This IIT Delhi initiative is helping rag pickers earn up to Rs 25k a month

Recyclers pay between Rs 70 and 80 per kilo for cans and Rs 25 to 30 per kilo of plastic

As landfills are threatening to engulf not only India’s capital but most of its metros too, and people like us continue to throw our household waste into the bin with nary a care for where it ends up, a small initiative by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi shows the way forward.

“Think of it,” says Ashish Jain, founder-director of the Indian Pollution Control Association (IPCA). “Delhi alone generates 15,000 metric tonnes of regular and 5,000 metric tonnes of construction waste every day,” he says. To most, this would seem like a worrying statistic, but Jain and his cohorts at