A study commissioned by the International Labour Organisation and the department of environmental affairs and tourism’s child-labour programme of action has found that one of every four people who scavenge for recyclables on a landfill or dumpsite is a child under the age of 18.
The report also found that most of these children are under the age of 15, with many having left school to become waste pickers. Those who remained at school juggled long hours on the site with schoolwork.
The study, the first of its kind in South Africa, interviewed 75 children in landfill and dumpsites in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, and included a review of international and local literature on waste picking, as well as an analysis of existing policy and legislative frameworks governing waste management.
It noted that:
Children who engage in waste picking often contribute up to 50% of a household’s income, either directly or through the quantity of recyclable materials they collect.
Some of the children live with parents who are either unemployed or employed in low-paying jobs such as domestic work, farm labour or waste picking. Others live with a grandparent, surviving off the grandparent’s pension, which they supplement by scavenging recyclables.
Most of the children said the money they received for waste picking was given to the adults in the household.
The study said the plight of child waste pickers has been ignored by civil society movements, including child advocacy groups and environmental justice groups, and that there are virtually no civil society or union advocacy programmes on the issue.
The study recommends that children under the age of 18 should be prohibited from working as waste pickers on landfill and dumpsites.
However, because it is ‘an adaptive response to poverty and unemployment, and because children are engaging in this work to supplement their families’ incomesâ€, it is vital to ‘recognise, regulate and control the work of adult scavengers, making it economically viable for them, with the aim of phasing out this work into other forms of waste reclamation workâ€.
The report remarked that the department of environmental affairs and tourism had produced numerous legislative and policy documents on waste management and the environment, but that these took no account of the waste-picking industry.
Saranel Benjamin, who conducted the research, said that in policy documents the department spoke about waste management with zero waste in mind.
‘They don’t provide a budget and programmes to foster recycling, and they make no connection between scavenging and recycling. Yet the largest reclamation of recyclable material comes from scavengers,†Benjamin said.
In the ‘minimum requirements for disposal of waste by landfill†drawn up by the department of water affairs and forestry in 1998, landfill site managers were responsible for waste pickers and had to sign an indemnity form taking responsibility for any injuries.
The role of enforcing minimum standards has since fallen under the department of environmental affairs and tourism.
The National Waste Management Strategy, drawn up in 1999, said that ‘salvaging†on landfills will be formalised and controlled by 2003 ‘with the aim of phasing it out completely in the long termâ€. It vaguely notes that the department of environmental affairs and tourism will investigate the best option for promoting and implementing waste recycling.
The trade union movement also ignored waste pickers, Benjamin said. She had been told by a unionist that the reason for this was that such workers did not earn enough to pay union membership fees.
‘It’s quite sad that they [unions] won’t touch them, as they would be quite easy to organise,†she added. ‘Scavengers are not migrant workers, they go to the same spot from Monday to Friday.â€
Joining forces for better pay
Waste pickers in parts of Asia and Latin America have, mainly because of their sheer numbers, mobilised for recognition and better working conditions by forming worker cooperatives.
Researcher Martin Medina, based at the Institute for Global Environment Strategies in Japan, lists the first of these as Asmare (Waste Picker Association of Belo Horizonte City), which was founded in 1988 in Brazil.
Its 380 members recycle 500 tons of paper, metal, cardboard and plastics each month. They earn four to six times the minimum wage and receive training and benefits.
After a conflict between the municipality and a Brazilian cooperative over access to parts of Sao Paulo, Unicef helped to put pressure on the state to recognise waste pickers’ rights. This led to the formation of a national Movement of Rubbish Reclaimers in 1999.
Waste pickers have also organised in India. In 1996 Indian ‘social entrepreneur†Millind Ranade helped mobilise more than 100 pickers to go on a hunger strike over demands that the Bombay council make clean drinking water and ablution facilities available at dumps.
The government conceded to the former demand, and the fight for improved rights led to the formation of the KVSS (Waste Collectors and Transporters Union), which operates in all 32 of Mumbai’s municipal wards. — Kwanele Sosibo