The Ragpickers

The charity group IFA has given me the task of keeping in contact with Pramod Kumar who is helping the ragpickers. I am supposed to talk to him every month, to encourage him to keep on going and to get an idea of how he is working. First I took the Metro to a place very far from the center of the city. There Pramod came to the Metro station and gave me a ride on his motorbike. After about half a mile, we were driving along  next to this open canal. It was stinking so much, like someone poking needles in your nose. The bank of the stinking canal was littered with garbage. It went on for about three miles. By now I could not smell anything! We arrived at their slum. It was pretty far from the canal. It almost smelled good. I think the smell is a matter of relativity. Their slums were not smelling as bad as the canal.

These people are from Bihar just like the Rickshawallas. There have no marketable skills. They go thru the garbage and pick out anything that can be sold to recycling companies. They pick out rags, plastic bottles, plastic bags, styrofoam pieces, human hair, metals and even discarded wrappers. They bundle everything and sell their finds to people who process these things. In the photo above you see their living place. They work and live in the same place.

They even pick women's hair from discarded household waste and sell it. The photo on the right shows piles of hair they have painstakingly separated from the other waste. I was told that human hair is very good for business since they sell it for good money. (Note to Kristina: Next time you use your comb and get some hair, save it, we will give it to them for recycling!)

These rags were just brought in. They will be separated by color and fabric and will be rebundled and sold. There was another room where they burn styrofoam waste. It produces a horrendous toxic smoke. The styrofoam then turns into black gooey stuff which they also sell. They collect polyethylene and other used bags and burn them for heat in the winter.

They use the same, all year round to cook on. I gave them a long talk about the dangers of burning polyethylene. Pramod Kumar knew it was detrimental to the environment but he was taken aback by my description of it. I said that burning polyethylene produces dioxin and that one drop of dioxin on your skin for one minute can kill you! It is kind of true. Dioxin is the name for a group of chemicals. Burning polyethylene does produce dioxin. The nerve gas that the US Army has is a kind of Dioxin and one drop of it on your skin will kill you in one minute. You do not even have to inhale or ingest it! Anyway Pramod is going to talk to some people in Delhi government to see if they can find some place to dispose of the plastic bags and find some alternative fuel for the ragpickers to cook on.