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All over the world, waste and its disposal are becoming a more prominent issue, as landfills swell up and growing evidence points to its contribution to climate change and environmental degradation. In the developing world, waste pickers sort through solid waste and sell it to vendors, who will recycle the product into something consumable. The work they do is vital to climate change mitigation, as well as urban cleanliness. In a way, waste pickers, especially in India, are vehicles of environmental justice, but they are often discriminated against and subjected to inhumane working conditions. In this environment, the pandemic hit, making waste pickers' already precarious life even worse. This paper attempts to fill the gap in the academic literature by compiling a systemized literature review of the impacts of COVID-19 on waste-pickers' lives using an environmental justice perspective. The review also uses a Feminist Political Ecology perspective to illuminate the double jeopardy that female waste pickers face in the era of COVID-19, which academia often ignores. Ultimately, this paper shows that COVID-19 exacerbated the preexisting injustices that the waste picker community face and created an immense burden on women. This paper will show that it is important to notice the differentiation between female and male waste picker challenges, especially at the crux of the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper has important policy implications as well as research considerations for both environmental justice and feminist political ecology scholars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite several research evaluating the connection between sustainability and the bottom line of firms, the existing research is inconclusive. In addition, most studies focus on multinational firms based in the United States or Europe, while research in the context of emerging economies is scant. This paper endeavours to investigate the strength of the association between Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) disclosure scores and the financial performance of 272 Indian firms listed on National Stock Exchange for the period 2015 to 2021 by employing panel data regression techniques. The results indicate that organisations having better ESG performance outperform their industry peers financially and are valued more by the market. Moreover, the data indicates that financial markets for lenders consider ESG disclosure when determining creditworthiness. In accordance with this, businesses can examine their operations and become more aligned with eco-friendly methods. Even though ESG disclosure appears to be associated with improved financial success, this is not the case across all industries and during COVID-19 pandemic. This study is relevant due to the growing significance of sustainability and the role of emerging nations in international commerce. It helps managers prioritize resource allocations to ESG-related activities that may affect financial performance differently across industry sectors, thus adding to the literature on the financial effects of ESG disclosures, particularly industry-specific aspects. This research represents a pioneering effort by assessing the impact of ESG disclosure on the profitability, market value, and cost of financing of Indian firms using both aggregation and disaggregation methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]