Across India, many are showing that zero waste is an achievable goal through innovation, upcycling, composting and community-led waste management solutions

Imagine an India where urban and rural roads are smooth, long lasting, and not prone to crumbling; construction debris and agricultural waste are used in new housing and factories; garbage of plates, glasses and food packages after large gatherings don’t exist; administrators and politicians have intent and residents segregate solid waste; residents are responsible about waste management and do not litter; and waste pickers run efficient waste upcycling businesses. It sounds like heaven, but it is beginning to happen in pockets, and we need to help accelerate this, because we can.

Waste To Value: Homes And Infrastructure From Waste
It was energising to speak with Tarun Jami, the founder of Greenjams in Bangalore. They have developed a 100 per cent upcycled, non-virgin Bio-concrete (Agrocrete). They use paddy straw, bagasse, and others, which otherwise get burnt, exacerbating air pollution. India generates problematic construction and demolition waste of 150 million tonne annually, of which only 1 per cent is recycled. AgroCrete has 80 per cent C&D waste by weight. Agrocrete improves building thermal efficiency by 3.5 times, i.e. cooler in summer/ warmer in Winter, saving big on energy. I presume the Bureau of Indian Standards is setting standards for such earth-friendly alternatives.

India, along with Australia, Indonesia, Thailand and the UK, has experimented with plastic roads but not expanded. Now, in a first in a dense urban and heavy vehicle setting, Singapore’s Land Transport Authority collaborated with NUS last year to experiment with having sections of its busy Pan Island Expressway with recycled plastic-infused asphalt.

The outcome – an ability to better withstand heavy usage vs regular asphalt, lowered noise pollution, withstanding extreme weather, with less maintenance and cooling urban heat islands. Seems like a miracle solution, especially for lower plastic grades that are difficult to recycle into a usable form. The 12-month tests done on surface and ground water seem to indicate they have cracked the issue of leaching of microplastics, which was the ecological worry with trials done in many countries in the past decade.

Meet Amarnath in Chennai, who has a financial service practice. Fuelled by the sight of heaps of plastic in the city, he worked with Engineers India and IIT Chennai to depolymerise non-PET plastic through pyrolysis. He set up a plant to convert 5 tons of plastic into 2000 litres of sulphur-free diesel per day. He is setting up a second plant, driven by the belief that this needs to be a decentralised operation, which he dreams of taking to every district in India, to minimise plastic waste transportation.

Consumer Products And Daily Use Items From waste
I recently bought a pair of casual wear shoes and a running shoe from Neemans who recycle plastic, cork and rubber for the same. I must say that over the last month of using the shoes, I have become a loyalist. Significant value addition with this upcycling. And then there are companies which use banana peels and other materials for Vegan leather belts, wallets, handbags and more. Natural insect repellents with garlic, chillis and onion peels. The list goes on.

While spending a day with waste pickers of Bangalore-based Hasiru Dala, I was shown a huge chunk of household garbage, including Swiggy/Zomato food delivery containers. Chuk is a brand of re-heatable tableware products made from bagasse, enabling party and food take-away containers to be composted. Chuk and those working on materials like Areca Palm could address this issue. Amazon and other e-delivery should focus on compostable alternatives to traditional bubble wrap, cardboard and tape.

In Colombia, bagasse is used extensively in newsprint, writing paper, toilet rolls, and corrugated cardboard. We could save huge forest acreages if we in India emulate this. Even the humble coconut, after we drink its water and eat the tender cream, gets picked up for a fee; the vendor near my home pays five thousand rupees a month for the service. The husk, fibre and shell get upcycled into coir mattresses, rope, mats, paint brushes, upholstery, sacks and as fuel. This is another example of true value from waste.

Changing Attitudes And Moving Towards Zero Waste
Spending some time with Shekar Prabhakar, the founder of Hasiru Dala in Bangalore, was fascinating. The focus is on processing garbage created within the wards, by reducing waste through reuse, composting wet waste, sorting and recycling dry waste to minimise material going into a “landfill”. The goal is to have a zero waste ward – there is no place called away and there is no action called throw.

Having been composting myself for 5 years in our condo while in Singapore, and now with a simple set of stacked terracotta pots in Bangalore, from an organisation called Daily Dump, we have not thrown our kitchen waste into trash, enriching our potted plants in the process – composting is odourless and hassle free and can be done in a garden, balcony or terrace. Excess fruit and vegetables also get transformed to compost.

About 60 to 70 per cent of urban household waste by weight (based on Napa Valley Bangalore’s data on my day of visit) is kitchen waste. That is one heck of a lot of savings in waste not needing to be collected. People could be better utilised in the segregation and recycling parts of the value chain, vehicle and fuel requirements would be halved, landfills would be halved and that too, with less of a stench of rotting food waste all over the place.

Benefits Of Trial Composting
Parks and gardens could compost their leaves and green matter from pruning, as well as the municipal green waste swept off roads every day, which, in the most part, still get burnt, furthering air pollution. Perhaps community parks could even encourage locals to deliver their kitchen waste for community composting. I am Gurgaon does horticultural waste composting in all the sites they help manage in Gurgaon and these are easy ways of engaging communities across towns and city neighbourhoods and even large villages, and making a difference.

I was impressed by the Hasiru Dala plant, where wet waste is converted into CNG used by restaurants, with fertiliser and compost as by-products for local farmers. Their dry material recovery facility stands out for meticulous segregation of waste by type—clear PET bottles, colored plastics, medicine bottles, milk packets, and more, each fetching different market prices. The waste segregators, many led by a former waste picker turned waste-preneur, take pride in creating value from waste. Initiatives like I Am Gurgaon’s installation of eight separate bins for various dry wastes at multiple sites serve as daily educators and should be scaled across other cities to encourage segregation and reduce littering.

Despite extensive resident training programs, 10 to 20 per cent of homes in Bangalore’s outskirts still do not segregate waste properly. To address this, education needs to be engaging and inclusive, involving children and domestic helpers through fun activities like snakes and ladders or dart games with rewards tied to green actions. School projects such as growing plants in compost can also foster hands-on learning. Starting with a few motivated community experts can inspire wider participation and make waste segregation and composting a shared, enjoyable responsibility.

E-waste
E-waste is much smaller and infrequent in terms of tonnage but huge in terms of value. India generated 3.8 million tons of e-waste in 2024, (with smartphones accounting for 75 per cent of the consumer electronic waste) with an estimated USD 6blln economic potential from metal extraction (ferrous metals, copper, aluminium and gold) alone. Advanced recycling and extraction facilities are an area where India needs investment to transition from the informal sector to the formal sector for greater effectiveness.

There are startups like Control Z in Gurgaon which have started on a journey focused on old mobile phones, working on salvaging components and screens, to refurbishing old phones and offering an 18 month warranty – both addressing an underserved market with aspirational products, as well as using waste that could otherwise be toxic if in a landfill.

People, Livelihoods And Dignity
And who manages all this waste? ‘Safai Karamcharis’, who go by different names across states, are salaried government employees. Waste pickers, on the other hand, belong to the informal sector—unemployed in the official sense, earning no fixed income, and depending on picking, sorting, and recycling waste to survive. It is these estimated 5 million people who drive the waste economy, and their lives require urgent improvement with added dignity and safety. Better segregation at source is critical to move waste up the value chain and generate better incomes.

Rupa Trivedi, an ultrasonic engineer from Mumbai, who in 2003 was horrified by the pollution from festival beach immersions and began exploring ways to recycle those materials. Passionate about natural dyeing, she taught herself and trained girls from disadvantaged backgrounds. After initial setbacks, she partnered with Siddhi Vinayak temple in 2012, sourcing marigolds, hibiscus, coconut hair, and roses from Haji Ali to create natural dyes. Her organisation, Adiv, developed a sustainable supply chain, enabling handloom weavers to produce high-end textiles for Indian and European fashion labels—an effort that has inspired others to find value in floral waste, now also used in creams and incense sticks.

G. Nagaraj, known as Plogman, works with Hasiru Dala and has led the plogging movement (picking up waste while jogging), rallying citizens across cities to join his runs and build the Indian ploggers army in 2018. This is something I had also taken up on treks and trips into nature, where heaps of litter were routinely left behind by fellow tourists. Starting in 2008, we began getting participants of our runs in Gurgaon, the Aravalli, the Himalayas, along the Ganga, Kihim beach near Mumbai, and other locations to do the same. The result—bags full of litter cleared, cleaner surroundings, and stronger attitudes toward responsible waste behaviour.

Town And City Administrations
At a conference in Bangalore last year, the Mayor of Indore, P. Yadav, highlighted varied actions on waste management and greening, which led to Indore being declared the cleanest city in the country annually from 2016 to 2023. The Municipal Corporation engaged NGOs, academia, residents, and businesses in this effort, intent magnified by collaboration brought about this outcome, with a strong sense of city pride accelerating residents’ behaviour towards responsible waste management. Mr. Gaurav Sogarwal, Municipal Commissioner of Gorakhpur, outlined Solid Waste Management improvements aimed at ending open waste burning by 2027, including clearing legacy waste, promoting home composting, incentivising waste segregation, and mechanising recovery facilities. Focused departments manage various waste types to maximise recycling and upcycling, minimise incineration (a cop out), and interdepartmental collaboration has started shifting public behaviour.

Anita Bhargava, who launched Let’s Do It Delhi in 2010 and later consulted for the city administration, emphasised that with political and administrative will, collaborative funding and execution become possible. She stressed that while politicians are rewarded every 4-five years, bureaucrats, too, need fixed terms and recognition for long-term outcomes, as systemic reforms require time and stability. Starting with easy wins helps forge political-bureaucratic alignment, and enabling corporates to contribute through CSR or business development can help scale initiatives without straining budgets, keeping service standards high. Meanwhile, the BMC’s announced garbage tax (Feb 25, 2025) is a disaster—Mumbai first needs systemic upgrades, then a fee on kitchen and organic waste to incentivise composting and remove 50 to 60 per cent of waste at the source.

The Judiciary
In the Supreme Court update of 24 February 2025, a bench of Justices Oka and Bhuyan stated on the smart cities project,”.. how can cities become smart without compliance with the Solid Waste Management rules?” If there were no proper segregation of waste, even waste-to-energy projects would create more pollution. The bench has also asked the states to set out a comprehensive plan for waste management, along with timelines and implementing agencies. 3,000 tonne of solid waste are generated every day in Delhi remains untreated.

You can only imagine the vastness of the issue in every part of our country, and the indifferent attitude of us as residents, as well as the administrators and politicians. Strict guidelines and enforcement are required over a long time to change short-term behaviours, and then longer-term attitudes.

How Can We Support This National Endeavour?
To support this national endeavour, we can start at home by refusing unnecessary purchases and focusing on needs, reducing waste by avoiding food and water wastage, composting kitchen and garden waste, reusing water bottles, avoiding littering, rejecting single-use plastics, buying recyclable and natural products, and diligently segregating waste. Industries should set high standards for waste and effluent treatment, encourage responsible waste behaviour among employees, support upcycling startups, engage suppliers, and channel CSR resources strategically. Investors can fund waste-to-value startups and accelerators.

Media should highlight progress and positive stories on waste management and upcycling. Schools can embed values through immersive learning, projects, and composting activities. Politicians and administrators must think beyond incremental changes, set stretch goals with incentives, double waste management budgets, clean legacy waste, upgrade sewage systems, ensure efficient waste management, promote citizen reporting, incentivise segregation through differential tender rates, recognise local efforts, and foster waste-to-value entrepreneurship with marketplaces and credit systems. Waste segregation at source must be mandated. The judiciary should establish and enforce frameworks, impose fines for littering, monitor effluent standards, and ban waste-to-energy plants.

In Closing
Having observed Singapore’s advanced waste system firsthand, I believe India must avoid incineration and focus on creating value from waste. Poorly managed Waste-to-Energy plants risk pollution and discourage proper waste practices. Instead, Waste-to-Value addresses hygiene, pollution, and community pride, laying the foundation for sustainable growth. Surat’s transformation shows that change is possible nationwide. We need high standards, not small fixes. With collaboration and innovation, we can build a Swachh, Viksit Bharat. It’s a marathon, not a sprint and the first step begins now.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication.