Waste is increasingly a site of social conflict. The questions related to waste management are not merely technical; what, how, where, and by whom become political questions. This book is about the power relations in recycling. Informal waste recyclers (so called waste pickers) are socially invisible. Their struggle aims to transform this situation. This book focuses on environmental conflicts, with two emblematic case studies from India. First, ship breaking, where the metabolism of a global infrastructure, namely shipping, shifts social and environmental costs to localized communities in order to obtain large profits. Second, the conflict around municipal waste management in Delhi shows how environmental costs are shifted to urban residents, and recyclers are dispossessed of their livelihood source: recyclable waste.