Bharati Chaturvedi: Chintan

Feature Image Credit: Chintan

Think about the last thing you threw away.

Maybe it was a plastic bottle, an old food container or the packaging from an online order. You put it in the bin, and as far as you were concerned, you were done with it.

For most of us, sometimes, that is where our thought about waste ends. For waste pickers, it is where the work begins.

They collect, sort and recover materials that still have value, keeping huge amounts of waste in circulation.

That is what Delhi-based envrionmentalist Bharati Chaturvedi, founder of the non-profit environmental research and action group Chintan, has spent more than two decades trying to change.

She started it in 2002 because she wanted to work on the issues that bothered her most about waste, inequality and the people whose livelihoods depend on what cities throw away.

Chintan began with one volunteer, Bharati herself.

Today, it works across waste, circular economy, climate change and environmental justice, and primarily on informal workers and low-income communities.

Recycling Is Also Someone's Livelihood

That is why Chintan’s work is about diverting waste from landfills and also about making waste work safer.

The organisation says it has helped thousands of waste workers access social security, improve incomes and organise for better representation.

Chintan says it has helped 5,250 informal workers and supported 12,000 waste workers in organising for self-representation.

Its work also reaches women directly, including 5,000 women waste workers supported to improve nutritional resilience and 1,000+ women trained to cope with climate-induced extreme heat.

It has also helped establish 30 microenterprises for waste pickers, mainly women, and operates nine micro material recovery facilities in Delhi NCR.

Women Are At The Centre Of It 

Chintan has supported women waste workers with livelihood training and repair skills. It has also helped create women-led roles around local climate action.

If the circular economy creates new green jobs and businesses, the people already doing this work should have the chance to move up the value chain too.

In 2026, Chintan worked with 25 waste workers in Delhi to add battery assistance to the cycle rickshaws they use for waste collection.

These workers can spend seven to eight hours outside, in extreme heat.

After the change, workers reported less fatigue and found it easier to move heavy loads.

India is trying to build a more organised circular economy. The question is whether the people who have already been recovering and recycling waste for decades will have a real place in it.

It is easy to think of sustainability in terms of better products and better recycling systems.

A circular economy can be truly circular if the people who made that possible are valued equally.