“I like working here because I don’t feel like I am working alone,” says Chaya Mane Sontake, as she lugs a heavy bag into a scrap shop operating under a railway bridge near Finolex Chowk, in Pimpri, Pune. A group of women seated outside the shop are busily segregating bags of waste.

Deceptively small from the outside, the shop is surprisingly large and airy inside, with partitions for different kinds of waste. There are around 20 men and women at work here. The light flickers continually because of a low-set fan, but the work of sorting and hauling bags of recyclables continues apace.

Sontake drops off her bag at the counter, telling the clerk, “This bag weighs 10 kg. Note it down”, and moves away to chat with a friend who’s just walked in. The shop is owned and run cooperatively by 40 waste pickers.

Scrap shops have always been an important link in the country’s informal recycling chain. Household waste often traverses a long path before it gets recycled. Waste pickers collect recyclable waste, which is sold to scrap dealers, who in turn sell to aggregators and, finally, the waste reaches recyclers. The value of the waste increases at every stage, and waste pickers get the short end of the stick, owing to many reasons, but chiefly their marginalised position in a caste-based society.

In Pune, the Kagad Kach Patra Kashtakari Panchayat (KKPKP), a waste pickers’ union, came into being in 1993. A few years down the line, 8-10 of its members decided to set up their scrap shop after realising that scrap dealers were shortchanging them.

“In 1997, when the municipal corporation gave us this space, we did not plan to start a shop,” says Sangeetha John, a coordinator who supports the waste pickers in running the shop.

“Around the same time, waste pickers in Pimpri were facing several issues with scrap dealers. First, we got our weighing scale. When they [waste pickers] saw a significant difference between the actual weight and the scrap dealers’ weight, they were convinced about starting a shop.”

The venture was not without hiccups, though. “In the initial stage a fire broke out and, shortly after, a theft took place. A wholesaler even filed a police complaint against us, since he was not getting our waste,” adds John. But the team persisted. Slowly they began making changes, too — to start with, an open storage area was closed.

From a dividend of just 5 per cent initially, the members today earn 30 per cent . “I earned ₹25,000 as bonus last year,” says Sangeetha Mune, a 40-year-old member, who has been with the cooperative since its inception.

“This January, the maximum bonus earned was ₹1.55 lakh,” says John.

The shop currently handles two tonnes of waste a day and has hired three workers to handle operations. Following the demonetisation of ₹500 and ₹2,000 notes in 2016, while other scrap dealers ground to a halt, this store stayed open throughout.

“I walk in and demand that my goods be weighed correctly. This won’t happen in any other store. Since we are part of the union, we have a space to voice our concerns,” says Sontake. She then narrates the details of an ongoing tussle between nine members of the union and a well-known multinational company. The company had for three years been giving its waste to these nine members, but without paying service charge for the collection. “We have to pay from our pocket even for a vehicle to clear the waste. And if we refuse to collect the recyclables, there are other contractors ready to take it off our hands,” says Sontake.

The members have submitted a quotation to the company and are awaiting its response.

The shop has also brought about a change in the city’s scrap business. “Other scrap shops don’t want to lose business. So now they put up written rates, and give printed receipts,” says John.

It’s a little after lunchtime, and the women wrap up their work and prepare to leave for the day.

Sontake collects her receipt and money. Before heading out, she tells me, “Work was tough when I worked alone. Now we are all together, so the others are scared of fighting with us. Working here is good.”

Swetha D is a freelance writer based in Hyderabad

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