Ahead of World Environment Day observed on 5th June annually, You! looks at Pakistan’s waste emergency - overflowing landfills, plastic-clogged drains, and an overwhelmed system. But amid the mess, a new wave of local innovators is flipping the script: treating waste not as trash, but opportunity…
In the soft haze of Karachi’s early morning, 52-year-old Bashir Hussain begins his shift. His uniform - sun-bleached and frayed at the sleeves - clings to him as he drags his cart through the lanes of Saddar. He sweeps quickly, instinctively, the rhythmic scrape of the broom echoing through the quiet.
“Plastic. Always plastic,” he mutters, pausing to pick up a tangled mess of snack wrappers and broken hangers. “Even in the gutter, it doesn’t dissolve.”
Bashir has been a municipal sanitation worker for more than 20 years - long enough to remember when most household waste consisted of food scraps, fruit peels, or ash. “Now it’s this stuff,” he says, flicking a crumpled chip packet into his cart. “Nobody separates anything. It’s all dumped together.”
His job is meant to end by midday, but he often stays late, clearing clogged drains or responding to complaints about overflowing bins. “It’s not the hours,” he adds. “It’s that the garbage never ends. You clean it up, it comes right back.”
According to Pakistan’s Environmental Protection Agency, the country generates over 48,000 tonnes of solid waste daily - a staggering amount, considering that only about 3 per cent of it is recycled. The rest ends up in overflowing landfills, illegal dump sites, or is burned in the open, releasing dangerous fumes into densely populated urban areas.
And while men like Bashir are at the coalface of this crisis, they operate within a broken system - one where municipal bodies are underfunded, waste remains unsegregated, and most households treat trash as an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ problem.
“We’re just shifting trash from one place to another,” he says, adjusting his mask - a thin surgical one he bought himself. “No one knows where it goes, and no one really wants to know.”
In other words, every day Pakistan’s cities produce tens of thousands of tons of garbage – a staggering volume overwhelming its rudimentary collection systems. Less than half of this waste is formally collected or treated, experts say; the rest remains on streets, clogged drains or in open dumps. The result is a chaotic waste landscape.
The mounting waste crisis
In rural villages and urban riversides alike, plastic bottles, rags and rotting food scraps spill into ravines and waterways. This litter is not just unsightly: it carries a hidden cost for climate resilience and public health. When rains come, choked drains turn into flash floods. As one analysis of Pakistan’s 2022 ‘super floods’ warned, debris-packed canals and seasonal rivers can transform a heavy storm into a ‘staggering disaster’.
Plastic bottles, packaging and other refuse pile up along a riverbank in Pakistan, a common sight that highlights the scale of the pollution problem. Studies now count Pakistan among the world’s worst plastic polluters. By one measure, Pakistan generates nearly 2 million tonnes of plastic waste each year – roughly 8kg per person – and mismanages about 86 per cent of it (almost 1.7 million tonnes). In fact, Pakistan ranks as the sixth-largest plastic waste generator globally (third in Asia), producing an estimated 55billion pieces of plastic waste a year. Most of these plastics end up in landfills, in drainage canals, or drifting down the Indus, rather than being recycled. As Climate Action Centre director Yasir Hussain observes, “Environmental laws restricting the dumping of harmful materials are not being implemented in Pakistan.” The result is a runaway plastic crisis: thousands of tons of bags, bottles and sachets are burned or buried, releasing toxic fumes and greenhouse gases into the air.
Yet waste is also, potentially, a resource in disguise. Industry leaders have begun to push this circular-economy perspective. “Waste is often just a misplaced resource,” says Zia Hyder Naqi, CEO of packaging firm SPEL (Synthetic Products Enterprises Limited), noting that his company has already rerouted production scrap into secondary processing lines. By measuring and tracking waste streams, businesses can “explore circular alternatives,” he adds.
Behind the scenes, Pakistan’s textile and fashion industries add another layer to the crisis. A recent study found the country generates about 270,000 tonnes of textile waste per year – offcuts and discarded clothing that often end up in municipal dumps. Inefficiencies are rampant: affluent urban consumers toss out hundreds of kilograms of cloth per capita, while formal recycling of garments is rare. In Karachi’s bustling garment workshops, clothing scraps pile up in corners. A spectator notes that “some clever folks in Karachi are already turning factory scraps into new fabric”. These pilot projects underscore the untapped potential of a circular fashion economy, but the volumes remain tiny compared to the estimated waste.
Another fast-growing category is electronic waste. Pakistan generates roughly 500,000 tonnes of e-waste annually (computers, phones, appliances discarded at end-of-life), plus tens of thousands of tonnes imported illicitly from abroad. With no formal collection or recycling plants, most old electronics are shredded in shady bazaars. Workers - often unprotected - burn cables and dismantle circuit boards by hand to extract gold, copper and plastic. Former climate officials warn this is a disaster for health as well as environment. “E-waste is not just an environmental issue; it is a health issue, an economic issue, and a social issue,” a group of Pakistani environmental scientists revealed in a recent report. “The key to success lies in creating a circular economy where e-waste is seen as a resource, not just a problem.”.
The financial stakes are clear. One government analysis notes that recycling 100,000 mobile phones could recover about 2.4kg of gold, 900kg of copper and 25kg of silver – resources worth millions of rupees.
Amid these sector analysis, one story unites them all: the invisible army making do with what society discards. While city sweeper Bashir braves the filth in Saddar’s streets, countless others work in even more hazardous conditions below. With no formal job or safety net, scavenging provides a much-needed source of income, but at great cost. In Orangi Town, sewer cleaner Jameel Masih descends manhole after manhole with no safety gear. “Every time I go down, I don’t know if I’ll come back up,” he says quietly, sitting on the edge of a drain. In Korangi and Lyari, families live off waste - sorting, collecting, and surviving. Zulfiqar Mirza, a father of five in Landhi, takes three of his children each morning to scavenge in Defence and Clifton, picking through trash bags for bottles, cardboard, or anything with resale value. “This is how we eat,” he shrugs. Barely clad and unprotected, these waste-pickers expose themselves and their children to injury and disease. “Barefoot children roam garbage dumps… Entire families are exposed to health risks they hardly understand,” states a recent report. Public institutions have largely abdicated responsibility to this informal sector. As researcher Muhammad Toheed of Karachi’s Urban Lab explains, waste sorting in Pakistan typically happens at the dump by cheap labourers, not at the source, “In developed countries waste is segregated… by households,” he notes. “In our case, the waste is segregated… by waste pickers, and mostly it is children involved in this activity.”
A paradigm shift
Despite the dire picture, a subtle shift is under way. Across Pakistan, a new generation of entrepreneurs is tackling the waste crisis with ingenuity and purpose - offering scalable, community-rooted models that rethink what we throw away. Many of these change makers were recently spotlighted at the 2nd Life Pakistan 2.0 programme, a national competition backed by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Unilever, SEED Ventures, and others that brought together over 30 youth-led waste-tech initiatives from across the country.
Among them, Pak BioEnergy stood out for its work turning agricultural and organic waste into clean, carbon-neutral fuel for local communities - a solution that earned them the top prize in the Growth Stage category. Ecobricks.pk, which is giving some of Pakistan’s toughest plastic waste a second life as durable, micro plastic-free construction material, took home the first runner-up title. TrashItPK is developing a farmer-powered composting model that converts food and organic waste into nutrient-rich compost to help restore soil and strengthen food systems. Their grassroots approach was recognised as the second runner-up.
In the Idea Stage category, innovation took centre stage. FiltResha’s biodegradable filtration systems - made from agri-waste materials like banana stems and feathers - won them top honours. Metalyze was recognised as first runner-up for its safer, smarter method of extracting valuable metals from e-waste. And MycieBlue, exploring mycelium-based alternatives to plastic packaging, secured second runner-up for showing how nature can offer ready-made, scalable answers to our most pressing pollution problems.
Collectively, these ventures exemplify how young innovators are carving out a circular economy from the margins - turning waste into opportunity, and climate despair into climate action.
Their work also seems to be stirring momentum at the policy level. Following this visible surge of grassroots innovation, a parallel shift is now taking shape within institutions. At the 2nd Life programme’s finale, held recently in Karachi, Sindh Solid Waste Management Board’s Managing Director Tariq Nizamani remarked, “Pakistan’s climate journey cannot move forward without innovation and action from its youth.” His sentiment was echoed by British Deputy High Commissioner Lance Domm, who praised the ideas presented as ‘practical’ and ‘scalable’ - a welcome contrast to the usual bureaucratic platitudes that circle around sustainability.
Beyond words, Pakistan’s regulatory framework is beginning to reflect this urgency. In Karachi, Lahore and other urban centres, municipal authorities have begun piloting outsourced waste collection through public-private partnerships. Meanwhile, efforts to promote waste segregation are picking up - but citizen participation remains uneven, hampered by years of civic neglect and weak infrastructure. As Sheikh Adil Hussain, Unilever’s General Manager and a key advocate behind the programme, put it, “Waste isn’t inevitable - it’s a design flaw.”
Experts agree that no silver bullet exists – only a portfolio of actions can turn the tide. Key steps include:
Build infrastructure: Pakistan urgently needs more trucks, sorting centres, recycling plants, and engineered landfills. Waste-to-energy and material recovery tech, already used in China, could slash landfill dependency.
Formalise the informal: Waste-pickers must be protected, trained, and integrated into formal systems - with safety gear, employment, and dignity.
Enforce extended producer responsibility (EPR): Producers must fund take-back and recycling. Draft EPR rules are a step forward, but bans on open dumping and burning need real teeth.
Engage the public: Campaigns, school programmes, and incentives like curb side rewards can nudge households toward source segregation.
Back circular start-ups: With the right support, Pakistan’s youth and private sector can drive innovation. Initiatives like the 2nd Life show what’s possible; global partnerships can take it further.
These measures won’t be easy or cheap. But they carry high rewards. Analysts note that repurposing Pakistan’s ‘trash mountains’ into new products could spark industries, create jobs and ease resource shortages. As one commentator put it, with hundreds of millions of tons of waste and millions of young innovators at hand, ‘can we really afford not to try?’
Echoing the words of Pakistan’s emerging green leaders, it’s time to turn trash into treasure – and prove that a circular, climate-resilient economy in Pakistan is more than a slogan, but an imperative for the future.
The writer is a subeditor at You! Magazine. She can be reached at wallia_khairi@hotmail.com
