Modern urban environments and the emerging lifestyles of a consumer oriented society have led people to invest money in modern gadgets and ever newer technologies. Each ‘upgrade‘ requires an investment of money. Each ‘upgrade’ requires a new investment of resources, and yet each upgrade also has an inevitable fallout - garbage. A city like Ahmedabad, a city of 6 million produces 2400 tons of garbage every day. This garbage finds its way to the city dumps and is either disposed off in a landfill or by burning. Garbage that is put into landfills seeps into the soil and eventually into the water table, while garbage that is burnt pollutes the air. Out of the 2400 tons of garbage, nearly 20% is collected and recycled by an entire army of waste pickers, a large number of them being women. Without these people, the city would be choked in a matter of weeks, yet these people receive no help, no subsidies and in fact are looked down upon. They are poor, live in slums, often in illegal structures, vulnerable to every malady of the city. These women who used to collect garbage from door to door were able to sort the garbage at the doorstep and toss the rest of the garbage in a nearby container for the municipality to pick up. But in the recent months, a powerful businessman has taken over the contract for collecting the garbage. This means that all the garbage reaches the landfills and the waste pickers' livelihoods are being destroyed. In the name of modernization, true mitigators of environments are being marginalized and the environment is being bombarded with waste that is supposed to be disposed of.