New Delhi, India – “My right eye swells up in the heat, so I stopped going to the landfill last year,” says 38-year-old Sofia Begum, wiping her watering eyes. Begum married at the age of 13, and for more than 25 years, she and her husband have picked through mountains of rubbish at Delhi’s Ghazipur landfill, scavenging for recyclable waste they can sell to scrap dealers.

Dressed in a ragged, green and yellow kurta, and sitting on a chair in a narrow lane in the middle of the slum settlement where she lives beside the dump site, Begum explains that she came into contact with medical waste in 2022, which infected her eye.

Her eye swells up painfully when it is exposed to the sun for too long, so she has had to stop working in the summer months. Even in winter, she struggles to work as much as she used to.

“Now I can’t work as much. I used to carry 40 to 50 kilograms [88-110lbs] of waste a day. Now my capacity has reduced to half,” she says.

As temperatures in Delhi soared as high as 49 degrees Celsius (120 degrees Fahrenheit) in June, causing the India Meteorological Department (IMD) to issue an “orange alert” for two days, three rubbish sites at Ghazipur, Bhalswa and Okhla in India’s capital city became environmental ticking time bombs. Choking with rubbish and filled far beyond their capacity, these towering waste mountains have become hubs for toxic fires, methane leaks and an unbearable stench.

It’s a slow-burning public health threat that, every year, blights the lives of the tens of thousands of people who live in the shadow of these rubbish heaps.

Making a living from toxic work

Waste pickers are usually informal workers who earn a living by collecting, sorting and selling recyclable materials like plastic, paper and metal to scrap dealers. They are typically paid by those who buy the materials they forage, depending on the quality and quantity they can find and sort.

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As a result, they have no stable income and their work is hazardous, particularly in the summer months.

According to a study published in the scientific journal Nature, the temperature at these landfill sites varies based on the size of the dump. The temperature from dumps exceeding 50 metres (164 feet) in height generally lies between 60 and 70C (158F) in the summer. This “heat-island effect” is caused by the decomposition of organic waste, which not only generates heat but also releases hazardous gases.

“These landfills are gas chambers in the making,” says Anant Bhan, a public health researcher who has specialised in global health, health policy and bioethics for 20 years. “Waste pickers work in extreme heat, surrounded by toxic gases. This leads to long-term health complications,” he explains.

“Additionally, they are exposed to several gases, like the highly flammable methane, which causes irritation to their respiratory system. The rotting waste also leads to skin-related complications among the waste pickers.”

Ghazipur, which now towers at least 65 metres (213 ft) high – equivalent to a 20-storey building – has become a potent symbol of Delhi’s climate crisis.

Begum’s eye started swelling up in the intense heat last year. “I went to the doctor and he suggested surgery to treat my eye, which would cost me around 30,000 rupees ($350) but I don’t have that kind of money,” she says.

Like other waste pickers, Begum says she is reluctant to visit the government hospital, where she could receive free treatment, as it can take six months to receive a diagnosis there. “It is a waste of time to stand in queue for long hours at the cost of work days, and the diagnosis takes months to come through,” she explains. “I prefer going to the Mohalla Clinic; they check the Aadhaar Card [a form of identification] and instantly give medicines.”

The Mohalla Clinics, an initiative started by former Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, offer free primary healthcare, medicines and diagnostic tests to residents in low-income areas.

A ticking time bomb

On a blazing summer day in July as temperatures reach 40C (104F), Tanzila, 32, who also lives in the slum next to the landfill site, is preparing for her night shift of waste picking. “It’s just too hot now,” she says. Tanzila, a mother of three children aged eight to 16, who has done this job for 12 years, says she passed out from dehydration while working under the sun last year. “Now I only go at night. During the day, it feels like being baked alive.”

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Slender and dressed in a full-sleeve red, floral kurta with a headscarf, Tanzila appears exhausted and weary. She explains that when she did work during the day. “I would go early in the morning, come back around 9am, then again go around 4pm and come back around 7pm. But for the past two years, I have been going with other women only at night during summers because it has become harder to work during the day in this weather.”

Sheikh Akbar Ali, cofounder of Basti Suraksha Manch and a former door-to-door waste picker, has been campaigning for the rights of waste pickers across 52 sites in Delhi for the past 20 years. He explains that the conditions can be more dangerous at night than during the day.

“There are many vehicles like the tractors and JCBs operating on the landfills at night, and the waste pickers who work at night wear torchlights on their head, which indicates their visibility on the landfill. However, waste and gas leaks are more visible during the day.” This is because fires and smoke can more easily be seen in the daylight.

Despite the government’s repeated assurances that these rubbish mountains will be cleared, little has changed on the ground. In the latest assurance made in May 2025, Manjinder Singh Sirsa, Delhi’s environment minister, claimed that the “garbage mountains” would be completely cleared by 2028, contradicting his own statement from April 2025, in which he had said that they would “disappear like dinosaurs” in five years.

As the summer heat accelerates the decomposition of organic waste, the release of hazardous gases has worsened the air quality in Delhi, something environmentalists and public health experts have sounded the alarm over.

According to a report from AQI, an open-source air quality monitoring platform based in New Delhi, since 2020, satellites have detected 124 significant methane leaks across the city, including a particularly large one in Ghazipur in 2021, which leaked 156 tonnes of methane per hour.

Even though the same work which puts food on the table also makes them ill, waste pickers like Begum and Tanzila say they have little choice other than to continue with their work. “Garbage is gold to us. We don’t get bothered by the smell of waste. It feeds our families, and why would we leave?” asks Tanzila.

Their labour, unrecognised as a profession by the government, comes with few protections, no health insurance and no stable income. Rubbish pickers must fashion their own safety gear from whatever they can afford – such as used disposable masks which can be bought in the market for 5 to 10 rupees (6 to 11 cents) – but nothing is particularly effective at keeping workers free from hazards.

“They don’t wear gloves because the heat makes their hands sweat easily and they aren’t able to hold waste properly. Even the masks are a total waste because all the sweat gets collected in the mask, which makes it difficult for them to breathe,” adds Akbar.

When climate change and waste mismanagement meet

New Delhi’s civic bodies, which are under pressure from environmental and health activists to demonstrate some visible progress in tackling the city’s waste and pollution problems, have largely responded with quick fixes, most notably plans to build four incinerator plants in Okhla, Narela, Tenkhand and Ghazipur. But experts warn that such infrastructure-centric solutions only mask deeper problems and could also cause further environmental damage.

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Incinerators often release various harmful pollutants such as dioxins, furans, mercury contamination and particulate matter into the air, which pose serious health risks, they say.

According to a 2010 report by the World Health Organization, dioxins are “highly toxic and can cause reproductive and developmental problems, damage the immune system, interfere with hormones and also cause cancer”.

Furthermore, if incineration plants replace landfill-based recycling, many fear the erasure of their livelihoods altogether.

“Delhi’s shift to incinerators has completely excluded informal waste pickers, particularly women,” says Bharati Chaturvedi, founder of Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group. “It threatens their livelihoods and pushes them into deeper poverty. It is an environmental disaster in the making. Incinerators emit toxic fumes and undermine recycling efforts.”

“Beyond just closing landfills or building incinerators, we need to ensure that waste pickers have alternative livelihoods and are part of the formal waste management system,” says Chaturvedi.

“This is not just about clearing garbage,” she argues. “It’s about including waste pickers in the formal economy. It’s about creating decentralised, community-level waste management systems. And it’s about acknowledging that climate change and poverty are deeply interconnected.”

Activists and public health professionals advocate for the creation of a decentralised waste system, one that includes segregating waste into separate places according to type, ward-level composting (processing organic waste locally to avoid transportation), and robust recycling systems.

Formalising the role of waste pickers by offering legal recognition, fair wages, protective gear and access to welfare schemes would not only empower one of the city’s most vulnerable communities, but it would also help build a climate-resilient waste management model, say environment activists.

Back at the Ghazipur landfill, the reality remains grim. Fires break out with increasing frequency, and the acrid air clings to nearby homes. For residents and waste pickers, the daily battle against the heat, stench and illness is a matter of survival.

“Nothing has changed. The garbage grows, and we keep working,” says Shah Alam, Tanzila’s husband, who used to work solely as a waste picker but now also drives an electric rickshaw to earn a living. “During summers, more people fall sick, and we lose workdays. But what other option do we have?”