SWaCH

SWaCH is a cooperative of self-employed waste pickers who provide waste management, segregation and recycling services in Pune city in western India. SWaCH also works with companies, and partners with a packaged food company to recover multi-layered plastic waste.

SWaCH was formed out of a trade union of over 9,000 waste pickers in Pune, who sort through household waste, recover recyclable materials and sell it to recyclers. The cooperative was founded in 2008 after the union partnered with the city government to have waste pickers gather waste directly from households.

Its members currently cover 800,000 households every day – about 70% of the city. The members earn from fees paid by users, and from the sale of recyclable waste materials that they recover from the household waste, such as corrugated boards, plastics, metals and glass. The cooperative claims to help recycle 70,000 tonnes of waste every year.

SWaCH runs specialized waste collection programs at events and schools. It also collects old clothes and unused items from households, which are repaired to be reused or sent for recycling. It collects electronic waste from companies, helping them meet their legal obligations for recycling such waste.

They provide MLP collection service in Pune. The organization has partnered with Indian snack foods company ITC to collect and recycle multilayered plastic waste. The waste pickers recover MLP from household waste and sell them at designated collection centres, from where they are transported to a central baling facility and then dispatched to recycling facilities. An average 4,314 kilogrammes of MLP waste was recovered every day in December 2019, as per the cooperative’s estimates.