Long before most of Bengaluru is awake, thousands of waste pickers are already at work — sorting through what the city threw away the night before, pulling out what can be reused, recycled, or resold. It is unglamorous, essential work, and for decades it has gone almost entirely unrecognized.
The informal backbone of a formal system
Bengaluru's waste management, on paper, runs through the BBMP (Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike). In practice, it runs just as much through an informal network of waste pickers who intercept recyclables before they ever reach a landfill. Every plastic bottle, cardboard sheet, or scrap of metal they pull out and sell is one less thing filling up a dump that is already overflowing. Without this informal layer, the city's official waste system would be handling a far heavier — and far more expensive — load than it currently does.
Hasiru Dala and the fight for identity
In 2010, Anslem Rosario and Nalini Shekar founded Hasiru Dala — Kannada for "Green Force" — a not-for-profit built specifically to advance social justice for waste pickers. Its work isn't charity in the traditional sense; it's infrastructure for dignity: helping waste pickers secure identity documents, access healthcare and education for their families, find stable housing, and build skills that open up better livelihoods — recognizing work that the formal economy had, for years, simply pretended not to see.
A seat at the table
In 2017, something structurally significant happened: the first tripartite Memorandum of Understanding was signed between the BBMP, waste pickers, and resource organizations including Hasiru Dala. It allowed waste pickers to formally operate and manage their own Dry Waste Collection Centres (DWCCs) — turning informal, unrecognized labor into an officially acknowledged role within the city's waste management system for the first time.
The city doesn't run cleaner because of a policy on paper. It runs cleaner because someone shows up before sunrise, every single day, to sort what everyone else has already forgotten about.
What's still missing
Recognition on paper hasn't fully closed the gap in practice. Advocacy groups continue to push for stronger legal protection for waste pickers in Karnataka — covering fair wages, safety equipment, and protection from extreme heat during long hours of outdoor sorting work. The MoU was a milestone, not a finish line, and the work of turning informal recognition into enforceable rights is still very much ongoing.
Why this matters to us
Sustainability isn't only about the environment — it's about the people whose labor makes environmental progress possible in the first place. Bengaluru's waste pickers have been doing the unglamorous, physical work of a circular economy long before "circular economy" was a phrase anyone used. They deserve to be seen, and they deserve better than being overlooked for it.
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