Karalam, Sheeja, Vincent, Theresa Nithila, and Francis, Abraham (2024) Sustainable Waste Management and Women’s Empowerment. In: Rajpal, Ankur, Choudhury, Moharana, Goswami, Srijan, Chakravorty, Arghya, and Raghavan, Vimala, (eds.) Waste Management and Treatment Advances and Innovations. CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, USA, pp. 278-293.

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Abstract

Waste management is a problem faced by major cities. Rural migration to urban areas created unplanned residential areas and high population density, and temporary living structures have a direct impact on poor waste management systems in urban areas. From September 2020 until February 2021, a case study was conducted (the first lockdown period of the COVID-19 Pandemic) among women members from an urban slum in Bangalore with objectives to understand the prevalent process of waste management and comprehend the association between women’s empowerment and sustainable waste management in a slum community. The purposive sampling technique was applied to select 10 women members of the slum community for this community-based participatory research as co-researchers from the slum community, along with all stakeholders. The results show that the women members could implement the immediate plans on waste management, including educating their neighbours on waste management, to ensure that a large part of the society they are living in is aware of it. The women members demonstrated their motivation and willingness in their actions in the slum neighbourhood concerning sustainable waste management. They applied their participatory activities to empower other women in the area by focussing on every stretch of the slum and educating on the management of waste. All the actions by the women members in the urban slum community and the stakeholders of waste management in that community intend to support the quality of life and strengthen the resilience to climate change through sustainable waste-management and are reflected in SDG 3, SDG 5, SDG 11, and SDG 13.

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