Waste Pickers and the Circular Economy

Waste picking is known to be one of the worst jobs in the informal economies of the developing world. Health risks associated with handling waste are exacerbated by a lack of safely regulations around heavy machinery and lack of support by law enforcement. In total, this makes waste picking a highly dangerous job for people involved in the industry. On the other hand, pickers are recycling workers, and are employed in a cutting-edge industry valued in the hundreds of billions of dollars. This essay will assess the ethical implications for the circular economy of sharing an ecosystem with some of the most marginalised workers in the world.

For a start, like many actors in the ecosystem, pickers are highly affected by the price of recycling. Current low prices undoubtedly cut into the profitability of the occupation and the quality of life of pickers. If demand for post-recycled products were to rise, this would be a boon for waste picking communities across the world. For the most part, a high cost of recycling plant products creates benefits to society. Highly profitable recycling plants will encourage governments to invest in and improve recycling infrastructure, which will remove more plastic from the waste stream. This will result in less plastic ending up in landfills or in the ocean. As such an economic situation that is for the most part beneficial to society will also benefit this marginalised demographic.

On the other hand, sharing an ecosystem with pickers also means a firm has potential to enter into direct competition with them. If developing economies began to offer substantial recycling collection alongside non-recyclable waste disposal, this would represent a strengthening of the circular economy and an enormous benefit to plastics pollution. Philippines alone creates 1/8th of plastic pollution entering the ocean, for example, and implementing a rigorous recycling system in that country would have a very significant effect in mitigating the looming catastrophe of plastics in our oceans. On the other hand, Philippines as a less economically developed economy has a significant waste picking community, and a government program to increase recycling could remove an important safety net for underprivileged demographics in that country.

This brings up the question of whether waste picking should be encouraged at all. An increase in the price of recycling for example would increase the standard of living for pickers, but in so doing also make picking a viable career choice for more people. Since picking is undeniably dangerous and degrading work, improving its economic viability might not be a boon for society. If a firm created a ‘killer app’ use for recycled plastic, creating an increase in the price of waste plastic, this would increase the size of global picker communities. The resulting increase in diseases and mechanical injuries could be directly blamed on the economic consequences of the ‘killer app’.

The problem with this line of reasoning lies with opportunity cost. For the most part pickers are not choosing waste picking over a good working-class job such as truck driving. Often waste picking as a profession competes with the likes of sex work and the drug trade, both of which can often also be very dangerous and which are also seen by many to be humiliating lines of work. Anecdotally, waste pickers tend to choose their profession because it is respectable, forgoing better paying options for a less humiliating lifestyle. Increasing the rewards for waste picking, while it might create more injuries at dumpsites, would create less rape at truck stops and gang violence. This should be considered when assessing the societal effect of increasing demand for recycling.

Sharing an ecosystem with this demographic also has another effect: some of the most marginalised workers on earth have experience and expertise in recycling, particularly in managing raw waste plastics. If recycling centres did begin to become profitable in the global south, this could be a useful source of labour for recycling firms. While a serious recycling industry would cut into the lifestyles experienced by pickers, it could potentially make up for this with preferential hiring from the picking community. If in a far future it were to become profitable to reclaim waste plastic from floating garbage patches in the ocean, a picker’s skill set would in fact be ideal for early stage sorting of the reclaimed material for processing.

The circular economy is an industry that lives and dies by it’s positive externalities, and firms’ ability to internalise the societal value they create through marketing and branding. Industry associations with waste picking communities are a significant overlooked source of societal benefits (or costs) that the recycling industry exposes actors to. A strong relationship with picking communities in a firm’s value chain could be a further source of societal benefit created by a recycling firm, and as such create a great deal of value for the firm in the form of brand equity.