Waste minimization is a technique used to achieve lessening of waste, mainly via reduction at source, but also includes recycling and reuse of materials. Recycling process is a very significant element of the sustainable waste management system that follows the principle of reducing the amount of the waste disposed by recovering the useful resources which would otherwise end up in the disposal sites. Recycling is a series of activities involving collection, sorting and processing or converting used or discarded materials into useful products. Discarded materials are collected from the municipal waste stream and used as raw materials in the product manufacturing process rather than for energy generation. Lots of materials comprising MSW can be reduced, reused and recycled for which have markets value. Recycling process coverts waste into valuable resources that would otherwise become waste. Materials such as paper, glass, plastic, leather, rubber and metals can be recovered from MSW stream (Bhoyar et al., 1996) and sent to facilities that can process them into new materials or products. Recycled paper is well recognized raw product for paper industry. The economy as well as environment is benefited from waste minimization process. It helps in reducing the burden of final waste to be disposed off.
In India the recycling process is mainly carry out by rag pickers and they play a significant role in the economy of solid waste management process (Agarwal et al., 2005). According to Mangalang et al. (2003) presently, recyclable materials are removed from the waste stream and recycled at many points such as prior to disposal in the household, during segregated collection, in the garbage truck while transporting the waste to disposal site, by rag pickers from roadside litters and illegally dumped garbage and at the dumping site by resident waste pickers. Rag pickers nourish the demand of the intermediary buyers, who in turn meet the demand of factories using recyclable solid waste as raw materials.