Restoring Dignity through a Collective Enterprise: The Story of Paryavaran Mitra

Every morning at 4 am, 67 years old Moriben walks around 8-10 km, bends at least 1,000 times and with her bare hands collects around 20 Kg of recyclable waste, which is carried in a large bag on her head or shoulder. She sorts the collected waste into different types of materials and sells it to a waste collection centre. Moriben is one of 30,000 women in Ahmedabad and 4 million rag pickers across India. Their contribution to keeping Indian cities clean has remained undervalued and unrecognised. Their poverty, marginalisation and lack of organisation or collective voice makes them invisible in processes for designing safe and humane urban solid waste management systems. While there is increased awareness today on the need to segregate waste, most urbanites are unaware of the operations and the value chain in waste. The six-year work of Paryavaran Mitra (PM) stands out as a beacon of hope not just for the rag picking ‘sisters’ of Ahmedabad, but has now become a model for wider dissemination and adoption across different cities in India.