The Great Indian Garbage Crisis: Why It Is A Failure Of Will, Not Know-how

Every morning across Bengaluru, a quiet failure plays out on street corners. Waste pickers sort through mixed garbage, trucks arrive hours late or not at all, and mountains of refuse accumulate where none should exist. The city generates 3,025 tonnes of wet waste and 1,925 tonnes of dry waste daily.

Yet only 2,180 tonnes of wet waste and 1,200 tonnes of dry waste are processed. The remainder (850 tonnes of wet waste and 725 tonnes of dry waste mixing together) ends up in landfills, a monument to systemic dysfunction.

This year, stung by Bengaluru's poor showing in Swachh Survekshan 2025, the state government decided to strip Bengaluru Solid Waste Management Ltd (BSWML) of its waste collection responsibilities. Yet beneath this administrative reshuffling lies a graver reality: India's waste management crisis stems not from lack of effort, but from a fundamental misalignment between policy, economics, and ground reality.

The time has come for an uncomfortable truth. Are our current approaches truly serving the best interests of either the environment or the people, or has our reluctance to confront hard economic realities trapped us in an unsustainable cycle demanding difficult re-evaluation?

The Governance Maze

In 2014, the government introduced a seemingly sensible reform: Bulk Waste Generators (BWGs) would no longer be serviced by ward-level contractors but would manage their waste independently through empanelled service providers. The intent was noble: create accountability, professionalise the sector, encourage responsible waste management.

Yet beneath this reform lies a transformation that would likely have horrified its architects.

Shekar Prabhakar, co-founder and CEO of Hasiru Dala Innovations, was among the first to navigate this new landscape. "Hasiru Dala Innovations was the first to be empanelled. We still have an ID of 001," Mr Prabhakar tells Swarajya. His organisation pioneered a model centred on waste picker entrepreneurs, providing them dignity and formal recognition.

The theoretical framework appears straightforward: property taxpayers can self-identify as BWGs, decline BSWML services, and contract private providers. Reality, however, tells a different story, one shaped by economics, exploitation, and misaligned incentives.

The Economics of Invisibility

Vivek Cholakkal, Manager of Plastics at Saahas Zero Waste (an agency processing over 100 metric tonnes of waste daily across 50 cities) offers a sobering assessment of the industry's fundamental structure. "Waste management is not like any other industry. In most industries, stakeholders are aligned towards the outcome. Here, there are multiple layers, immense informality, and exploitation at every level, of both people and resources," Mr Cholakkal explains.

His organisation runs Project Sarvam, an ambitious initiative designed to unite stakeholders by passing field-level information through policy layers. The disconnect between theory and practice has created a system where each layer operates with different assumptions and priorities.

"Until the government has one approach, the private sector another viewpoint, and we as consultants have our on-ground experiences through building infrastructure, performing operations, and collecting waste, the disconnect will persist," Mr Cholakkal states.

The information Sarvam collects reveals patterns most would prefer to ignore: the true volume of waste produced, the actual value of materials generated, and the bottlenecks strangling the system at every turn.

"If you step out in any Indian metro today, plastic is everywhere. But most of it isn't high-value plastic like PET and HDPE bottles. Most is flexible plastic used for packaging, what we call HM (High Molecular) plastic. This is low-value material with zero recyclability and no market value. This is why people throw it away and why it continues polluting our streets. Nobody will pick it up because there's no economic incentive," Mr Cholakkal states.

The implications cut deeper than aesthetics or environmental concern. This represents a design failure at the most fundamental level. "From a policy perspective, it's a design problem. These materials should not exist in the first place. Only about 60 per cent of plastic in products has recyclable quality. The rest, what we in Bengaluru call 'Kadak', are low or zero-value plastics with no takers due to their chemical composition," he continues.

Yet the fundamental economic problem remains unsolved, and it is this: the numbers simply do not add up.

The Deficit That Dare Not Speak Its Name

"The revenue generated does not justify the cost of maintaining and operating a waste management company," Mr Cholakkal reveals, his words carrying the weight of institutional failure that billions in investment cannot mask.

The economics are brutally simple, yet the implications prove devastatingly complex. Material flows from households to ward-level dry waste collection centres (2,000-3,000 square feet), where basic aggregation and semi-sorting occur. From there, it travels to Material Recovery Facilities (MRFs), centralised units ranging from 5,000 to 20,000 square feet, where comprehensive sorting happens before dispatch to recyclers.

"The operating expense of an MRF is Rs 10 per kg. Through sale of goods post-recycling, we recover only Rs 6-7 per kg. We operate at a deficit of Rs 4 per kg," Mr Cholakkal explains, the mathematics of impossibility laid bare in a single sentence.

Some BWGs do pay for collection services, creating islands of sustainability in an ocean of informal operations. Most, however, engage informal operators who charge less by cutting corners that formal entities cannot: no social security for workers, no proper infrastructure, no equipment, no compliance with regulations designed to protect both workers and the environment.

"Once a formal MRF is set up with all compliant procedures, naturally costs escalate. The service fee we charge BWGs is slightly higher than informal sector rates. BWGs follow the L1 bid mentality, whoever offers the lowest price gets the contract. This makes it very hard to break into the market. We need to convince waste producers to stop subscribing to informal operators and choose us," Mr Cholakkal explains.

Mr Prabhakar's critique echoes this reality with devastating clarity. "Similar attitude is seen with municipal corporation tenders, where L1 wins. To cut costs, many entities put 5 trucks and 10 people where 10 trucks and 20 people are needed," he laments. "This means waste isn't being collected efficiently, and that's how it ends up on streets. We're attempting to put band-aids over bullet holes through this approach."

The sustainability equation remains incomplete without another critical element that policy makers have consistently failed to acknowledge. "The government also needs to provide MRFs with service fees. When an MRF collects waste for an urban local body or gram panchayat, there's social impact value that needs accounting through fees," Mr Cholakkal argues.

The EPR Illusion

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) rules were meant to address this gap, forcing producers to bear costs of the waste their products generate. The reality reveals how good intentions become bureaucratic theatre.

Mr Prabhakar's assessment is withering.

"While the original principle was to allow charges to flow to people who collect and sort, the way it's implemented now, the recycler generates the EPR certificate and brands buy the same. So money goes to the recycler who was already in profit and is rarely passed down the supply chain. For brands, it's no longer about paying the cost for externalising waste generated from consumption of their products but rather a tick in the compliance box. It has become a legal department and procurement department problem, not the ethical responsibility of the brand. Today, EPR for multi-layer plastic is Rs 0.75 to Rs 1.25 per kg, which covers nothing."

His personal stance reflects the economics of dignity. "I haven't taken an EPR contract in the last five years. I won't go below Rs 6.5 per kg because I want to give our waste picker entrepreneurs Rs 3," Mr Prabhakar states.

The revenue breakdown at Saahas Zero Waste reveals the problem's architecture: 90 per cent from sale of goods, 5 per cent from BWG service fees, 2 per cent from other sources, and a mere 3 per cent from EPR.

Hasiru Dala's model inverts this entirely. "Our only revenue source is the collection fee charged to clients for collecting and transporting waste to assured destinations. We operate on a waste picker entrepreneur model and don't take revenue from recyclables because, ideologically, we've always felt that revenue belongs to waste pickers," Mr Prabhakar explains.

Models of Transformation

Wet waste goes to a biogas plant set up as a joint venture with Carbon Masters. Dry waste is taken by the waste picker to his godown, where he sorts it into multiple categories and sells to the recycling supply chain. This becomes one revenue source; the second is fixed income from Hasiru Dala for having collected the other two waste types," Mr Prabhakar explains.

The scale reveals the model's potential. "Today, Hasiru Dala has 33 waste picker entrepreneurs who in turn have hired more than 250 people. Our theory of change is bringing them from informal to professional and finally from professional to formal. We've noticed this journey takes years to come to fruition," he states.

"We want them to aspire to become more than minimum wage workers. Through our model, we've given them access to the market of BWGs and clean waste that they could not have gotten themselves. We do the sales, marketing, and provide working capital," Mr Prabhakar continues.

A second innovation addresses seasonality. "The second model Hasiru Dala pioneered was event management: weddings, marathons, music festivals. Here, waste pickers are hired for the day, given higher than standard market wages, provided uniforms. It's an opportunity for them to attend occasions they otherwise wouldn't. Since there's seasonality to events, it becomes supplementary income," he explains.

Certification provides market differentiation. "Hasiru Dala is the world's only multi-stream waste management company with fair trade guarantee by the World Fair Trade Organisation. We use this and waste picker impact to approach brands. H&M, for the past 13 or so seasons, for all apparels manufactured in India and sold globally, uses 60 per cent recyclable PET made from waste exclusively sourced from us as social partners. The same has been repeated with Sunsilk of Unilever. Here, we're asking for a premium," Mr Prabhakar reveals.

Saahas Zero Waste's approach focuses on transition and capacity building. "We run a programme called social inclusion, where we help informal waste workers or entrepreneurs set up facilities themselves. We provide machinery, capacity building, and training. We incubate them for three years. Once they hit all the KPIs (market command, entrepreneurship skills, domain knowledge) we hand over the facility and they run it independently," Mr Cholakkal explains.

"The entrepreneurs we train usually operated within the informal sector and wish to transition to the formal sector. They're mapped, filtered through selection, provided with business models for running an MRF or dry waste collection centre depending on capacity, then we help onboard workers with PPE kits, ESI, PF, and health insurance," he continues.

Saahas Zero Waste also operates Wisewaste, a traceability platform. Here, entities engaging Saahas for EPR compliance can trace waste from its origins through the supply chain to its final destination.

The Residential Resistance

The divide between corporate BWGs and residential complexes reveals much about how compliance functions when divorced from enforcement. "It's easier to engage corporates. Microsoft as a large MNC cannot condone child labour in whatever service they provide or consume. Saahas Zero Waste is already ethically aligned. The vendors we engage are subjected to similar checklists: no child labour, fire safety measures in facilities, social security for workers. In this space, at least, we don't compete with the informal sector, which mostly operates within waste worker colonies," Mr Cholakkal notes.

Mr Prabhakar's assessment reveals the arithmetic of indifference: "Competition within the informal sector is immense. Currently, the rate averages about Rs 25 per month per household. In the formal sector, the charge would exceed Rs 200 per household. Hasiru Dala charges Rs 225 per month when picked up from a central point. Housekeeping brings it to said point; door-to-door collection involves additional charges. Residents are therefore reluctant to transition to the formal sector."

The resistance runs deeper than economics. "For residential complexes, their income source for waste management services is maintenance charges. All residents want this low. Most associations are willing to spend on security, housekeeping, and landscaping. The last priority is waste management. Though by law they're required to work only with empanelled service providers, they approach tendered contractors whose costs are already covered by the municipal corporation to collect other non-BWG waste. Such contractors then charge 10-15 per cent of what I would charge," Mr Prabhakar reveals.

The Policy Disconnect

The fundamental problem, both Mr Prabhakar and Mr Cholakkal argue, lies not in execution but in the gap between policy formulation and ground reality.

"The government needs to consult stakeholders to align policy with on-ground implementation. For instance, the area specified for dry waste collection is far less than actually required. Additionally, there's no mandate that service fees for collection need to be paid, yet it's crucial to make facilities sustainable," Mr Cholakkal states.

The invisible labour demands recognition. "What people don't realise is that the waste picker who collects your waste is the one who identifies potential in it and transforms it into a tradeable commodity. This is the first and most important value addition. Unfortunately, this service doesn't get its true value within the value chain. The price of waste is still largely determined by the recycler. The physical effort of picking and the knowledge-based skill of sorting don't get their due," Mr Prabhakar continues.

The economic vulnerability flows downward with brutal efficiency. "The waste picker who performs this service is unfortunately at the receiving end of all price falls. When crude oil prices fall, plastic prices fall, therefore recycled plastic prices fall, and the whole price drop is transferred through the value chain back to the first point: the waste picker," he states.

The Global Mirror

When examining how other nations solved similar crises, the contrast with India becomes not merely stark but damning.

Mr Prabhakar's assessment of Indian attitudes cuts deep: "Most of the time, the attitude in India has been to dispose of waste from our immediate surroundings without thinking about what happens thereafter. Out of sight, out of mind has been our policy towards littering. Secondly, the common citizen attitude revolves around the idea that waste is an externality, something the government needs to take care of, with zero to limited individual accountability."

The developed world operates on different premises. "While India is plagued by this mindset, the rest of the world has moved on to the idea that the generator is also responsible along with other stakeholders. Most of the West has a well-established polluter pays principle. In places like California, people pay up to 200 dollars per month for waste management services. In many US counties, there's also the pay-as-you-throw model: consumers sign up for a 16-dollar or 32-dollar drum of waste," he explains.

Geography creates additional complexity. "However, India is a tropical country with a very high percentage of food and organic waste being generated (50-60 per cent at a per capita level of total waste). It has to be picked and managed daily. It can't be once a month because otherwise it decomposes within 48 hours and leads to stink. This adds a layer of having to treat waste management as a utility, just like water, electricity, or telecom, which more often than not the government doesn't do," Mr Prabhakar states.

His organisation has found the formula for reliability. "Today, I deal with 300-plus BWGs and operate with 99 per cent efficiency. When waste management is treated as a utility, the client doesn't have to spend time or bandwidth figuring out whether the truck came. We provide assurance that 90 per cent of the client's waste will be responsibly processed and managed, and only 10 per cent will end up in landfills. This reliability and assurance is what has sustained us for the past decade and kept our clients loyal," he notes.

Japan's experience offers particularly relevant lessons. "The two top problems in highly urbanised areas of our country remain mobility and waste management. Countries like Japan face their own unique challenges. Unlike the USA where land is plentiful and landfilling is possible and happens to be the cheapest way of managing waste, in Japan land is scarce.

The Foundation That Remains Unbuilt

Segregation at source, that simple act of separating wet from dry, high-value from low, recyclable from reject, remains the cornerstone of responsible waste management. Everything else builds upon this foundation. Without it, the most sophisticated processing facilities become monuments to futility, the most dedicated workers become martyrs to inefficiency, and the most generous funding becomes subsidy for continued failure.

Yet here lies the final, most damning revelation: India knows this. The solution has been documented, tested, and proven across continents and decades. The economics have been mapped, the infrastructure requirements calculated, the policy frameworks drafted and waiting.

What remains missing is not knowledge but will: the political courage to mandate what works rather than enable what fails, the institutional honesty to charge what sustainability requires rather than what election cycles permit, and perhaps most fundamentally, the collective maturity to accept individual responsibility for the waste we generate rather than insisting it remains someone else's problem the moment it leaves our hands.

In this gap between what we know and what we do lies not merely a waste management crisis, but a measure of our civilisational ambition. Are we building a nation that handles its refuse with the same seriousness as its aspirations, or are we content to let mountains of garbage serve as monuments to intentions that were always more impressive than our commitment to seeing them through?

The waste pickers sorting through mixed garbage each morning already know the answer. The question is whether the rest of us are ready to acknowledge it.