Around 62 million tons of waste are generated in India every year, of which only 19 percent is processed. The rest ends up in landfills, but it doesn’t sit there – anything that can be monetized is channeled through the 1.5 to 4 million informal garbage collectors who are the biggest driving force behind recycling in the country.
Often barefoot, uneducated and shunned by society, they scale a city’s vast heaps of garbage to monetize glass, metal and all kinds of plastic. The people living in poverty are key players in India’s waste and circular economy, sorting faster and more thoroughly than any machine could, yet under-recognized and with little access to social support.
In 2020, the H&M Foundation launched a $11 million (€10.3 million) initiative, Saamuhika Shakti (“Collective Power”), to fill the gaps in this system by bringing together ten local experts and NGOs from different sectors in Bengaluru, India, with the aim of turning plastic waste into a valuable resource and empowering the garbage collectors to lift themselves out of poverty.
The PET waste thus collected is sold to the social enterprise Hasiru Dala Innovations and then flocked, washed and sent to button suppliers. To date, 152 million buttons on garments have been sold worldwide and 32,000 people are already benefiting from improvements in various areas such as education, health and safety.
“The buttons can be traced back to the source of the waste, along with the names of the workers, social security, salaries and working conditions at the collection center,” the H&M Foundation said in a press release.
“If we work together holistically towards an inclusive circular economy, we can create solutions that help both people and the planet to thrive. By tackling the challenges associated with the lives of refuse collectors, they have the potential to lift themselves out of poverty and contribute to a circular global system,” commented Maria Bystedt, Strategy Lead at H&M Foundation.