JAMMU, India – The putrid smell of burning garbage extends for miles from the landfill on the outskirts of Jammu, in a potentially toxic miasma fed by plastics, industrial, medical and other waste generated by a city of about 740,000 people. But a handful of collectors ignore both the smoke and the sweltering heat to sort through the trash, seeking out anything they can sell to earn, at best, the equivalent of $4 a day.
“If we don’t do this, we won’t have food to eat,” said 65-year-old Usmaan Shekh. “We try to take a break for a few minutes when it gets too hot, but most of the time we just keep going until we can’t anymore.”
Shekh and his family are among the estimated 1.5 to 4 million people who make a living scavenging India’s waste – and climate change is making a dangerous job more dangerous than ever. In Jammu, a northern Indian city in the foothills of the Himalayas, temperatures this summer have regularly exceeded 43 degrees Celsius (about 110 Fahrenheit).
At least one person who died in northern India recent heat wave was identified as a garbage collector.
Landfills themselves boil internally as trash decomposes, and the increasing heat of summer accelerates and intensifies the process. This increases emissions of gases such as methane and carbon dioxide, which are dangerous to breathe. And almost all landfill fires occur in the summer, experts say, and can last for days.
At the Jammu landfill, small fires dotted the massive pile, raising clouds of smoke as two men carried a frayed tarp laden with trash on the day of a visit by Associated Press journalists. A 6-year-old boy held an armful of plastic sandals. While other scavengers occasionally took shelter from the heat, birds flew overhead, occasionally landing in search of scraps.
India generates at least 62 million tons of waste annually, according to federal government records, and some of its landfills are literally mountains of trash, like the Ghaziabad landfill outside New Delhi. And although a 2016 law made waste segregation mandatory so that dangerous materials do not reach landfills, the law has been poorly applied, increasing the risk for collectors.
“Since most of them only use their hands, they are already contaminated by touching everything from diapers to diabetes syringes,” said Bharati Chaturvedi, founder of the New Delhi-based Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group.
Chaturvedi, who has worked with waste pickers for more than two decades, said the extreme heat has added new risks to waste pickers who are already victims of social discrimination and appalling working conditions.
“It was a terrible, terrible, terrible year,” she said. “They already expect to suffer from the heat and this gives them a lot of anxiety, because they don’t know if they will make it, if they will survive (the summer).”
Chaturvedi said this year’s heat “has been the most catastrophic thing one could imagine,” adding that “it’s really very sad to see how the poor are trying to live somehow, just picking up their bodies and trying to get to the end of this heat wave. in some way of being intact.”
Thermal planning and public health experts say people who are forced to work outdoors are at greater risk due to prolonged exposure to heat. Heatstroke, cardiovascular disease and chronic kidney disease are some of the risks of working outdoors during high temperatures.
Waste pickers “are among the most vulnerable and highly exposed to heat,” said Abhiyant Tiwari, who leads the climate resilience team at the Natural Resources Defense Council’s India program.
In New Delhi, some people who work with the capital’s estimated 4.2 million tons of waste a year have cut back from eating two meals a day to just one, said Ruksana Begum, a 41-year-old waste picker at the city’s Bhalswa landfill.
“They are trying to avoid work because of the heat, because if they go to work they end up spending more on the hospital than on food,” said Begum.
Tiwari and Chaturvedi said it is essential to give waste pickers access to a regular supply of water, shade or a relatively cool building near the landfills. They should also be encouraged to avoid working in high temperatures and receive immediate medical attention when necessary, they said.
Tiwari said India has taken significant steps to conceive heat action plans but implementing the plans across the country is a challenge.
“As a society, we have a responsibility to protect them (garbage collectors),” Tiwari said. Simple measures can help, such as offering them water if they are outside people’s homes rather than asking them to leave, he said.
Geeta Devi, a 55-year-old garbage collector who also works at the Bhalswa landfill in New Delhi, says that when she feels dizzy from the heat, she takes shelter and sometimes someone gives her water or food. But she has to work to earn between 150 and 200 rupees ($1.80 to $2.40) a day, which means food on the table for her children.
“It’s difficult to do my work because of the heat. But I don’t have another job,” she said.
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Follow Sibi Arasu on X in @sibi123
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Arasu reported from Bengaluru and Nagpal reported from New Delhi.
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