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Waste is the visible outcome of socioeconomic processes such as urbanisation and industrialisation. Yet the negative impacts of waste mismanagement are often externalised and invisibilised in the metabolism of cities, in which informal waste labourers often assume the heaviest burden. In this paper, we approach cities as sociocultural arenas in which agents work within and around structural constraints to allow transformation to take place. Our paper analyses how grassroots activism, NGO-municipality collaboration, and women's empowerment led to realising transformative potential for both solid waste management and social inclusion in the Indian city of Pune. We analyse the case of SWaCH Pune Seva Sahakari Sanstha (SWaCH), a predominantly-female social cooperative of waste pickers, to show how supporting and enhancing informal labour can produce multiple positive outcomes. Our analysis also examines the role that the women waste pickers themselves played in bringing about change. We consider the structural constraints for achieving deeper and broader impact and assess what these indicate for the long-term success of this initiative. We also illustrate how power structures tend to constrain bottom-up transformation approaches, regardless of their transformative potential. Above all, SWaCH's story shows how working with informality rather than seeking to eradicate it can result favourably in moving towards the legitimisation and gradual institutionalisation of a pro-poor urban solid waste management system in which women's empowerment is expressed not only for their benefit but also for the states, the citizens and the environments.

Catalysing urban transformation through women’s empowerment in cooperative waste management: the SWaCH initiative in Pune, India