Waste pickers should be seen as essential workers - The Mail & Guardian

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While reclaimers offer society a public service, they operate outside of the public sector. A majority of reclaimers are just ordinary people who work on their own to earn a living. Climate subsidies are also not directed towards them.

Waste pickers are everywhere and invisible at the same time. These efficient environmental workers operate on the margins of society. Despite being at the core of waste-management processes across the globe, as recycling is one of the most economic and efficient ways of reducing greenhouse emissions, they are often ill treated, and even criminalised, by the public and authorities alike.

This should not be the case because “there is less dirt because of the work that we do”, says Mokoena. The Covid-19 pandemic further complicated matters in Nigeria’s biggest city. Informal waste pickers were banned from operating, says Friday. But reclaimers organised and linked up with other bodies and forced the government to engage with them at last. These workers want to operate without harassment. They also want to be formally incorporated into the city’s waste-management system.

Across the world, waste pickers are proving that they are essential workers. They are also in the frontline in the fight against rampant pollution and, by extension, climate change. Standing in their way is not just discrimination but privatisation and a lack of political will from governments to integrate them into formal waste-management systems. Waste pickers remain outside municipalities’ remuneration frameworks.

The government of Colombia, in the early 2000s, passed a series of laws that were anti-waste pickers. Recyclable material became the property of the private sector. Reclaimers were barred from collecting waste in cities with more than 8 000 people.

 

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