9 months ago
Bengaluru's Textile Waste Recycling Revolution
In Bengaluru, a group of people and organizations are working together to recycle old clothes.
They collect used clothes from people's homes, sort them into different types, and send them to special places where they can be reused or turned into new things.
This helps keep the clothes out of landfills and makes money for the people who collect and sort them.
Some of these people, like Kumudha Ma and Indumathi, have even started their own businesses because of this work.
The project is part of a bigger effort to make sure that clothes are recycled properly and that everyone involved gets a fair share of the benefits.
Bengaluru's textile waste recycling initiative involves door-to-door collection, segregation, and recycling of post-consumer textile waste.
The program is led by organizations like Hasiru Dala, Saamuhika Shakti, and Saahas Zero Waste, with support from various civil society groups.
Textile waste is sorted into 10 categories and sent to textile recovery facilities for downcycling, recycling, or resale.
The initiative has diverted over 575 metric tonnes of textile waste, increased incomes for over 300 waste pickers, and been recognized by UN-Habitat.
The goal is to create an inclusive, circular textile economy that benefits waste pickers and prevents textile waste from ending up in landfills.
- Who
- Waste pickers, social impact organizations, and civil society groups in Bengaluru
- What
- A textile waste recycling initiative to collect, segregate, and recycle post-consumer textile waste
- Where
- Bengaluru, India, with plans to expand to other cities
- When
- The program was developed in 2018, with significant activities ongoing in 2023 and 2024
- Why
- To create an inclusive, circular textile economy, prevent textile waste from ending up in landfills, and provide livelihood opportunities for waste pickers
Key facts
- Location
- Bengaluru, India
- Organizations Involved
- Hasiru Dala, Saamuhika Shakti, Saahas Zero Waste, Circular Apparel Innovation Factory (CAIF)
- Textile Waste Collected
- 575 metric tonnes (by Indumathi's TRF)
- Income for Waste Pickers
- ₹3-5 per kilo of textile waste
- Key Figures
- Kumudha Ma, Nalini Shekar, Indumathi, Venkat Kotamaraju, Shobha Raghavan
- Textile Recovery Facility (TRF)
- 5,500 sq. feet, established in 2023
- Categories of Sorted Clothes
- 10 categories (whites, coloured cottons, reusable clothes, etc.)
Quotes
Indumathi
Owner and manager of a Textile Recovery Facility (TRF) in Cheemasandra, Bengaluru
“I told the PM about the problems faced by waste-pickers and how some of us have become business owners thanks to recycling textile waste. I told him textile waste should be seen as a resource, and how this also helps the environment as we prevent it from ending up in landfills”
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“These are all the whites, later they will be separated into cotton, polyester, mixed fabrics, etc. These are the coloured cottons, and this pile is clothes that can be reused. Altogether, we sort the clothes we get into 10 categories. Some people throw away nice clothes—sometimes they even have their tags on. Those sell really well”
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Kumudha
Former waste-picker and operator of the Dry Waste Collection Centre (DWCC) in JP Nagar, Bengaluru
“Every three days, we go around the ward collecting the textile waste. We have educated residents to keep it separate from the other dry waste, because sometimes people throw things like milk packets in dry waste and this soils the cloth and then it cannot be used”
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Nalini Shekar
Co-founder and director of special projects at Hasiru Dala
“When we did a survey (in 2015) of the DWCCs that are supported by Hasiru Dala, we saw that 1 tonne of cloth waste was being generated by each DWCC. We also realised that the main recycling units in India in Panipat (Haryana), and Tirupur (Tamil Nadu) were mostly using textile waste from other countries, which is being dumped in India, because it is cleaner and well segregated—even as we are generating so much textile waste ourselves. So we realised that we needed to set up a pipeline, because one of the main challenges was that the lack of systematic collection of textile waste as a separate stream makes it very difficult to find a market for reusable textiles. It is not enough to collect the material—we needed to be able to send it to processors who would bring it back into the circular economy”
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Venkat Kotamaraju
Partner and director of Circular Apparel Innovation Factory (CAIF)
“Our job has been to connect the dots (of textile waste collection, segregation and recycling) and build these capacities and capabilities in a way that eventually it ends up solving for the industry”
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Shobha Raghavan
CEO of Saahas Zero Waste
“We need to scale up textile recovery urgently, and these cannot be run as one-off projects. These are systems that have to be built for the city, and be part of a systemic change that involves the consumer, brands and city governments”
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