Even with all of the gadgets that have been created to recycle paper, steel, glass, you name it, without people, it just doesn’t work.  In many parts of the world sorting through trash for recyclables was how many made enough money to live and helped clean the environment at the same time.  The global recession has brought hard times to recyclers and put many out of business.

The New York Times reported that “urban recyclers” were some of the millions suffering from the global recession.  These urban recyclers, “the trash pickers, sorters, traders and reprocessors who extricate paper, cardboard and plastics from garbage heaps and prepare them for reuse”, have fallen on hard times with the fall in the price of scrap metal, paper and plastic.

Without these informal workers, many parts of the world don’t have recycling.  That means that trash that could be recycled is incinerated or left to rot (in a thousand years) in a landfill.  Many cities rely on urban recyclers to help keep them clean.  And the informal workers recycle items cheaper than governments and businesses.

Developing countries have been especially hard hit.  In Brazil, the catadores, as they are called, are receiving governmental food subsidies and help from local farmers.  In India, many of the trash pickers have quit buying such staples a milk, meat and fruit.  Their children are leaving school early to sift through landfills with their parents in order to buy any food at all.

It doesn’t matter what you call them, trash pickers, urban recyclers, catadores, or traders, they all tend to be invisible entrepreneurs who aren’t counted as “workers” of any type in surveys or censuses.  Their work goes unnoticed for the most part and their troubles are rarely acknowledged.  Brazil and Peru may be the only exceptions.

Bharati Chaturvedi, the author of The New York Times guest editorial, is from India.  He suggests that governments pay subsidies to waste dealers so that they could purchase recyclables from the trash pickers at 20 percent above the market.  He also suggests that these invisible people be given some sort of status in the business world so that don’t continue to fall through the cracks of governmental aid programs.

The problem with his ideas is that urban recyclers are considered to essentially be independent contractors-recycling entrepreneurs if you really want to dress it up and just like most independent contractors, they are subject to the whims of the economy as it affects their services or trades.

Having governments hire trash pickers to sort through trash before it gets to the landfill so that recyclables are more easily collected is a great idea.  Getting them to adopt such policies is a whole different matter.  Currently, the government doesn’t need to pay trash pickers to collect recyclables.  Governments don’t have to develop new trash collection systems or special areas for recyclables to be collected.  The dirty work is done by people the government doesn’t pay for a pittance of what the service is worth.  Change it? Increase the budget? Not likely.

Giving small subsidies to waste dealers to allow them to purchase recyclables from these independent contractors assumes that the dealers would indeed use that extra subsidy for such purchases and not just to increase their own profits.

According to Time magazine, Recyclers in Peru have formed the National Movement of Recyclers of Peru.  The movement has formed several dozen local Associations of recyclers to give the “scavengers” as they are now called a voice.  The recyclers are looking to change the attitudes of fellow citizens and government officials.

They are starting by emphasizing that they are recyclers and they are promoting a current bill that would have the government formalize the recycling associations.  President Alan Garcia’s administration is behind the bill because of the importance of the recyclers in cleaning up the towns and cities of Peru.  The hope of the government is that the associations will organize recyclers so that they are able to work more efficiently and are able to significantly increase the amount of solid waste that recyclers process and remove from the waste stream.

Creating green cars and technology is wonderful.  Kudos to India’s Tata Motors for its electric vehicle plans.  But no city or country should trust that those gadgets and inventions will be enough to stop pollution.  Without the trash pickers/ recyclers, cities will become more filthy and polluted.  Water ways and land will become deadlier for plants, animals and fish.

There is an organization that is called Recyclers Without Borders that is in the midst of organizing.  Hopefully this organization will be able to help other areas of the world to understand the important service that recyclers perform and give them status and a safety net for when bad times come.

Picture of Cambodia rubbish pickers from Pattaya Today

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Entry was posted on Wednesday, August 5th, 2009 at 10:25 pm under Green Technology.

Read more entries by Susan Wilson.
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