In this case, child labour may not be a bad thing. These children go to school and use their extra time to supplement their family incomes, through recycling.

Note the Noddy cardboard cover and the flies circling the children.

The good old neighbourhood kabari wallah separates plastic bottles and paper waste, cardboard and metal, and makes a living out of selling the scrap materials to a recycler. Good old Indian innovation at work...

These recycling shops are owned by the scrap dealers (kabari wallah) who collect and purchase used items from households in exchange for money. They purchase such products in order to take them for recycling. However, not all items can be recycled and it is therefore important to sort all items before taking them to the merchants. Items that can be recycled will in most cases have a sign indicating the importance of conserving the environment.

The kabariwallah can therefore take time to sort the items in to different bundles. Those that can be recycled can be placed in one bunch and those that cannot be recycled can be placed in another. This will make the work of the broker much easier as they do not have to sort the items all over again.

These kabari wallah provide home service to individuals. Any person can therefore engage in business with them. This age-old Indian practice ensures that the environment is conserved and in return a person is able to earn some money depending on the weight of the items delivered.

Children work as labourers in a recycling shop owned by their families.

Forms of waste picking have been practiced since antiquity, but modern traditions of waste picking took root during industrialization in the nineteenth century. Over the past half-century, waste picking has expanded vastly in the developing world due to urbanization.

Waste picking provides a source of livelihood to extremely poor people with few other employment opportunities. Though many waste pickers practice their trade as a full-time profession, its flexible hours make it accessible to women with other care responsibilities and to people looking to supplement income from other jobs. During times of need, waste picking serves as a safety net to street children, orphans, the elderly, widows, migrants, the disabled, the unemployed, and victims of armed conflicts. Waste picking also benefits the broader economy by supplying raw materials to industry and creating many associated jobs for middlemen who purchase, sort, process, and resell materials collected by waste pickers.

Waste pickers collect garbage from neighborhoods that lack public services. Without waste pickers, residents would be forced to burn trash, or dispose of it in rivers, streets and empty lots. Waste pickers provide the only solid waste removal service in many cities. By cutting the quantity of virgin materials needed for production, waste pickers save room in landfills, lessen water and energy consumption, reduce air and water pollution, and abate climate change.

If the west were to adopt the Indian practice of karabi collection, the problem of a shortage of landfills would not exist.

This footage is part of the professionally-shot broadcast stock footage archive of Wilderness Films India Ltd., the largest collection of HD imagery from South Asia. The Wilderness Films India collection comprises of tens of thousands of hours of high quality broadcast imagery, mostly shot on HDCAM / SR 1080i High Definition, Alexa, SR, HDV and XDCAM. Write to us for licensing this footage on a broadcast format, for use in your production! We are happy to be commissioned to film for you or else provide you with broadcast crewing and production solutions across South Asia. We pride ourselves in bringing the best of India and South Asia to the world... Reach us at rupindang @ gmail . com and [email protected].