Waste collection as environmental care work: the case of Haritha Karma Sena and SwaCH

Solid waste management has become an important environmental challenge, yet the labor sustaining it remains largely undervalued and unrecognized. Drawing on care and feminist political ecology scholarship, the paper examines how women waste workers understand and negotiate recognition for their labor and how gender, caste, and institutions shape its recognition, formalization, and the possibilities for more equitable environmental governance. This paper focuses on the cases of Haritha Karma Sena (HKS) in Kerala and Solid Waste Collection and Handling (SWaCH) in Pune, India. It uses primary and secondary sources, including participant observations, semi-structured interviews, and focus group discussions with waste workers and organizations’ representatives, policy documents, institutional reports, and media reports. The findings show that women workers contribute to waste collection and recycling, as well as to public health, environmental education, and the everyday reproduction of urban life. While formalization enhances occupational visibility and institutional recognition, it does not necessarily eliminate economic insecurity, caste-based stigma or unequal benefits. Thus, the paper brings the care dimension of this work into the discussion of environmental sociology and contributes to the critical understanding of the reproductive nature of environmental care work.