Recycling is not just a stopgap—it’s crucial for a circular economy and climate action. It is not merely about sorting trash; it’s a systemic solution to some of the world’s pressing challenges.
The World Bank warns that global waste could surge by 70% by 2050 if we don’t change our practices. Each time we recycle, we reclaim precious materials—metals, plastics, paper—that help reduce our dependence on virgin resources.
Solid waste management is perhaps among the most overwhelming problems that Indian cities are grappling with today. But while the complexities around waste management in big cities are discussed widely, the challenges faced by smaller Indian cities and towns are even more complex due to limited scale, inadequate funding and institutional capacity constraints. Tier-1 and some Tier-2 cities have set up infrastructure and allocated resources for waste processing, but in general, small cities struggle to do so. As a result, waste processing in these cities is almost negligible, with only a few exceptions.
The rise of fast fashion, coupled with citizens’ limited awareness about waste disposal, has led to a textile waste challenge in Bengaluru. The city generates 220 tonnes of textile waste everyday, which accounts for 4% of its municipal waste.
Managing urban textile waste goes beyond collection, sorting, and recycling — it should also take into account the needs of the frontline workers, the waste picker community. To address this challenge, waste pickers, with support from NGOs, have developed multiple solutions. In the past few years, they have set up Bengaluru’s first textile waste processing centre, a decentralised system to provide waste to this centre, and even a separate upcycling system that fashions new clothes out of waste.
The Supreme Court on Monday (February 24, 2025) said segregation of garbage starts at home and it is a practice which is of vital importance for the well-being of the environment.
A Bench of Justices A.S. Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan asked the National Capital Region (NCR) States of Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan how smart city projects envisaged by their governments could actually become a reality unless there was proper segregation of waste at the source in compliance with the Solid Waste Management Rules, 2016.
Researchers in Japan have confirmed that microplastics are present in clouds, where they are likely affecting the climate in ways that are not yet fully understood.
In a study published in the journal “Environmental Chemistry Letters”, Japanese scientists climbed Mount Fuji and Mount Oyama in order to collect water from the mists that shroud the peaks, then applied advanced imaging techniques to the samples to determine their physical and chemical properties.
In just five questions, explore the circular economy—what it is, why it’s crucial for sustainability, and the challenges of adopting it.
Microplastics are an invisible pollutant, affecting everything from ocean life to human health. They’re the size of a sand grain. At smaller than 5 millimetres (mm), microplastics enter us through the air we breathe, through food we eat and even through skin. Here’s why India should be taking this issue seriously.
In India, waste is more than a problem—it’s a billion-dollar opportunity. But behind the scenes, startups face a different challenge.
India currently generates around 62 million tonnes of waste overall, out of which only 20% is recycled—the rest ends up in landfills and oceans, affecting human and marine life, as well as destroying the environment, according to the Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change. Only 30% of the recyclable waste is currently recycled, according to the Mordor Intelligence report, and a majority of it is done by unorganised factions that almost operate as monopolies with little tolerance for intrusion from others.
As of May 2024, around 145 governments have announced – or are considering – net zero and carbon neutrality targets, covering close to 90% of global emissions. Among these are China’s 2060 carbon neutrality target, the EU’s 2050 net zero target, the US’s 2050 net zero target, and India’s 2070 net zero target.
During the early wave of net zero commitments, most were simply political declarations of intent, with details on what the net zero targets meant in practice largely missing. For instance, governments did not specify to what extent they planned to reduce emissions by the target year compared to “neutralising” them through carbon dioxide removals.
This blog outlines our recent findings on how governments have improved their current planning on carbon dioxide removal — sometimes known as ‘negative emissions’ — to meet their net zero targets, and why this matters.
Held from 25 November to 1 December 2024, in Busan, Republic of Korea, the fifth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution (INC-5) to develop a Global Plastic Treaty concluded without an agreement, pushing further negotiations into 2025. The draft text made some references to local and subnational governments, prompting the Local and Subnational Governments Coalition to End Plastic Pollution to advocate for stronger inclusion and appealing to all local and subnational governments to join the Coalition.
