A New Era for Recycling and Waste Management empowering Pune’s Waste Collectors

Pune based SWaCH empowers waste collectors through recycling and waste management and fair pay, health benefits and leadership opportunities for marginalized women.

Once a street waste picker, Rajabai Sawant is today a founding member of a cooperative that has changed the landscape of Pune's recycling and waste management. She is part of SWaCH (Solid Waste Collection and Handling), wherein she speaks to the residents on segregation of waste for their better environmental sustainability. Started in 2005, SWaCH has laid down a formal system for waste pickers who are able to help to recycle 227.1 tons of waste in a day, leading to reduced emissions normally produced by waste dumped at landfills and saving costs on that.

However, the primary thrust of the cooperative is that of maximizing the rights and dignity of the waste pickers. Thus, it is that today, SWaCH becomes more than a mere waste management entity; it is also a medium of empowering women through fair wages, health benefits, and an opportunity to lead.

To that extent, as recycling and waste management go, it is also cleaning the city while making sustainable, decent work available to those formerly at the bottom end of socioeconomic development.