The Women Picking Up What the World Leaves Behind

This International Women's Day, we're spotlighting the women on the front lines of the plastic waste crisis in Kerala, India, and what their work has to do with every bar of Alter Eco chocolate you eat.

Every Bar Has a Bigger Story

When you unwrap a bar of Alter Eco chocolate, you are holding something more than a treat. You are holding a set of choices, about the farmers who grew the cacao, about the way that cacao was sourced, and about the kind of world we want to leave behind. One of those choices involves plastic.

Alter Eco is plastic-neutral, which means that for every gram of plastic used in our packaging, we fund the recovery of an equivalent amount of plastic waste from the environment. That work is made possible through our partnership with rePurpose Global. And at the heart of that partnership are people, specifically, the women of Kerala's Haritakar Messena, which translates to the Green Army.

Meet Kerala's Green Army

Kerala is one of the most beautiful states in southern India, known for its coastline, its canals, and its lush green landscape. It is also home to a waste crisis that was quietly choking those same communities. Before rePurpose Global and its impact partner Greenworms stepped in, over 42,000 households across 10 villages had no proper waste collection system. Residents were burying their trash, burning it, or dumping it into waterways where it would eventually find its way into the ocean.

That is where the Green Army comes in. Every morning, women waste workers go door to door through their villages, collecting waste from every single household. They bring that waste to local material collection facilities, where they hand-sort it into categories: plastic bottles, cardboard, paper, metals, glass, and crucially, the low-value plastics that no one else wanted, including the chip wrappers and flimsy plastic covers that previously had no buyers and no destination except a landfill or a waterway.

Why Low-Value Plastic Matters So Much

Here is a detail that does not get enough attention: high-value plastics like water bottles already have a recycling market. Someone will collect and process them because there is money in it. Low-value plastics, the crinkly wrappers and multilayer packaging that make up so much of everyday waste, have historically had no economic incentive to recover. They go unrecycled, not because the technology does not exist, but because the market does not pay for them. Plastic credit financing, funded in part by brands like Alter Eco, creates that missing economic incentive. It pays Greenworms to recover and process these materials. And that means the women of the Green Army have steady, meaningful work.

The Impact Behind the Numbers

The numbers from this project are significant. Since its inception, the Greenworms project has recovered over 600 tons of low-value plastic waste that would otherwise have polluted the environment. But the numbers that stick with us most are the ones about the people doing that work.

Nearly 99% of the workers in this project are women. Many of them are holding their first formal job. And they are earning wages that are nearly 50% higher than the state minimum wage, a fact that matters in a region where economic opportunity for women has historically been limited.

Greenworms has also invested in making the working environment safer and more dignified: safety aprons, gloves, masks, proper segregation tables, and sanitation facilities. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when the workers found themselves in an especially precarious situation, rePurpose Global extended a care fund to ensure they were supported even when everything else felt uncertain.

Why We Are Proud to Support This Work

At Alter Eco, we have always believed that choosing chocolate should not mean choosing between delicious and doing good. Our commitments to organic ingredients, fair trade sourcing, regenerative farming, and now plastic neutrality are all part of the same belief: that what we put into the world matters.

Supporting projects like Greenworms through rePurpose Global is not a box we check. It is an extension of our values. The same care we put into sourcing our cacao from farmers who are paid fairly and farming regeneratively, we put into making sure our packaging footprint does not come at someone else's expense. And we are genuinely proud that the people doing this work are being recognized, fairly compensated, and building something lasting in their communities.

This Women's History Month, We See You

March is Women's History Month. March 8th is International Women's Day. And while we celebrate that, we also want to be honest about something: the work these women in Kerala do every day is not historic in a distant sense. It is happening right now, in real time, in communities that rarely make headlines.

They are not waiting for recognition to show up. They showed up already, every morning, with their carts and their gloves, to collect what the world leaves behind and turn it into something better.

We think that deserves more than a hashtag. We think it deserves a commitment. Every time you choose Alter Eco, you are part of that commitment.

See It for Yourself

Watch the full story of the Greenworms project and the women who power it: https://youtu.be/8TAb9nmjsg0

Shop Chocolate That Gives Back

Every bar, every truffle, every bite is a vote for a world where women are paid fairly, plastic stays out of the ocean, and chocolate is made with integrity from farm to wrapper. Explore our full collection and taste the difference that real values make.