Jun 10, 2020
Empowering Women Waste Pickers in the Global South
Sonia Maria Dias — Why I Joined the Ocean Plastics Leadership Network
Sonia Maria Dias works with the organization Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO) and is one of the authors of a new study about the waste picking economy.
She is a trained sociologist, one of Brazil’s leading experts in waste-related management and plays a crucial role in helping to integrate the social aspects into the technical planning of waste collection and recycling.
Ms. Dias is also an active member of the Oceans Plastics Leadership Network. We interviewed her recently to learn a little more about her work and how it relates to our collective mission.
How did you first learn about the Ocean Plastics Leadership Network?
I learned about it when John Ehrmann from Meridien invited me for the 2019 expedition. Unfortunately, I was not able to participate in person. Still, the organizers were so kind as to allow me to contribute with a PowerPoint presentation delivered on my behalf.
What inspired you to join? Was there any personal experience that moved you to search for new ways to fight for a change?
The fact that respected organizations who were working with waste pickers had joined the initiative gave me the confidence that we would not be a lonely voice. Thus, I consulted some membership-based organizations of waste pickers (waste pickers unions, cooperative movements, etc.) to get their inputs on whether we should join in.
WIEGO is not a waste picker organization but a research-action-advocacy network with a constituency of researchers and informal workers organizations (street vendors, waste pickers, home-based workers, and domestic workers). I wanted to make sure that our workers’ organizations thought that joining OPLN might serve a purpose for our members.
Some of the consulted organizations raised the opportunity to bring the issue of inclusivity of informal waste workers to the OPLN agenda as a reason for us to join in. We cannot speak about Solid Waste management without raising the issue of informal waste pickers, because, in some cities across the globe, they provide the only waste collection that there is.
Thus there is a need to highlight that the working poor already contribute to the diversion of plastics from our oceans and river basins and that they can contribute even more effectively if supported. That’s the reason to join.
What do you think are some of the most pervasive plastic issues happening on our planet and to our people?
Plastic pollution has been a hot topic lately. Still, I want to highlight that the management of solid waste, in general, is one of the biggest challenges we face in contemporary society. Globally two billion people don’t have their wastes collected, which often leads to disease and death.
The impact of uncollected garbage can be seen on people’s health but also in our rivers and oceans. In this way, it is essential to highlight the role of informal waste pickers who provide the collection of waste, including plastics, in unserved areas across cities in the global South. They do not receive recognition and support from municipalities and companies for the environmental work they perform.
One of the significant issues we face is the open-air burning of plastic and garbage in developing countries, adding to carbon emissions and thus contributing to climate change, besides affecting people’s health in sites where waste is being burned. Impacts of plastic pollution also include contaminated water supplies, respiratory illness from exposure to burning plastic, and the rise of organized crime, which abounds in areas most exposed to the flood of new imports.
What excited you the most about joining OPLN, and what do you hope to gain from being a member?
We hope to highlight the role and contribution of waste pickers. Still, most of all, we hope to come up with guidelines, in conjunction with corporations, towards a fairer recycling chain. The majority of waste pickers are at the bottom of the value chain, where earnings are low and risks are high. Given their role and contribution to the environment, it is about time we move towards an inclusive value chain with clear guidelines and frameworks for corporations.
Waste pickers are not included in legislation and policy, are not paid as service providers to cities with solid waste systems or to the industries. So my personal and institutional goal is to raise this in the OPLN agenda within its corporations’ constituency.
How does the OPLN align with WIEGO’s mission and the insights you have provided?
WIEGO’s waste work focuses on strengthening the voice and raising the visibility of organizations of waste pickers. We also push for inclusive, reliable waste systems. We think that now more than ever, we need to improve waste management at the source as a way to prevent plastic pollution. We need to build the capacity of waste picker organizations so that they can improve their skills as service providers in collection.. We can no longer ignore informal waste pickers as contributors to tackling the reduction of plastic pollution.
The creation of a waste pickers working group at OPLN was a great move. I hope there is room to integrate the work of the different work lines at OPLN so that we can work towards guidelines for Extended Producer Responsibility and circular economy systems.
With the recent coronavirus outbreak, it has become clear how vital formal and informal waste collectors are to public health. We need to push forward towards a fairer recycling chain and towards the adoption of the ILO (International Labor Organization) decent work agenda to respect workers’ rights to access waste as a source of livelihoods, social protection, adequate infrastructure, occupational and health measures, payment for collection, sorting, classification services. I hope the members of the OPLN take the lead towards a decent work agenda.
What other contributions do you think major corporations could offer to the global economy with environmental issues in mind?
Multinational companies need to commit to a decent work agenda for millions of waste pickers who perform a service to the value chain with their low paid and unprotected work, from one side. Also, they could make fundamental changes to their business models by, for instance, committing to halve single-use plastic items by 2025.
What do you hope other companies could learn and change regarding their efforts moving forward?
Corporations and all of us need to understand that recycling alone will not fix the problem of ocean plastics. We need a balanced approach that focuses both on individual commitment to reduce plastic consumption and a systems approach in which governments produce legislation which creates mechanisms that enable individuals to commit to sustainable and affordable lifestyles. These systems would also force corporations to act responsibly to the wastes they create.
Corporations are still using single-use packaging with subsidies from governments. What I am saying is that the focus on individual actions overlooks the fact that governments and corporations have a crucial role. This complex problem needs complex answers that include reduced consumption, waste management practices that are equitable within and across countries, commitment from corporations to Extended Producer Responsibility Systems, government regulation, and citizen’s action.
The working poor need to be represented in decision-making processes on regulations and mechanisms at local, sub-national, national, and global levels.
What kind of work are you currently doing that relates to finding ways to battle our ocean plastics crisis?
At WIEGO, we have a SIDA funded project called Reducing Waste in Coastal Cities (RWCC), in which we are building the capacity of workers to contribute to reducing the waste materials that wash into the ocean, polluting the marine environment. We have developed a methodology and calculator tool to enable the estimation of the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that waste pickers groups prevent with their work. This tool is currently being tested in a few cities.
In addition to that, our waste experts sit in a number of advisory boards of UN agencies and other organizations, interventions, or research projects designed to tackle plastic pollution. At a local level, we have the WIEGO team working alongside waste pickers groups in a variety of local interventions towards waste management in general and plastics in particular.
What other challenges do you see afflicting global communities?
Waste pickers face numerous threats, but I will focus on two pressing issues that are somehow interrelated — waste to energy technologies and open dump closure.
Although recycling activities generate between 10–20 times more jobs than incinerators, waste to energy technologies are being pursued indiscriminately. Waste to energy technologies are being portrayed as a magical solution that fits all contexts, which is a highly problematic approach for environmental and livelihood reasons. Due to the different conditions, a technology commonly used in developed countries often fails in developing countries and cities. Hence, the push for waste to energy technologies is a major concern of us.
Informal recyclers have been advocating for livelihood sensitive finance mechanisms from global climate funds with a focus on resource recovery. These crucial programs ensure decent livelihoods for all workers and traders in the recycling economy and are directly accessible by waste pickers and other informal sector groups.
Another pressing issue is waste picking at open dumps. Open dumps are the most prevalent form of waste disposal in developing countries and informal workers abound in these places, working under appalling sanitary conditions. Municipalities make too many sweeping decisions to close open dumps and adopt waste-to-energy technologies. Moreover, cities shut down waste sinks without offering alternative work for informal workers whose livelihoods depend on this work. We are not saying that cities should not move from open dumps to proper sanitary landfill but rather that this cannot be done at the expense of livelihoods and also by adopting harmful technologies such as incineration.
Finally, the most recent challenge is Covid-19. WIEGO’s social protection program has been documenting the impacts of the lack appropriate social protection measures (pensions, access to health and childcare) in the lives and work of informal workers and what we see is that crisis and economic downturns tend to exacerbate pre-existing discrimination patterns faced by informal workers and it especially affects women workers. What we are hearing from the workers organizations we work with speaks to the threat of reverting to pre-existing or worse conditions: police harassment, worsening of health conditions, displacement from worksites either through evictions or privatization of waste services, increase in domestic violence etc.
It has become evident that without substantial state intervention we cannot tackle this outbreak and these interventions need to cater for gender issues. It has also become evident that corporations have a huge role to play. In some countries such as in Brazil through EPR mechanisms industries are contributing with cash grants, food security, and PPE.
WIEGO has focused on documenting the devastating impacts of Covid-19 on the lives of waste pickers as well as supporting them in their fundraising campaigns, advocating for and with them for cash grants and food security schemes, and drafting health guidelines.
Are you optimistic about the efforts put forth by OPLN and other environmental organizations that are trying to team up with leading corporations?
Given the increase in attention to ocean and river plastic pollution, I have been continuously stressing the need to focus now, more than ever, on improving waste management at the source as a way to prevent plastic pollution. I think OPLN can be instrumental in raising the visibility on this issue, in pushing for capacity building of waste pickers organizations and towards inclusive frameworks in the industry.
Ms. Dias would also like to thank Global Resilient Cities Network, Circulate Initiative, UNEP, UN Be Waste Wise Campaign, ISWA, and Globalrec.
