In India, more than a million people make their living from what the world throws away. These waste pickers are the backbone of India’s recycling system, quietly keeping our world moving. For decades, their contribution to the economy and the environment went largely unnoticed.
Saamuhika Shakti, a Bengaluru-based collective impact collaborative initiated and funded by the H&M Foundation, is changing that story. Not with interventions tackling just one problem they face, but by acknowledging and tackling the many interconnected barriers that push informal waste pickers from opportunities and lead better lives. The collective impact initiative unites 12 organizations, including Enviu, each addressing critical challenge areas, from livelihood and assured incomes, social security, access to housing, water and sanitation, upskilling, education, to circular and inclusive waste management models, while centering gender and equitable access to outcomes of the various interventions Together, the collective works toward a shared goal: enabling informal waste pickers in Bengaluru to have greater agency to lead secure and dignified lives.
People and planet: two sides of the same loop
When we talk about circularity or sustainability, we often jump straight to technology, materials and system redesign. But the truth is simpler: the circular economy has always depended on people – especially informal waste pickers – long before the world began calling it “innovation.” They have kept materials in circulation, protected the environment, and reduced the burden on landfills every single day, yet their contribution remains largely unseen.
This is why Saamuhika Shakti works on both sides of the loop: strengthening the lives of waste pickers and improving the systems that rely on them. By helping families access identity documents, social security, safe housing, education for their children, financial literacy, health services, and pathways to better livelihoods, the collective strengthens the very foundation on which circularity stands. When waste pickers are supported, the environment benefits. When their lives become more secure, the system becomes more stable. People and the planet move forward together.
The goal isn’t only to upgrade the physical waste-management system, it’s to shift societal perception. Saamuhika Shakti pushes for a mindset where waste pickers are seen not as the margins of the system, but as critical vanguards of the system. Because a circular economy cannot exist without the people who keep the circle moving.
Inclusion meets innovation
Enviu, as one of Saamuhika Shakti’s partners, brings a venture-building and market lens to this collective impact. Where others work on enabling people, Enviu works on building ventures that include them right from when the ideas take shape. This ensures social inclusion is embedded in every business model from day one.
Under its Closing the Loop program, Enviu focuses on used textile waste (one of the most complex and least organized waste streams in India). The country generates approximately 3.94 million tonnes of post-consumer textile waste each year, nearly 40% of total textile waste comes from household waste. With 55–70% of this waste landfilled or incinerated, it poses a serious environmental and social challenge.
Enviu saw an opportunity to reimagine this system, creating one where every discarded fabric is recovered, reused, or remade into something valuable. Rather than solving one problem in isolation, Enviu built an interconnected value chain that shares resources across its ecosystem of ventures and partners.
Through Enviu’s ventures:
- High-quality clothes are cleaned and resold via Qilin
- Worn-out textiles become industrial wipes, and polyester-heavy waste is transformed into felt through The Good Felt (TGF)
- Cotton-rich institutional linens are recycled through Second Spin
This interconnected value chain only works because each venture plays a specific role in keeping textiles in the loop and works along with waste workers, aggregators, and partners are part of the system from the start. By linking collection, sorting, resale, recycling, and product innovation, these ventures create an inclusive circular model where every kind of textile, and every person in the chain, has a place.
Together, these ventures form a market ecosystem that turns waste into value while creating fair, safe, and sustainable jobs.
Second Spin
At the Textile Recovery Facility (TRF) and Dry Waste Collection Centres (DWCCs), waste pickers sort through large volumes of institutional textiles coming in from hotels. Second Spin works closely with this network to intercept these materials at source and redirect them into reuse and recycling, before they slip into the general waste stream.
Krishna, a long-term waste entrepreneur, DWCC operator, and a partner to Second Spin, manages the collection of hotel linen discards right from their doorstep in Bengaluru. This partnership not only ensures cleaner, higher-quality material flows into the system but also creates an additional income stream for him and his team.
Krishna, Dry Waste Collection Centre Operator:
“If there was no textile waste system, it would be hard to run this center. Now we have the skills and the opportunity. We can see textile waste in a new light.”
The collected linens and towels are then recycled into high-quality yarns, fibres, and even paper. These recycled yarns are now being developed further with institutes to explore wider textile applications.
The Good Felt (TGF)
Polyester-rich garments often end up as the last choice for recyclers and are too delicate for most upcycling processes. They slip through the cracks of the circular system. The Good Felt steps in precisely at this gap – transforming these hard-to-reuse textiles into a valuable material that gives them a second life..
The TRFs and DWCCs supply these polyester-heavy textiles to The Good Felt, where they are transformed into high-quality felt used in packaging, automotive, and shelter-tech.
By working directly with waste pickers and collection centers, The Goof Felt ensures that even the most difficult-to-handle textile fractions find a second life instead of a landfill, creating a market for the polyester heavy textile waste collected and sorted by the waste pickers.
Qilin
Qilin, a community-driven peer-to-peer marketplace for second-hand fashion. Qilin is a one stop online curated resale platform for Indian Gen-Z to BUY & sell pre-loved fashion with zero hassle.
Wearable-grade clothes sorted at the TRFs are now reaching new users through Qilin, a peer-to-peer secondhand platform.
Qilin has onboarded waste aggregators and TRF as a seller, allowing them to upload high-quality secondhand garments directly onto the platform.
Together, Second Spin, The Good Felt and Qilin don’t just create a value chain, they form an ecosystem. One where waste workers earn better incomes, materials stay in circulation for longer, and new businesses emerge from resources that were once ignored. And this is only possible because of Saamuhika Shakti, a one-of-a-kind collective impact initiative that brings organisations together to solve for waste, livelihoods, inclusion, and dignity. It’s a rare ecosystem where circularity is built with the people who have always powered it, not around them.
See it in action
Discover how Enviu is closing the loop on textile waste in this exclusive short documentary.
