Occupational Groups
Waste Pickers
Refusing to be Cast Aside:
Waste Pickers
Organising Around the World
Edited by Melanie Samson
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In Copenhagen, waste pickers are sharing their experiences and insights and advocate for alternative funding mechanisms to support fair and just solutions to climate change. read more |
United Nations Climate Change Conference| Informal Economy in the News: Waste Collectors |
November 20, 2009 - PAKISTAN: Child Ragpickers should get protection By Mr. Amir Murtaza, forwarded by the Asian Human Rights Commission, AHRC New Weekly Digest. Universal Child Day is being celebrated by the international community, including Pakistan, on 20th November. The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) was signed on 20th November 1989, and so far the Convention has been ratified by 191 nation states. This day is a reminder for us to review our commitments and action for the protection and promotion of child rights. Read August 4, 2009 - Waste Pickers: Silent Friends of the Polluted Earth, By Marianne de Nazareth, Deccan Herald, Pakistan. Picking through stinking garbage dumps, these waste pickers are workers in the informal economy, who recover recyclable materials from waste thrown out by offices and homes. Read full story Trash Has Crashed: Downturn in Recyclables Industry. The financial crisis is having effects on all parts of the real economy from car making to waste picking. Read stories on this "crash" from around the world. |
| Publications | |
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Reclaiming Livelihoods:
The role of reclaimers in municipal
waste management systems. Melanie Samson, South Africa.2009. |
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Occupational and Environmental Health Issues of Solid Waste Management: Special Emphasis on Middle- and Lower-Income Countries. The World Bank, Urban Papers, July 2006 This paper by Sandra Cointreau (World Bank) deals with occupational health risks in social waste management, including the risks faced by waste pickers. |
WIEGO has facilitated global networking amongst informal waste collectors, organizing with partner organizations an international waste collector conference in March 2008:
See also: "Waste pickers without frontiers," South African Labour Bulletin, Oct-Nov., 2008 |
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Informal Recycling Around the World: Waste Collectors
Waste collectors form a small but vital part of the informal economy. These workers—men, women, and children—make a living collecting, sorting, recycling, and selling the valuable materials thrown away by others. In nearly every city of the developing world, thousands can be found collecting household waste from the curbside, commercial and industrial waste from dumpsters, and litter from the streets, as well as canals and other urban waterways. Others live and work in municipal dumps—as many as 20,000 people in Calcutta, 12,000 in Manila, and 15,000 in Mexico City. 1
THE BENEFITS OF INFORMAL WASTE COLLECTION
Informal waste collectors perform an essential role in the economies and societies of developing countries. The benefits created by informal waste collection include:
- Contribution to public health
and sanitation. In the fast-growing cities of
the developing world, informal waste collection is the only way
that waste gets removed from the many neighborhoods not served
by municipal authorities. Third World municipalities only collect
between 50 and 80 percent of the refuse generated in their cities. 2
- Employment and a source of income
for poor people. The World Bank estimates that
one percent of the urban population in developing countries earns
a living through waste collection and/or recycling; 3
in the poorest countries, up to two percent do so.4 A
significant number are women, and, in some cases, children.
- Provision of inexpensive recycled
materials to industry. This reduces the need for
expensive imports. The Mexican paper industry, for example, depends
on wastepaper to meet about 74 percent of its fiber needs, and
buys cardboard collected by Mexico’s cartoneros at less
than one-seventh the price it would pay for market pulp from the
U.S .5
- Reduction in municipal expenses. Waste collectors reduce the amount of waste that
needs to be collected, transported and disposed of with public
funds—in Indonesia, for example, by one-third. And in Bangkok,
Jakarta, Kanpur, Karachi, and Manila, informal waste collectors
save each city at least US$23 million a year in costs for waste
management and raw material imports. 6
- Contribution to environmental sustainability. In many cities, informal recycling is the only kind of recycling that occurs at all. It decreases the amount of virgin materials used by industry, thereby conserving natural resources and energy while reducing air and water pollution. It also reduces the amount of land that needs to be devoted to dumps and landfills.
HOSTILE SOCIETIES, HAZARDOUS WORK
Despite the considerable economic and social benefits they produce, waste collectors usually operate in hostile social environments. Public authorities often treat them as nuisances, embarrassments, or even criminals. They tend to have low social status and face public scorn, harassment, and, occasionally, violence.
Waste collectors are also vulnerable to exploitation by the middlemen
who buy recoveredwaste material from them before selling it to industry.
Waste collectors in some Colombian ,Indian, and Mexican cities can
receive as low as 5% of the price industry pays for recyclables;
middlemen pocket the rest. 7 Accordingly,
waste collectors generally have low incomes, and oftenlive in deplorable
conditions, lacking access to water, sanitation, and other basic
infrastructure.
As a result of their poor living conditions and the nature of their
work, waste collectors face tremendous health and safety risks,
including:
- Exposure to the elements (extreme temperatures, wind, rain,
and sun)
- Exposure to dangerous waste, including toxic substances such
as lead and asbestos,as well as blood, fecal matter, animal carcasses,
broken glass, needles, and sharp metal objects
- Exposure to diseases transmitted by vermin, flies, and mosquitoes
- Back and limb pain, skin irritation and rashes, and specific high risk of tuberculosis, bronchitis, asthma, pneumonia, dysentery, and parasites.
It comes as no surprise, then, that high infant mortality rates
and low life expectancies are common in waste collector communities.
In Mexico City, for example, where overall life expectancy is 69
years, dumpsite waste collectors live for an average of 39 years.
8 The community of waste collectors in Port Said, Egypt,
has an infant mortality rate of one in three. 9
ORGANIZING AMONG WASTE COLLECTORS
The good news is that, when organized, waste collectors can and
do raise their income, their social standing, and their self-esteem.
There is a growing organization of waste collectors into trade unions,
cooperatives, and associations, especially in Latin America, and
to a lesser extent in Asia.
Workers’ cooperatives in several Latin American cities have
successfully cut middlemen out of the recycling chain, raised members’
incomes dramatically (sometimes well above the minimum wage), secured
social services like medical care, and contracted with municipalities
to provide waste management services.
In some countries, national alliances have been formed. However, organizations have had little opportunity to interact or come together globally, and the vast majority of waste collectors remain unorganized, unrepresented, and unprotected. Much work still needs to be done to strengthen and support waste collectors’ organizations worldwide.
COMMON WASTE COLLECTOR DEMANDS
Below is a list of common demands made by waste collector organizations.
- Identification, recognition and registration (identify cards).
- Right to work/ have access to waste.
- Provision of facilities for collection and sorting of waste
– set aside sorting sites to sort without harassment.
- Provision of sites to sell waste (“cash for trash”).
- Sanitary and storage facilities.
- Health care and social security provisions.
- Credit/loan facilities.
- Granting of rights to collect scrap for recycling (linked to
ID cards).
- Organise house to house collections through waste collector
organisations – first preference.
- Where outsourcing to private companies should be asked to employ
waste pickers on first priority basis. (otherwise lose their livelihoods).
- Scrap dealers/traders and recycling enterprises to contribute
through a levy to contributory provident fund/leave/insurance
(where tripartite boards or other provisions).
- Consultation/negotiation with waste collector organisations
before initiating any disposal of solid waste schemes.
- Provision of rest rooms, drinking water, toilet, crèche
facilities at dumping grounds and landfill sites.
- Child labour should not be allowed.
- Institutionalising informal waste collectors into doorstep/other
collection.
- Encouragement and support for organisations of waste collectors- financial and non financial.
Photos by Bharatiya Kaban Mazdoor Adhikar (BKMA). On Labour Day 2007, thousands of informal waste collectors, wholesale junk dealers and recyclers protested against privitization in Delhi, India. To read more about BKMA, please click here to view their Labour Day press release.
NOTES:
1. Medina, Martin. 2005. "Waste Picker Cooperatives in Developing Countries." Paper prepared for WIEGO/ Cornell/ SEWA Conference on Membership-Based Organizations of the Poor, Ahmedabad, India, January 2005, p. 12
2. Ibid., p. 2
3. Medina, Martin. 2006. “Informal Recycling Around the World: Waste Collectors.”
4. Medina, 2005, p. 2
5. Ibid., p. 14
6. WIEGO.
7. Medina, 2005, p. 10
8. Medina, Martin. 2006. “Informal Recycling Around the World: Waste Collectors.”
9. Ibid.