Major Occupational Groups: Waste Collectors

Informal Recycling Around the World: Waste Collectors

By Martin Medina

Most recycling activities in the developed world are carried out in recycling programs often run by municipalities. In these programs, residents, institutions, and businesses separate their recyclables –metals, plastics, glass, paper, cardboard, and in some areas brush and leaves– which are then picked up separately from the rest of the mixed wastes. Inorganic materials are sorted, cleaned, processed and sold to industry for recycling. Brush and tree branches are shredded and used as mulch in landscaping, while shredded leaves are composted. The US has more than 7,000 local recycling programs, with a recovery rate of 28% of wastes generated. In Japan, over 92% of its municipalities have recycling programs with a recovery rate of about 50%. In the developed world, recycling is mandated by law.

What We Know About Waste Collectors

We know a few things about waste collectors. In contrast, recycling activities in the developing world are carried out informally by individuals, known in English-speaking areas as waste collectors, waste pickers, paper pickers, and other less-known words. Table 1 shows the main terms used to refer to the individuals engaged in the informal recovery of recyclables from waste.

The World Bank has estimated that about 1% of the urban population in the developing world survives by scavenging. Waste pickers recover materials to sell for reuse or recycling, as well as diverse items for their own consumption. These individuals are generally known as ‘waste collectors’ ‘waste pickers’ or ‘rag pickers’ in English-speaking areas, but they also receive different names, depending on the local language, on the place they work, and on the material(s) they collect. In Mexico, for example, dumpsite waste pickers are known as pepenadores, while the term cartoneros applies to the cardboard collectors, buscabotes to the aluminum can collectors, and traperos to rag collectors. And Colombians use the generic term basuriegos, while scrap metal collectors are known as chatarreros, glass bottle collectors as frasqueros, and so on.

Commonly Used Words for Informal Recoverers of Recyclable Materials

Despite their large numbers and presence in most African, Asian, and Latin American cities, waste pickers have largely been ignored by scholars. And the relatively few studies conducted so far have been conducted by anthropologists. Consequently, we have a good understanding of the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of the individuals involved in it, their activities, and the social dynamics in waste picker communities. But we know relatively little of the economic, environmental, and historical dimensions of waste picking, the linkages between waste picking and the international economy, as well as the impact of globalization on waste pickers and their activities.

We do know that waste pickers constitute disadvantaged and vulnerable segments of the population. Third World waste pickers face multiple hazards and problems. Due to their daily contact with garbage, waste pickers are usually associated with dirt, disease, squalor, and perceived as a nuisance, a symbol of backwardness, and even as criminals. They are often marginalized by the rest of society, and survive in a hostile physical and social environment.

Scavenging may pose high health risks to the individuals engaged in it. According to a study, Mexico City dumpsite waste pickers have a life expectancy of 39 years, while the general population’s is 67 years. Another study, conducted in Port Said, Egypt, found that the waste picker community had an infant mortality of 1/3 (one death of an infant under one year out of every 3 live births), which is several times higher than the rate for the region as a whole. The prevalence of enteric and parasitic diseases was also higher in the waste picker community than in the region. In Cairo, one in four babies born in the waste picker communities dies before reaching their first year. In Manila, more than 35 diseases have been identified in waste picker communities and areas that lack refuse collection and sanitation, including diarrhea, typhoid fever, cholera, dysentery, tuberculosis, anthrax, poliomyelitis, skin disorders, pneumonia and malaria. The health effects of practicing this activity on waste pickers deserve careful study. Serious investigations on this topic are scarce.

Patterns of Waste picking

The recovery of materials from waste by waste pickers in developing countries takes place in a wide variety of settings. Although the circumstances under which materials are recovered in a particular place may be unique, scavenging patterns do exist. According to where they occur along the waste management system, scavenging activities can be classified into the following:

Source separation
Individuals at homes, small businesses and offices recover materials, such as food leftovers and aluminum cans. These materials are then reused, sold or given away. Residents in many Mexican cities, for instance, separate stale bread and tortillas, which form ingredients in traditional dishes, such as tortilla soup, and other called chilaquiles and capirotada. Alternatively, stale bread and tortillas can be sold to pig farms located near towns. Many Mexican households and employees at schools and businesses recover and sell aluminum cans. Refillable glass bottles are still widely used in developing countries, and families routinely take the empty bottles to grocery stores when they purchase beverages. If someone does not bring an empty bottle when purchasing a beverage in a refillable bottle, must pay a deposit equivalent to the cost of the bottle. This encourages the return of reusable bottles.
Sorting of recyclables by collection crews while on their collection routes
Open collection vehicles in particular offer easy access for the recovery of recyclables from collected mixed wastes. Sorting of recyclable materials also exists when compactor trucks are used. Here separation of materials occurs prior to the compaction of the refuse. This activity is common in Mexican, Colombian, Thai, and Philippine localities. Collection crews later sell the materials on their way to transfer or disposal facilities, and divide the proceeds among them. Sorting of recyclables by collection crews can double their salaries, providing a strong incentive to engage in it.
Recovery of recyclables by informal refuse collectors
The zabbaleen of Cairo, previously referred to, constitute an effective refuse collection and recycling system. A pair of zabbaleen working with a donkey cart can collect garbage from 350 households in a day. After sorting the garbage, the collectors feed the edible portion to pigs, sell pig droppings and human excrement to farmers as fertilizer, and scrap metal, glass, paper and plastics to middlemen, who then sell the materials to craftsmen or to industry for recycling.
Itinerant buyers purchase recyclables from residents
In Philippine and Mexican cities, and elsewhere, itinerant buyers purchase from residents various types of items for reuse and recycling, such as cans, bottles, paper and old mattresses. The vehicles used to carry these items include pushcarts, animal-drawn carts and pick up trucks.
Waste pickers salvage materials from dumpsters
Waste pickers consider refuse from high-income neighbourhoods, hotels and stores as particularly valuable, since wealthy individuals tend to discard more recyclables and items that can be repaired or reused.
Scavenging on the streets or public spaces
Waste pickers pick up recyclables that have been littered, such as in Pune, India, where the approximately 10,000 ‘rag pickers’ in the city recover materials from garbage thrown into the streets.
Recovery in canals and rivers that cross urban areas
Canals and rivers that run through urban areas in developing countries often transport waste materials thrown in by residents or litter carried by runoff water. This type of scavenging activity is usual in cities such as Manila and Bangkok, where canals and rivers exist. Waste pickers generally recover recyclables from small boats, which they also use to transport the materials for sale. Recyclables present in canals and rivers tend to be more abundant during the rainy season, as runoff water carries materials littered on the streets.
Recovery at composting plants
Recovery of recyclables also exists at composting plants, such as the one in Monterrey, Mexico, which allows scavenging activities in its premises. At this plant, waste pickers are allowed to sort inorganic materials from mixed wastes before the organic fraction is composted. This does not interfere with composting operations and reduces the presence of inorganic materials in the compost. Inorganic materials are considered as contaminants if present in the compost, and thus scavenging improves the quality of the final product.
Recovery at municipal open dumps
Large scavenging communities have developed around many open dumps in Third World cities. As many as 20,000 waste pickers live and work in Calcutta’s municipal dumps, 12,000 in Manila and 15,000 in Mexico City. By settling around the dumps, waste pickers minimize their transportation costs, occupy land that may be undesirable to others, have access to discarded materials that can be used as construction materials for their homes –usually shacks– and thus save on housing costs. Living around a dump allows entire families to recover materials there by simply claiming an area and salvaging materials while mothers keep an eye on their children. Street scavenging, on the other hand, requires walking several miles a day searching for materials, making it harder for families with small children to recover materials. Settling around a dump also enables families to raise pigs by feeding them discarded organic materials found at the dumps.
Recovery at landfills
Prior to the compaction and burial of wastes, waste pickers recover materials at landfills where these activities are allowed, such as in Mexico City. At these sites, scavenging activities have been integrated into the normal operation of the landfills. As soon as the refuse is dumped on the ground, waste pickers pick over the piles of mixed wastes, searching for any items that can be reused or recycled. Later during the day, bulldozers compact the refuse and cover it with a layer of dirt.

Economic and Environmental Impact of Scavenging

Scavenging renders economic and environmental benefits, such as providing an income to unemployed individuals, supplies inexpensive raw materials to industry, reduces the demand for collection, transport and disposal equipment and facilities. Further, materials recycling has a lower environmental impact compared to the use of virgin resources.

Despite the lack of reliable data at the national level, various studies have highlighted the economic importance of scavenging activities. In Bangkok, Jakarta, Kanpur, Karachi and Manila, scavenging saves each city at least U. S. $ 23 million a year in lower imports of raw materials, and reduced need for collection, transport and disposal equipment, personnel and facilities. According to some estimates, Indonesian waste pickers reduce the amount of wastes that need final disposal by one third, which has significant environmental and economic benefits. In the city of Nuevo Laredo, on the U.S.-Mexico border, the economic impact of scavenging activities has been estimated at nearly half a million dollars a month.

Public Policy Towards Scavenging

When scavenging is supported –or at least tolerated– by authorities, scavengers can achieve respectable earnings and improve their working and living conditions. At the Beijing dump, for instance, scavengers earn three times the monthly salary of college professors. Scavengers in Jakarta and Katmandu earn above the average of other manual workers. Scavengers in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, earn three times the minimum wage, which puts them in the top 5 percent of income earners in that city. Waste management / recycling programs that incorporate and formalize scavenging activities have been particularly successful. Repression of scavenging, on the other hand, rarely reduce these activities, but rather lower scavenger earnings, deteriorate their working and living conditions, and increase bribes to the police.

Scavenging provides an income to unemployed individuals, recent migrants who have been unable to find employment in the formal sector, women, children, and elderly individuals. Many scavengers can be considered a vulnerable segment of the population. Due to their daily contact with garbage and their often raggedly appearance, they are often associated with dirt, squalor, considered as undesirables and sometimes even as criminals. Public policy generally considers scavengers as a nuisance or a problem to be eliminated.

Despite the stereotypical view of scavengers as being marginal and the poorest of the poor, a growing amount of evidence demonstrates that that is often not the case. Scavenging supplies raw materials to industry, and therefore has strong linkages with the formal sector. In some cases, these linkages have existed for centuries, such as in the paper industry. Since paper was invented by the Chinese and until the nineteenth century, paper was made mainly of cotton and linen rags. Scavengers or “rag pickers” recovered rags from residents and sold them to paper mills, which then recycled them. In the nineteenth century, the paper industry switched from rags to wood pulp as its main raw material. In developing countries today, scavengers still play an important role in supplying wastepaper to the paper mills. Thus, the rag pickers of the past and the wastepaper collectors of today have never been a marginal occupation. Scavenging can also save foreign currency by reducing imports of raw materials. Alternatively, if industrial demand is stronger in a neighboring country, scavenging can become a source of foreign currency by exporting the materials recovered by scavengers.

Scavengers are not always the poorest of the poor. In fact, scavengers sometimes earn more than factory workers. When scavengers organize themselves in micro-enterprises, scavenger cooperatives, or form public-private partnerships with municipalities, they can achieve a decent standard of living, and improve their working conditions, resulting in grassroots development. In African, Asian and Latin American cities exist a growing number of successful micro-enterprises, scavenger cooperatives and public-private partnerships that provide low-cost waste management services to municipalities.

The structural causes of scavenging are underdevelopment, poverty, unemployment, the lack of a safety net for the poor, as well as industrial demand for inexpensive raw materials. These factors are likely to continue to exist in India. Therefore, a public policy that supports scavenging activities would be humane, as well as make social, economic, and environmental sense.

Support for scavenging activities could take the form of: