While it is fairly common to see waste pickers in the bustling city, their lives and work are, ironically, cloaked by invisibility. Perhaps this stems from that out-of-sight-out-of-mind view and treatment of waste everywhere in the world.
Getting to know Bengaluru’s waste workers through The Body Shop’s latest community trade programme, which aims to help close the loop on plastic waste management.
SINGAPORE (June 3): The day begins early — often before sunrise — for 40-something Annamma who works as a waste picker in Bengaluru, India. After preparing breakfast, she heads out even before her children wake up for school, returning in the late afternoon to segregate the collection of the day and just in time to cook and clean for the family. Some days, she walks a few miles to the nearest collection centre to sell the scrap. This has been a typical day for her for decades, as it probably has been for the rest of Bengaluru’s community of waste pickers, 50% of whom are women.
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