Wasting the Nation.indd - Groundwork

Chapter 7: The question of the futureNational movements of waste pickers are well established in Brazil and Columbiaand several affiliate groups have set up materials recycling facilities. In Brazil, theyhave support from President Lula da Silva. Nevertheless, Bonner notes that many facecompetition from corporate rivals bidding for municipal contracts. The establishmentof formal recycling plants becomes a prerequisite for getting the contracts. The intentionis to improve people’s lives by creating work off the dump but, while most pickersvalue their autonomy, the plant requires the formalisation of labour with regular hoursand supervision by technical and managerial staff. The contradictions are sharpeningat a number of plants.The people engaged in waste picking are generally driven by desperate circumstances.It is, in the first place, a ‘survivalist’ activity carried out by people impoverished bycapitalist development. The zabbaleen of Cario are dispossessed farmers who movedinto the city. Once there, they were again removed from more valued locations to thecity periphery. Children often work with their parents for long hours and in unsafeconditions. And the zabbaleen face competition from large, commercial recyclingfirms as Cairo municipality follows the international trend of privatising services. LailaKamel describes several initiatives – education, health, sanitation and water supplyprojects – that have improved their lives. However,… a number of serious, negative conditions prevail: garbage still arrives inthe neighbourhood unsorted. What is not fit for recovery and trade is lefton the streets to rot or burn. Women and adolescent girls still sort rottingfilth manually. Hospital waste still arrives mixed in with kitchen waste.Health hazards from broken glass, infections from syringes and sharp metalstill occur. Though animals are now often contained in pens, their presencein the neighbourhood still creates an unsanitary condition in the homeand on the streets. Burst sewage pipes constantly threaten the health of thepopulation. [Kamel 2000].More broadly, pickers operate within the harsh constraints of capitalism. On theone hand they are challenged by privatisation and on the other rely on access to themarkets of the consumption cities. The strategies of organised pickers, like that ofother groups of informal workers, have largely aimed at moving up the value chaindefined by capital. It is a way of surviving the neo-liberal context but, notes Bonner,one criticism of the Bogota conference was that there was no real political debate. Themost immediate difficulty is that the markets for recyclables are notoriously fickle and- 188 - groundWork - Wasting the Nation