Growing up, there was always a corner in our homes reserved for things that might still be useful someday.
Old newspapers, glass bottles, cardboard boxes, plastic containers — all carefully stored until the kabadiwala arrived.
Nothing about it felt environmental. It was simply how Indian households functioned.
But as cities changed, many of those informal systems slowly disappeared from everyday life. Gated apartments replaced neighbourhood lanes, disposable products became easier to buy, and urban waste began piling up faster than cities could manage.
Now, cities like Kochi and Mangaluru are beginning to rediscover that older culture of reuse — but in new forms.
Swap shops are appearing beneath flyovers. Repair fairs are encouraging residents to fix broken appliances instead of discarding them. Community groups are organising reusable cutlery banks for festivals. And “online kabadiwalas” are turning India’s oldest recycling habit into app-based urban services.
When Kochi’s waste crisis became impossible to ignore
In Kochi, this shift cannot be separated from the memory of the Brahmapuram landfill fire.
In March 2023, flames tore through the massive dumping yard on the city’s outskirts, releasing toxic smoke that lingered across the city for days. The fire exposed what environmentalists had warned for years: urban waste systems were collapsing under rising consumption and dependence on dumping grounds.
After the fire, segregation, composting, reuse, and decentralised waste management stopped sounding like niche environmental ideas. They became urgent civic concerns.
Since then, municipalities and resident groups around Kochi have increasingly started experimenting with smaller, localised waste systems.
Urban sustainability estimates suggest India’s cities could generate more than 165 million tonnes of waste annually by 2030 if current consumption patterns continue. Photograph: (Kabadiwala.com)
One such initiative emerged in Maradu municipality near Kochi, where authorities launched a “Swap Shop – RRR (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) Centre” under the Kundannoor flyover.
Residents can leave behind usable clothes, books, school bags, toys, utensils, umbrellas, and electronics that others may take home instead of buying new ones.
A child’s unused school bag becomes useful to another family. Old toys avoid landfills. Household items circulate through communities instead of entering overloaded waste streams.
India’s invisible recycling economy
Importantly, these newer systems are not replacing India’s traditional recycling economy. In many ways, they are acknowledging it.
For decades, India’s kabadiwalas, ragpickers, scrap dealers, and refurbishers have sustained one of the world’s largest informal recycling networks.
Plastic bottles, newspapers, cardboard, glass, and metal scraps have long moved through informal recovery chains operating outside formal municipal systems.
Long before sustainability became corporate language, these workers were already building circular economies lane by lane.
Studies and civic reports have repeatedly shown that informal waste workers recover recyclable materials far more efficiently than many formal systems while saving municipalities enormous collection and segregation costs.
Yet they remained largely invisible in urban planning conversations.
Bhopal-based “The Kabadiwala” collects and recycles scrap from five cities across the country. Anurag Asati, a Madhya Pradesh-based engineering graduate, and his partner, Kavindra Raghuvanshi, started the business. Photograph: (The Better India)
At the same time, India’s cities are generating increasing volumes of plastic packaging, electronics, fast fashion waste, and disposable consumer goods — a scale that recycling systems alone cannot fully manage.
That is pushing many cities to think not just about recycling, but about reuse.
Mangaluru’s push towards reuse
That thinking is increasingly visible in Mangaluru and nearby towns like Moodbidri.
During the 2025 Ganeshotsava celebrations in Moodbidri, organisers replaced disposable plastic items with steel tumblers and reusable plates circulated through community-supported cutlery banks. Thousands attended while generating significantly less waste.
Meanwhile, sustainability forums and design groups in Mangaluru have hosted repair fairs where residents bring damaged bags, clothes, appliances, and electronics to be repaired instead of discarded.
Globally, this philosophy is often described as the “circular economy.” But India has practised fragments of it for generations.
The neighbourhood cobbler. The tailor altering old clothes. The utensil repairman. The second-hand bookshop. The kabadiwala buying newspapers every month.
These were always low-waste systems hiding in plain sight.
The rise of the “online kabadi wala”
Now, startups are attempting to modernise that older system without entirely replacing its informal roots.
Among the earliest was The Kabadiwala, founded in Bhopal by Anurag Asati and Kavindra Raghuwanshi. Residents could schedule scrap pickups online instead of waiting for neighbourhood collectors to pass through city lanes.
But the larger idea went beyond convenience.
The platform digitised collection systems while continuing to work with local kabadiwalas instead of replacing them. Scrap dealers received electronic weighing machines, logistics support, and structured recycling channels.
The startup also introduced environmental impact reports showing users how much water, oil, or how many trees were saved through recycling their waste.
Other startups expanded the idea further.
Now, startups are attempting to modernise that older system without entirely replacing its informal roots. Photograph: (The Better India)
Delhi-based Junkart introduced online scrap pickups with transparent rate cards and digital payments, while Karma Recycling focused on refurbishing old phones, laptops, and tablets before recycling became necessary.
Meanwhile, Gurugram-based ExtraCarbon and Hyderabad’s ScrapTap introduced rewards systems and structured digital recycling programmes.
What connects all these platforms is not merely technology.
It is the attempt to build a modern urban layer over a system India has practised for decades.
Because long before climate reports and sustainability summits began discussing circular economies, Indian cities already had people practising them every day.
