The recycling of refuse in India is a business for the most ‘illegal’ but is tolerated by the state since it gives millions of people work and allows them to survive. In Mumbai there is a district, specializing in the recycling of the refuse, nicknamed ‘Compound 13’, inside one of the largest shanty towns in all of Asia; Dharavi. There are around 30,000 people working in this district, who arrive from Dharavi and from the slums all over the city to be employed in the daily recycling of 6000 tons of refuse products from Mumbai’s 18 million inhabitants.  Here they recycle everything, from plastic to card, from iron to glass; in this place you find any material that can be salvaged.  They are recycle up to 600 tons of plastic per day, not counting all the other materials. This district is an example for the entire world, where we speak continually, but do precious little, about recycling of refuse as one of the principal ways of combating the destruction of natural resources and pollution.  To the detriment of the vast social and ecological work that these people carry out, they are forced to work and live in a  miserable, degrading condition beyond every human limit and die very young due to the numerous diseases caused by their work.

They dig with their bare hands in the rubbish dumps, amongst the little channels of sewage that run through the city, in dustbins, searching for any rubbish that they can sell in order to survive. The paradox of this work is that if, on the one hand, the recycling of materials safeguards the environment by reusing resources, on the other hand the chemical agents used in the recycling process and the potent atmospheric pollution caused by the toxic fumes from the melting of certain materials, creates a higher level of pollution in the area and therefore poses a greater risk to the workers and the local population. Moreover trade-unions legislations do not exist to protect against disease or injury, as for the greater part, these activities are illegal (in Compound 13, there exists more than 700 small and medium sized enterprises, with more than half of these operating illegally) and often in India frequently there is a marked absence of protection for the workers, provided by the state. There exists only the job, and the necessity to work for many people, and many employers cynically use this situation in order to exploit a desperate labour force that will do anything in order to survive. These workers earn two euro a day, scarcely enough for them and their families to survive in the slums of the city. They are forced to accept these inhumane work conditions because they know very well that there is always someone coming up behind them who is even more desperate and deprived, and who will accept the work conditions and therefore, in order to keep their jobs, they are forced to endure the situation. 

Their employers, small unscrupulous businessmen, succeed in earning between 50 to 350 Euros per day, a fortune here in India. The “rubbish seekers” are the first link in a chain of collection that will see the rubbish they collect sold to wholesalers who separate the refuse according to the quality and colour of the materials etc, which will then be crushed and melted down in order to give it a new form. Rubbish recycled to give it a new lease of life, achieved only due to the work of thousands of people who operate and survive in these dire inhumane conditions, and who also unconsciously contribute to saving the environment for all of us. These people deserve respect and profound consideration: they are people who have decided, for their own dignity, not to go out and steal or swindle, actions that would undoubtedly be more financially beneficial, but to do this job, however inhumane the conditions, in order to survive and live their lives honourably.