Informal recyclers recognition
as service providers pushed

Recycling advocates pushed the need to fuse informal recyclers into the formal government-run systems for managing solid waste to bring about health, environmental and economic benefits for waste pickers and their families.

Citing recent studies on the role of the informal recycling sector, the EcoWaste Coalition and the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA) appealed for the official recognition of waste pickers and other informal recyclers as formal partners in ongoing waste management programs.

Anne Laracas, both of GAIA and the Coalition’s task force on waste pickers’ concerns explained that "by fusing the informal recycling systems comprising mainly of waste pickers, backyard recyclers and junk dealers, our society will have higher retrieval rate of discarded resources, while opening opportunities for upgrading recycling methods and improving the workers’ occupational health and safety."

"Waste pickers and other informal recyclers have become our most dependable allies in reclaiming everything that has market value. Without this unnoticed service of women and men who retrieve useful discards from bins and dumps and sell them to junk dealers and factories, our cities would have even bigger garbage headaches," added Laracas.

A study by a team of UK researchers led by David Wilson showed that informal recycling systems reduce the cost of formal waste management systems as they reduce the quantity of waste for collection, resulting in less money and time spent on collection and transport. The report, published in Habitat International, a journal for the study of human settlements, concluded that incorporating the informal into the formal recycling operations can yield significant benefits such as improved recycling efficiency, likelihoods, and working conditions