5 minute read
No reclaimers, no recycling
from ReSource August 2021
by 3S Media
outh Africa’s waste pickers are
Scritical to the recycling economy and green future yet, for the most part, are still marginalised and discarded. According to research, reclaimers collect up to 90% of all post-consumer packaging and paper left behind; if they stopped today, there would be no recycling industry in South Africa.
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Over the past several years, Dr Melanie Samson – senior lecturer: Human Geography in the School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies at Wits – has been leading initiatives to ensure that waste pickers are recognised and valued.
Samson recently completed a three-year research project on ‘waste picker integration’ funded by South Africa’s Department of Science and Innovation’s Waste Research, Development and Innovation Roadmap and the current Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE). She also facilitated the DFFE’s national stakeholder process to develop the Waste Picker Integration Guideline for South Africa (‘the Guideline’) and is its primary author.
Samson previously worked for the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, and led a research and education project on gender and waste privatisation for the South African Municipal Workers Union. Her research focuses on how reclaimers forge value out of waste, reclaimer dispossession and ‘integration’, the political ecology of waste, and informal worker organising. Her research on reclaimers arose out of her activist work accompanying reclaimer movements.
Prior to joining Wits, she was the African waste sector specialist for Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing, where she worked with reclaimer (waste picker) organisations across Africa, Asia and Latin America.
This, she says, is where she learned about the many challenges that reclaimers face
working in the informal waste economy. A major challenge has been that people don’t really According to understand the value that reclaimers bring to the South African recycling the CSIR, informal economy, Samson notes. waste pickers (also “Each party [municipality, department] has a different known as reclaimers) understanding of the existing recycle roughly 90% of the recycling system. It’s therefore essential to develop a common recyclables collected from understanding about what households in South Africa – reclaimers do – with reclaimers sharing their experiences,” saving municipalities up to she adds. They are prevented from access
R750 million in landfill to landfills in some municipalities, space every year. stigmatised by government and the public, exposed to unhealthy working conditions, and vulnerable to volatile price changes on the scrap market. Samson believes that the only way to overcome the challenges with regard to integrating waste pickers into the formal waste management sector is first to demystify the sector.
Who’s helping who?
From her work with Latin American reclaimer organisations, Samson has been able to see what element makes those integration models successful, in comparison to the South African context. “In countries like Brazil, Colombia and Argentina, you have well-developed models where cities pay for their service,” she says.
“When a municipality contracts private companies to recycle, they pay the company a collection fee, while waste pickers [in South Africa] are not paid for the collection services they provide.
“In South Africa, we always looked at integration as us doing waste pickers a favour by including them into the national waste management system, but we don’t see that waste pickers have been doing us the favour all along – boosting our economy and helping to make South Africa’s recycling rate equivalent to that of some Western European countries.”
According to the 2020 National Waste Management Strategy, this is the timeline for integration: • 2020: Guidelines adopted and implemented • 2021: All metros have integration programmes in place • 2024: All secondary cities have integration programmes in place • 2024: 500 jobs/decent livelihoods created in collecting recyclables.
Changing the stigma
According to Samson, a vital part of waste picker integration is their participation in decision-making within the waste management process and recognition of the public service they supply. It also requires what Samson refers to as ‘social integration’.
She says government and industry need to transform how waste pickers are seen, appreciated and valued – by residents, industry and government officials.
“There is not enough focus on reclaimers as people. People with unique histories, knowledge, expertise, ideas, passions – they are not given the same rights and dignity as everyone else.”
Second, there is a need to understand what already exists – and this is where Samson coined the term ‘separation outside source’ (SoS), which helps with understanding the role of waste pickers. “Waste pickers created a wellfunctioning SoS system long before government interest in the 3Rs.” According to the CSIR, SoS saves municipalities up to
R748 million per year in landfill airspace. It also saves them transport and labour costs.
“Municipalities and industry benefit, but don’t pay for the collection service. Waste pickers only earn very low prices from sale,” assert Samson.
In contrast to the existing separation-atsource (S@S) system, SoS doesn’t allow for the ‘disintegration’ of reclaimers. Samson’s research has shown that, through S@S, companies or community coops were being paid to collect recyclables – meaning reclaimers were pushed out by the company but still had to keep working to survive. Only, this time, they access fewer materials and, unlike the contractors, are not being compensated for collection.
“This means reclaimers’ incomes, working conditions and relationships with some residents deteriorated. Waste pickers are criminalised, their dignity is compromised, and local street reclaimers are simply not included,” she adds.
Building on the SoS model (instead of importing companies into the sector) can ensure that waste pickers are prioritised and empowered though systemic integration, Sampson states. “The simple truth is we need reclaimers as much as they need us.”
Guideline
Through the development of the Guideline, Samson argues that we need to ask ourselves the following key questions: “Who is being integrated into what, when, why, how, by whom, and in whose interests?”
She insists, “Reclaimers are the experts, and they know best what they do, how recycling works in the city, and how they want to be integrated.”
Samson adds that engagement and collaboration are part of the definition of integration; if reclaimers are not involved in planning and implementation, it will fail. The Guideline provides a clear and important definition of waste picker integration. “Waste picker integration is the creation of a formally planned recycling system that values and improves the present role of waste pickers, builds on the strengths of their informal system to collect and revalue materials, and includes waste pickers as key partners in its design, implementation, evaluation and revision. It includes the integration of waste pickers’ work, as well as the political, economic, social, legal and environmental integration of waste pickers,” Samson concludes.
