stigma associated with caste and gender further isolates them from formal recognition.
However, several initiatives in Delhi are slowly beginning to transform this reality. Organizations such as Chintan, Safai Sena, and ActionAid India, often working in collaboration with WIEGO and municipal authorities, have implemented registration campaigns to help workers obtain identification cards, safety training programs, self-help groups, and women-led cooperatives that improve income stability and social status. These initiatives demonstrate that when women organize collectively, their work gains greater recognition, stability, and dignity.
Read the second part of this article here
References
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https://www.chintan-india.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/chintan_wastepickers_fact_sheet-2.pdf
Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group. (2023, June). Waste-pickers: Delhi’s forgotten environmentalists? A report for the Supreme Court of India.
https://www.chintan-india.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Chintan-Supreme-Court-Report_01.pdf
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https://globalrec.org/city/new-delhi/
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https://www.undp.org/india/blog/creating-life-dignity-safai-sathis-india
