Last week brought some very exciting news to us here at Waste Ventures! After Waste Ventures’ Sanjay Gupta presented our model at the Alliance of Indian Wastepickers conference at the end of January, the response from waste pickers and Jairam Ramesh (Minister of Environment and Forests) was overwhelmingly positive.
Less than two weeks later, a provision for waste pickers has already been drafted into the Plastic Waste Rules for 2011!
One of the major provisions under the new Rules is the explicit recognition of the rule of waste pickers. The new Rules require the municipal authority to constructively engage agencies or groups working in waste management including these waste pickers. This is the very first time that such a special dispensation has been made.