Spotlight

India, along with most of the developing world, is undergoing an extraordinary transformation, driven by both globalization and urbanization. Despite its role as a key player in world affairs, India is home to 300 million people who live on less than a dollar a day. A special characteristic of the urban Indian dynamic is the work of hundreds of thousands of informal sector waste-recyclers: waste pickers, waste buyers and waste reprocessors. They ultimately carry the burden of providing critical recycling services to major cities in India, where consumption generates tons of waste every day.
Our main approaches involve capacity building for dignified livelihood generation for the informal sector engaged in environmental service provision, inclusion of the urban poor in policy making, research and advocacy on issues of environmental justice and environmental governance, and education and awareness-raising for children and adults, ranging from school children and their parents to policy makers. We work in partnerships, constantly learning and evolving through our work.
Chintan envisions a world in which members from all sectors develop partnerships that ensure environmental and social justice through sustainable consumption, a dignified existence for the poor, and a toxic-free environment.
Chintan’s mission is to facilitate the participation of citizens in the empowerment of their communities and to advocate for local and national policies that ensure social equity and environmental safeguarding.
Capacity-Building:
• Enabling the informal waste recycling sector to organize itself to live and work under dignified, safer, non-hazardous conditions.
• Entering into partnership with both community organizations and the public sector to create livelihood opportunities.
Research & Advocacy:
• Advocating for policies that ensure social and environmental justice through publications, campaigns, networks, and partnerships with the poor.
• Raising environmental health issues in the media and in communities with the aim of reducing toxics use by the private and public sector.
• Providing an online information portal with Chintan-sponsored and outside research on sustainable consumption, toxics, underprivileged communities and individuals, and other related topics.
Education:
• Providing informal and formal education opportunities for children that enable them to successfully transition from child laborers to full time students who have equal opportunities in life.
• Offering environmental justice education for children and adults, focusing on issues that directly concern them and finding practical solutions to ongoing problems.