JAMMU, India– The putrid smell of burning garbage wafts miles away from the landfill on the outskirts of Jammu in a potentially toxic miasma fueled by the plastic, industrial, medical and other waste generated by a city of about 740,000 people. But a handful of recyclers ignore both the fumes and the sweltering heat to sort through the trash, looking for anything they can sell to earn, at best, the equivalent of $4 a day.
“If we don’t do this, we will have nothing to eat,” said Usmaan Shekh, 65. “We try to take a break for a few minutes when it’s too hot, but mostly just keep going until we can’t.”
Shekh and his family are among the estimated 1.5 to 4 million people who make a living scavenging through India’s waste, and climate change is making dangerous work 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 killed in northern India recent heat wave He was identified as a garbage collector.
The landfills themselves boil internally as garbage decomposes, and the increasing summer heat accelerates and intensifies the process. That increases emissions of gases like methane and carbon dioxide, which are dangerous to breathe. And almost all landfill fires occur in the summer, experts say, and can burn for days.
At the Jammu landfill, small fires dotted the massive pile, sending up plumes of smoke as two men dragged a frayed tarp loaded with garbage the day Associated Press journalists visited. A 6-year-old boy was clutching a bunch of plastic sandals. While other foragers occasionally took shelter from the heat, birds flew overhead and occasionally landed in their own search for remains.
India generates at least 62 million tons of waste a year, 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 it mandatory to separate waste so that hazardous materials do not end up in landfills, the law has been poorly enforced, increasing the risk for recyclers.
“Since they mostly just use their hands, they are already contaminated by touching anything 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 extreme heat has added new risks to waste pickers who are already victims of social discrimination and appalling working conditions.
“It’s been a terrible, terrible, terrible year,” he said. “They already expect to suffer the heat and that gives them a lot of anxiety, because they don’t know if they will last, if they will survive (the summer).”
Chaturvedi said that this year’s heat “has been the most catastrophic thing one can imagine” and added that “it is really very sad to see how the poor are trying to live somehow, just taking their bodies and trying to get to the end of this heat wave in some way to be intact.”
Heat planning and public health experts say people who are forced to work outdoors are at greater risk due to prolonged exposure to heat. Heat stroke, cardiovascular disease, and chronic kidney disease are some of the risks of working outdoors in very hot weather.
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 on the capital city’s estimated 4.2 million tons of garbage a year have cut back from two meals a day to just one, said Ruksana Begum, a 41-year-old waste picker at the Bhalswa landfill in New Delhi. the city.
“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,” Begum said.
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 landfills. They should also be encouraged to avoid working in high temperatures and provided immediate medical attention when needed, they said.
Tiwari said India has taken important steps to come up with 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 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 (between $1.80 and $2.40) a day, which puts food on the table for her children.
“It’s difficult to do my job because of the heat. But I don’t have another job,” she said.
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Follow Sibi Arasu on X on @sibi123
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Arasu reported from Bengaluru and Nagpal from New Delhi.
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