Beverage Companies Take the Sustainable Rein

PepsiCo uses 50% less water, delivers 5% increased crop yield

PepsiCo surpassed the target of a one-third reduction in water use using drip irrigation at the same time as growing ‘more crop per drop’

Trials were started in the UK in 2011, on 100Ha of crops used to produce potatoes for Walkers Crisps, and continued throughout last year.

In 2011, the trials delivered a7% increase in crop yield with 36% less irrigation water per tonne. Then in 2012, the company recorded a 5% increase in crop yield for 49% less irrigation water per tonne.

“These results are helping us deliver on our commitments to sustainable farming and to being a sustainable business,” said the company in a statement. “We recognize the important role we can play in helping farmers become more sustainable and are delighted that the farmers trialling drip irrigation are now investing in these systems themselves.”

PepsiCo claimed the runner-up spot in the Energy and Carbon Management – short-term category in this year’s 2degrees Sustainability Champions Awards with the company recognized for its efforts to reduce energy, water and waste impacts at its Walkers Snack Foods plant in Leicester.

The business has also been shortlisted for Best Supplier Engagement at the recent Ethical Corporation Awards 2013.

The PepsiCo potato trials were benchmarked against traditional methods of irrigating potatoes with rain-guns or booms. Trials, run with Cambridge University, took place simultaneously in four different areas of the country with three different grower groups, on three different potato varieties across the two crop years.
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MOLSON COORS' BEER PRINT IDEAL

On Tuesday, Molson Coors Brewing Company released its 2013 Corporate Responsibility Report, covering the company’s performance in five key areas: Governance and Ethics, Alcohol Responsibility, Environmental Stewardship, Employees and Community and Responsible Sourcing.

The report highlights significant savings of energy, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, water consumption and waste to landfill based on targets the company set in 2008.

“In 2012 Molson Coors saw Our Beer Print performance — our impacts on our communities, people and the environment — recognized as best in class when we were named the beverage industry sector leader on the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index,” said president and CEO Peter Swinburn. “Improving Our Beer Print has already positively affected our bottom line: From 2008 through 2012, we saved $10 million per year due to lower use of energy and water, reduced waste fees and taxes, and sales of materials that would otherwise have been disposed. Our targeted environmental performance through 2020 will result in additional savings of $16 million per year.”

While the company saw overall reductions, its water and energy intensity targets were not met due to lower than expected volumes. Last year, the company announced ambitious new long-term targets to achieve further reductions: 25 percent in energy intensity, 15 percent in GHG intensity and 20 percent in water per unit of production by the year 2020.

Building corporate responsibility into brands

In early 2013, Molson Coors adopted a 2015 goal for global corporate responsibility, ‘to improve Our Beer Print to create a competitive advantage for our brands and customers.’ The company’s focus has evolved from behind-the-scenes operations management to include embedding corporate responsibility in the brands themselves and how they go to market.

“As a consumer products company, we anticipate and respond to the changing attitudes and preferences of consumers. We will further succeed when we inspire consumers with our quality products produced sustainably and aligned with their social and environmental values,” said Bart Alexander, chief corporate responsibility officer for Molson Coors. “By building stronger partnerships with retailers to collectively advance responsibility, as well as by mobilizing consumers directly through our own efforts, improving Our Beer Print will continue to contribute to the company’s growth.”

Highlights of Molson Coors’ environmental stewardship performance in 2012 include commendable achievements in the areas of:

• GHG Emissions: Achieved a 24 percent reduction in carbon emissions intensity since 2008 (equivalent to a 25 percent reduction in absolute carbon emissions). The company surpassed its 2012 target in 2010 as a result of focused efforts to invest in GHG reduction, energy efficiency and process improvements.
• Waste: Accomplished zero waste to landfill in their UK-based operations by the end of 2012. Between 2008 and 2012 its UK operations diverted 5,697 tonnes of waste away from landfill and avoided $500,000 in landfill taxes. The company missed its global landfill-diversion target, sending 1.9 percent more waste to landfill in 2012 than in 2011. This was a stretch target and Molson Coors will continue to challenge its operations in this area through the development of a long-term global waste strategy.
• Water: At year-end 2012, water intensity was seven percent lower than in 2008. Since 2008, the company reduced total water consumption by over 12.6 million hectoliters, equivalent to 504 Olympic swimming pools. Lower than expected volumes made it difficult to reduce water intensity and caused the company to fall short of its 2012 target of 15 percent reduction.
• Energy: The company’s 2012 energy intensity was 11 percent lower than in 2008. Since 2008, the company reduced total energy consumption by over 370 million megajoules. Lower than expected volumes made it difficult to reduce energy intensity and Molson Coors did not meet the 2012 energy reduction target of 15 percent.
• Packaging: Set a new global goal to reduce packaging weight by four percent by 2015 from a 2012 baseline.

Alexander says Molson Coors remains committed to achieving and exceeding its goals in all five key areas.
"Clearly we want to sustain the progress we have made across the corporate responsibility spectrum,” he said in an email. “We are proud of what we have accomplished, and know we have more to do every year.

“Our work so far means we can now add a commercial focus to our effort. For a beer company, that involves building partnerships with our retail customers and consumers through our brands and innovation. We will measure our success by the quality of our relationships with customers and the health of our brands.”
He added, “Three principles will continue to guide us:

• Engage our people and our partners to improve Our Beer Print.
• Sustain ownership throughout the organization — from the Board of Directors and Executive Leadership Team to the sales force and shop floor.
• Be honest with ourselves and our stakeholders, learning from both our successes and failures."

Earlier this month, Molson Coors earned a 2degrees Sustainability Champion Award for its water stewardship campaign, “Every Drop, Every Ripple.”

Renewables to surpass gas by 2016 in the global power mix

Power generation from hydro, wind, solar and other renewable sources worldwide will exceed that from gas and be twice that from nuclear by 2016, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said today in its second annual Medium-Term Renewable Energy Market Report (MTRMR).    

According to the MTRMR, despite a difficult economic context, renewable power is expected to increase by 40% in the next five years. Renewables are now the fastest-growing power generation sector and will make up almost a quarter of the global power mix by 2018, up from an estimated 20% in 2011. The share of non-hydro sources such as wind, solar, bioenergy and geothermal in total power generation will double, reaching 8% by 2018, up from 4% in 2011 and just 2% in 2006.

“As their costs continue to fall, renewable power sources are increasingly standing on their own merits versus new fossil-fuel generation,” said IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven as she presented the report at the Renewable Energy Finance Forum in New York. “This is good news for a global energy system that needs to become cleaner and more diversified, but it should not be an excuse for government complacency, especially among OECD countries.”

Even as the role of renewables increases across all sectors, the MTRMR cautions that renewable development is becoming more complex and faces challenges – especially in the policy arena. In several European countries with stagnating economies and energy demand, debate about the costs of renewable support policies is mounting. In addressing these issues, Ms. Van der Hoeven warned that “policy uncertainty is public enemy number one” for investors: “Many renewables no longer require high economic incentives. But they do still need long-term policies that provide a predictable and reliable market and regulatory framework compatible with societal goals,” she stated. “And worldwide subsidies for fossil fuels remain six times higher than economic incentives for renewables.”

The forecasts in the report build on the impressive growth registered in 2012, when global renewable generation rose by over 8% despite a challenging investment, policy and industry context in some areas. In absolute terms, global renewable generation in 2012 – at 4 860 TWh – exceeded the total estimated electricity consumption of China.

Two main factors are driving the positive outlook for renewable power generation. First, investment and deployment are accelerating in emerging markets, where renewables help to address fast-rising electricity demand, energy diversification needs and local pollution concerns while contributing to climate change mitigation. Led by China, non-OECD countries are expected to account for two-thirds of the global increase in renewable power generation between now and 2018. Such rapid deployment is expected to more than compensate for slower growth and smooth out volatility in other areas, notably Europe and the US.

Second, in addition to the well-established competitiveness of hydropower, geothermal and bioenergy, renewables are becoming cost-competitive in a wider set of circumstances. For example, wind competes well with new fossil-fuel power plants in several markets, including Brazil, Turkey and New Zealand. Solar is attractive in markets with high peak prices for electricity, for instance, those resulting from oil-fired generation. Decentralised solar photovoltaic generation costs can be lower than retail electricity prices in a number of countries.

The MTRMR also sees gains for biofuels in transport and for renewable sources for heat, though at somewhat slower growth rates than renewable electricity. Biofuels output, adjusted for energy content, should account for nearly 4% of global oil demand for road transport in 2018, up from 3% in 2012. But advanced biofuels growth is proceeding only slowly.

As a portion of final energy consumption for heat, renewable sources, excluding traditional biomass, should rise to almost 10% in 2018, from over 8% in 2011. But the potential of renewable heat remains largely unexploited.

The MTRMR is part of a series of medium-term forecasts that the IEA devotes to each of the main primary energy sources – oil, gas, coal and renewable energy – and, starting this year, energy efficiency. This approach allows the IEA to look in detail at each market while taking into account the whole energy system and the relationships between the various energy sources.

Accredited journalists who would like more information or who wish to receive a complimentary copy should contact ieapressoffice@iea.org.

About the IEA

The International Energy Agency is an autonomous organisation which works to ensure reliable, affordable and clean energy for its 28 member countries and beyond. Founded in response to the 1973/4 oil crisis, the IEA’s initial role was to help countries co-ordinate a collective response to major disruptions in oil supply through the release of emergency oil stocks to the markets. While this continues to be a key aspect of its work, the IEA has evolved and expanded. It is at the heart of global dialogue on energy, providing reliable and unbiased research, statistics, analysis and recommendations.

Injunction in Favor of Stop Global Warming Assoc Delays Thai Mega-Dam Flood Scheme

K-Water, the Korean firm that won the largest bid on the project, is concerned that the responsibility and source of the EIA has not been defined. "We want the government to make it clear who will conduct the environmental and health impact assessments and public hearing, so as to comply with the Constitution."

Impact studies must be done first, judge says.

Companies that have won bids for the government's massive Bt350-billion water-management scheme are holding their breath, after an Administrative Court judge voiced initial support for an injunction.

Judge Wassana Maneetong said in the first hearing yesterday that all nine modules - due to be awarded soon - should be put on hold until environmental impact assessments (EIAs) and health impact assessments (HIAs) are completed.

Wassana is tasked with an initial role to hear facts, while a verdict will be made with other judges who act jointly in a quorum but are often absent from the trial chamber. The court tomorrow could reverse or uphold the statement.

Having to conduct impact assessments would significantly delay the mega-scheme and the injection of a large amount of funds into the economy.

An injunction would also mean that all terms of reference would have to be amended, as key factors and specifications would have to be changed, including the mandatory EIA and HIA operations, plus mandatory public hearings on projects, which have also not been done, and subsequent public participation. There has been little of the latter in projects proposed in the mega-scheme.

Monthon Panupokin, managing director of Korea Water Resources Corp (K-water), which won the biggest module worth Bt130 billion, said his agency is now waiting to hear the final decision from the court on whether the project will be suspended.

"We want the government to make it clear who will conduct the environmental and health impact assessments and public hearing, so as to comply with the Constitution," he said.

Vasant Chatikavanij, senior executive vice president of Loxley - a partner in the Loxley-AGT Consortium - voiced a similar concern. He said Loxley was ready to comply with the court's verdict by conducting an EIA before the construction of the water and flood information centre. Yet, as the contract has yet to be officially awarded, it remains unclear if the consortium or the government should undertake the EIA.

"At least, it's good that the court will not order the government to cancel the whole project. We would be happy if the court asks us to only conduct the EIA report before signing the contract," he said.

Judge Wassana's decision was in favour of a petition by the Stop Global Warming Association.

In her statement, she said the project should be suspended and public hearings completed before the government signs contracts with contractors, in line with Section 67 (2) of the Constitution, which requires EIA and HIA for projects that could affect the environment and communities.



Srisuwan Janya, president of the association, was convinced that the Central Administrative Court would uphold Judge Wassana's statement tomorrow.

"Normally, the EIA and HIA process takes about two years. This should require a similar period of time," he said.

The petition accused Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, the Strategic Committee for Water-Resources Management, the National Water-Management and Flood-Prevention Policy Commission and the Water- and Flood-Management Commission (WFMC) of abusing their authority when preparing the projects related to the flood-prevention/water-management systems.

The government has already selected financiers for the project, and expected to start dispersing funds from the last quarter of this year, to help boost domestic investment. Krungthai Bank is among four banks that will supply loans to support the water management scheme after signing contracts with the Public Debt Management Office on Monday.

Kittiya Todhanakasem, first senior executive vice president at Krungthai, said the bank believed that disbursement may be delayed till next year if the court agrees to an injunction. But the delay would not affect lending growth this year, as KTB had not included loans linked to the water scheme in its business plan this year, she said.

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/national/Water-mega-plan-faces-legal-delay-30209115.html

Food Waste NYC vs Trash Colection in India

BLOOMBERG PUSHES NEW YORK CITY TO COMPOST

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who has tried to curb soda consumption, ban smoking in parks and encourage bike riding, is taking on a new cause: requiring New Yorkers to separate their food scraps for composting.

Dozens of smaller cities, including San Francisco and Seattle, have adopted rules that mandate recycling of food waste from homes, but sanitation officials in New York had long considered the city too dense and vertically structured for such a policy to succeed.

Recent pilot programs in the city, though, have shown an unexpectedly high level of participation, officials said. As a result, the Bloomberg administration is rolling out an ambitious plan to begin collecting food scraps across the city, according to Caswell F. Holloway IV, a deputy mayor.

The administration plans to announce shortly that it is hiring a composting plant to handle 100,000 tons of food scraps a year. That amount would represent about 10 percent of the city’s residential food waste.

Anticipating sharp growth in food recycling, the administration will also seek proposals within the next 12 months for a company to build a plant in the New York region to process residents’ food waste into biogas, which would be used to generate electricity.

“This is going to be really transformative,” Mr. Holloway said. “You want to get on a trajectory where you’re not sending anything to landfills.”

The residential program will initially work on a voluntary basis, but officials predict that within a few years, it will be mandatory. New Yorkers who do not separate their food scraps could be subject to fines, just as they are currently if they do not recycle plastic, paper or metal.

Mr. Bloomberg, an independent, leaves office at the end of the year, and his successor could scale back or cancel the program. But in interviews, two leading Democratic candidates for mayor, Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, and Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, expressed strong support for the program — including the plan to eventually make it mandatory.

Sanitation officials said 150,000 single-family homes would be on board voluntarily by next year, in addition to more than 100 high-rise buildings — more than 5 percent of the households in the city. More than 600 schools will take part as well.

The program should expand to the entire city by 2015 or 2016, the sanitation officials said. Under the program, residents collect food waste — like stale bread, chicken bones and potato peels — in containers the size of picnic baskets in their homes. The contents are then deposited in larger brown bins on the curb for pickup by sanitation trucks.

Residents of apartment buildings dump pails of food scraps at central collection points, most likely in the same places they put recyclable material.

It remains to be seen whether New Yorkers will embrace the program, given that some may cringe at keeping a container of potentially malodorous waste in a typically cramped urban kitchen, even if it is supposed to be emptied regularly.

The city has historically had a relatively mediocre record in recycling, diverting only about 15 percent of its total residential waste away from landfills.

In the latest 12-month period recorded, the Sanitation Department issued 75,216 summonses to home and building owners for failing to recycle. Officials expected that more summonses will be issued in the current fiscal year, because the department has redeployed personnel to recycling enforcement. Still, the residential food-waste program would represent the biggest expansion of recycling efforts since the city began separating paper, metal and glass in 1989.

“It’s revolutionary for New York,” said Eric A. Goldstein, a senior lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council, a prominent environmental group. “If successful, pretty soon there’ll be very little trash left for homeowners to put in their old garbage cans.”

The city spent $336 million last year disposing of residential trash, exporting most of it to landfills in Ohio, Pennsylvania and South Carolina.

Food waste and other organic materials account for almost a third of all residential trash, and the city could save about $100 million a year by diverting it from landfills, said Ron Gonen, who was hired last year as deputy sanitation commissioner for recycling and sustainability, a new job at the department.

Experts have long criticized recycling as a weak spot in Mr. Bloomberg’s environmental record. But he appears to want to close out his tenure with a push to improve the program.

In his State of the City address in February, Mr. Bloomberg called food waste “New York City’s final recycling frontier.”

“We bury 1.2 million tons of food waste in landfills every year at a cost of nearly $80 per ton,” he said. “That waste can be used as fertilizer or converted to energy at a much lower price. That’s good for the environment and for taxpayers.”

The city does not handle commercial waste — businesses must hire private carters. But the administration intends to propose legislation that would require restaurants and food businesses to recycle their food waste.

A central question for the next mayor and City Council will be when to make residential recycling of food waste mandatory, with violators subject to fines. Garbage disposals remain relatively rare in the city.

Mr. de Blasio called diverting trash from landfills “crucially important to the environment and the city’s fiscal health” and said he would like to have a mandatory program within five years.

Ms. Quinn said the City Council would take up a bill this summer to require pilot programs across the city to ensure that voluntary recycling of food waste continues, regardless of who is mayor.

She said a mandatory program should be in place by 2016.

“We’re going to lock it in,” she said. “When New York makes composting part of everyday life, every other city will follow through. This is going to create an urban trend.” Sanitation officials said they had been heartened by recent pilot programs.

At the Helena, a 600-unit building on West 57th Street in Manhattan, bins are kept in the trash rooms on each floor and emptied daily by workers.

The building’s owner, the Durst Organization, said the weight of the compostable material had been steadily rising, to a total of 125 pounds daily.

In the Westerleigh section of Staten Island, the city offered 3,500 single-family homes brown bins, kitchen containers and compost bags last April. Residents were told to separate out all foods, and even soiled paper like napkins and plates. Already 43 percent are placing their bins out on the curb for weekly pickups, said Mr. Gonen, the senior sanitation official.

Ellen and Thomas Felci, neighborhood residents, said they were eager to take part in the program — “for the good of the city,” Mrs. Felci said. Everything now goes into the brown bin: things like corn husks and broccoli stems, but not meat (because Mr. Felci, 65, said he feared raccoons). Mrs. Felci, 62, said that a week into the tryout she noticed a bad smell coming from the container, which she had placed next to the sink in the kitchen. She solved the problem by dumping the contents into the bin outside more regularly and putting baking soda in the bottom.

But across the street, Joe Lagambina, 58, shunned the program. He said that recycling plastic and metal was already a burden, and that he would not separate food unless it was required by the city. He said his three daughters often mixed trash with recyclables.

“I’m the one who has to separate everything,” he said. “I go outside and there’ll be regular garbage in the blue can. It’s a pain.”  “I have enough work,” he said.

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Out of India’s Trash Heaps, More Than a Shred of Dignity

By SARIKA BANSAL

PUNE, India — “Trash! Trash!” yelled Chandani Nagtilak as she pushed her cart through a residential complex.

An older woman put two bins on her porch steps and exchanged pleasantries in the local language, Marathi.  Chandani took the bins to her pushcart, where she and her colleague Rekha Shinde emptied them and began separating the contents into organic, recyclable and nonrecyclable waste.

Chandani wore a magenta sari under her uniform, a dark blue button-down shirt.  Earlier that morning, she had eaten a rich breakfast of poha and halwa, washed her hands with soap, and complained to her friends that her teenage son would rather gossip than study.

This is significant. For many years, Chandani couldn’t count on eating a good breakfast, washing with soap or rolling a pushcart. For more than 20 years, she has been a waste-picker in Pune (pronounced POO-nay), a city of six million.  During most of that time, she dressed in tattered clothes and hauled a back-aching bag as she fought off dogs while scouring for recyclables at a landfill.  She sometimes went without meals.  She sustained injuries.  Most hurtful, people often refused to make eye contact with her — except to call her a thief or a piece of trash.

“Now people offer me tea when I go to their houses,” said Chandani, beaming.

That’s because her work has been formalized and people have come to appreciate the value of her services. In addition, waste management, recycling and composting are increasingly coming to be seen as vital to community health, environmental sustainability and quality of life around the world. So how did Chandani go from being regarded as a thief to a potential house guest?

As with so many social changes, it began with organizing. In 1993, a collective called Kagad Kach Patra Kashtakari Panchayat (K.K.P.K.P.) was established in Pune, with an ambitious goal: to organize waste-pickers, one of the poorest and more marginalized segments of urban Indian society.  Waste-pickers are often uneducated, rural migrants who sift through trash heaps or landfills, looking for plastics and glass that they sell to middlemen by weight, who send them to be recycled.  This informal system results in recycling rates of almost 50 percent for plastics (as compared with 8.2 percent in the United States) — which is why activists call waste-pickers “invisible environmentalists.”

Sarika Bansal Chandani Nagtilak sorted through recyclable materials in a residential complex in the University of Pune. Waste-picking is full of occupational hazards.  Waste-pickers sifting through trash with bare hands encounter rusty metal, cut glass, needles and menstrual blood; their life expectancy may be a decade or more below the average.  With a daily income of 60 rupees (one dollar) in Pune, most cannot afford proper meals or medical care.  Police and security guards harass them, particularly women.  Governments offers little protection.

It took years for K.K.P.K.P. to mobilize the waste-pickers, who were scattered and reluctant to take time off work for meetings.  As the group came together, however, they found a sympathetic ear in the Pune Municipal Corporation (P.M.C.), the city’s governing body.

That led to the innovation that changed Chandani’s life and has evolved into a waste-management approach that others can learn from. In 2007, the K.K.P.K.P. and Pune’s government got together to create a cooperative called Solid Waste Collection and Handling (Swach). The idea was to engage waste-pickers to handle almost all of the city’s waste, a remarkable departure from other cities, where private contractors haul waste to landfills with trucks. The question was: Could Swach save the Pune government lots of money, improve the environment and improve livelihoods for some of the city’s poorest inhabitants? The answer appears to be yes to all three.

After collecting trash, waste-pickers like Chandani and Rekha segregate the waste in nearby sheds. They send organic matter to be composted, sell recyclable items and collect nonrecyclable waste (like candy wrappers) for transport to a centralized facility to be incinerated.

The waste-pickers receive fees of about 60 cents per month from each household they serve.  The city also extends a modest health insurance scheme to the workers — a hard-won victory for K.K.P.K.P., which argued that after doing the city’s dirty work, its members deserved some social protection.

By last count, Swach’s waste-pickers were collecting trash from almost 400,000 houses, or 90 percent of Pune’s nonslum households.  “Pune is only second to Buenos Aires in the number of households from whom waste-pickers collect,” said Lucia Fernandez, who works with waste-pickers globally through a network called Wiego.

Swach and the P.M.C. observe several advantages to this model. Malati Gadgil, an organizer with Swach, says the waste-pickers cost the city 6 cents per household, while truck-hauled waste costs about 40 to 50 cents. Capital requirements are also less: pushcarts and buckets are a lot cheaper than trucks.

“P.M.C. hardly spends anything this way,” said Suresh Jagtap, P.M.C.’s joint commissioner of solid waste management and key supporter of Swach.  “Our spending on health insurance is hardly anything.”

The Swach model provides environmental benefits, too.  “Trucks are incentivized to focus more on tonnage and less on segregation,” said Jagtap.  When large quantities of mixed waste enter a landfill, it’s harder for waste-pickers to pick out recyclables or compostable items. Uncomposted organics release methane, a gas that is 20 times more heat-trapping than carbon dioxide. By segregating waste in sheds closer to the source — which is safer and more hygienic than working at a landfill — Swach waste-pickers divert far more from waste streams. In fact, several Pune neighborhoods will soon be “zero waste” — recycling or composting virtually everything possible.

Waste-pickers receive income from fees from households as well as from selling recyclables, which combined can double or triple their previous earnings. “I can buy books, uniforms and soap for my kids,” said Rekha. “I can run a house on this.” And, equally important, Swach’s uniforms and identification cards bring waste-pickers a measure of respect that many had not before received.

However, Swach’s model has challenges. How do you manage thousands of self-employed waste-pickers? Most of Swach’s workers have no bank accounts, so the group has to collect and distribute most of the fees in cash. And asking historically informal workers to provide a municipal service involves behavior change. For example, sometimes workers leave work without notice, leaving trash to pile up. Others do things like swearing or spitting that can offend middle-class sensibilities, noted Jagtap. (Swach offers training programs to improve the waste-pickers’ professionalism.)

Some households refuse to pay the fees and some politicians oppose them, too. Indeed, Swach’s biggest risk is political.  “At the end of the day, Swach is a contract and not a policy,” said Fernandez, of Wiego.  “If the municipal government changes, [they could decide] it’s more important to use a fancy international company than support the urban poor.”

In fact, the municipality next to Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad, recently dropped Swach in favor of a private contractor, and waste-pickers have returned to the landfill.  In other cities, lack of political will and historic social stratification keeps the model from taking off. Prakash Patil, the deputy municipal commissioner of waste management for Mumbai, told me that waste-pickers “have no role” in middle-class society.

To develop political will in Pune, Swach had to clearly demonstrate, and document, the financial and environmental benefits it brings. The group estimates that it saves the city $2.2 million annually.  K.K.P.K.P. had also organized 6,000 workers over 14 years before the city decided to contract with them.

Sarika Bansal Chandani Nagtilak, left, and Rekha Shinde traveled with their pushcart and buckets. In India, several cities have employed or are exploring similar models, including Ahmedabad, where the Self-Employed Women’s Association has been organizing waste-pickers since the 1980s. Globally the idea is also gaining momentum. Albina Ruiz, the founder of Ciudad Saludable, a waste management organization in Peru, has been working with waste-pickers for more than two decades. “Twenty years ago, nobody would talk about the waste-pickers,” she said. “Now they are visible, they can be ‘seen’, they attend international forums.” In more cities, laws have become more supportive.

But Ruiz and others caution that waste-pickers need to be careful not to sell themselves as a cheap solution to waste removal.  “The waste-pickers should only collect the recyclable waste,” Ruiz says. If they haul trash, they should charge per ton, she added. Other activists assert that waste collection is part of a city’s contract with its citizens. Accordingly, waste-pickers should be compensated in line with the value of their work.

For Chandani and Rekha, the simple opportunity to do this work and earn a reasonable wage and respect has been transformational. “I finally have a good life,” Chandani told me.  “I never thought I would see the day.”

Sarika Bansal is a journalist who writes about social innovation and global health.