Plastic Pollution: On the Essential Role of Informal Waste Pickers

The focus on plastics recycling and waste management affects millions of waste pickers in Asia, South America and Africa. These informal workers, often living in extreme poverty, recover, reuse or resell plastics, textiles, aluminium and other valuable materials from waste.

They are at the heart of the waste economy, where they play an essential role.

If these informal workers are to be recognised, if their working conditions are to be improved and if they are to benefit from a fairer ecological transition, policy solutions in a treaty on plastic pollution must go beyond market mechanisms and profit-driven strategies.

Otherwise, efforts to promote more inclusive recycling and a just circular economy risk reinforcing the very injustices they claim to combat.

Who are informal waste pickers?

Waste pickers – and others working with them in informal and cooperative settings – do a large part of the world’s recycling work. They significantly reduce the amount of plastic that ends up in the oceans.

Despite this, and because they do “dirty work” and live in “dirty places”, they are often blamed for plastic pollution. Their work has long been derided as unskilled and inefficient in municipal and national policy discourses. The lack of official recognition of their work makes their livelihoods particularly unstable and precarious. Environmental regulations can exacerbate these threats by accelerating the privatisation of waste management.

As efforts to combat plastic pollution gain ground, informal waste pickers face dual pressures:

• They must protect their access to waste, as it is one of the few means of subsistence they have.

• At the same time, they seek to improve their living and working conditions.

Informal recyclers, represented by the International Alliance of Waste Pickers, have leveraged the plastic treaty negotiations to demand recognition of their work. They have asked for their “historic contributions to plastic pollution reduction” to be explicitly recognised and for a just transition objective to be included in the plastics treaty.

In a circular economy, does everyone win?

Just transition is a principle championed by labour groups and social justice advocates to ensure that ecological transition policies protect, enhance and fairly compensate the livelihoods of affected workers and communities.

Waste pickers have used this term to call for a plastics treaty that includes provisions that improve their livelihoods. They demand that the treaty incorporate informal workers to a greater extent in waste management systems, and that extended producer responsibility (EPR) programmes also support workers in the waste sector, particularly women and other vulnerable groups.

Surprisingly, these demands have gained support from a wide range of powerful stakeholders, including the Business Coalition for a Global Plastics Treaty, the UN Environment Assembly and even the petrochemical industry.

Some of these demands were incorporated into the draft treaty text discussed during the negotiations in Busan, which represents a major victory for workers in the informal sector.

There is an emerging consensus that an inclusive circular economy can benefit the environment, the economy and workers by improving pollution management, livelihoods and economic growth opportunities for businesses.

However, these promises need to be verified on the ground. And that’s where things get complicated.

A win-win, but for whom?

In my book Recycling Class, I look at how inclusive recycling efforts have been implemented in Bengaluru, one of India’s largest cities.

In the book, I argue that inclusion in market-driven circular economy programmes is not a silver bullet solution to the injustices embedded in systems of production, consumption and disposal.

Most circular economy and inclusive recycling policies are based on market mechanisms, operating on the assumption that creating markets for waste materials will incentivise market actors to efficiently recover waste and convert it into resources.

To fulfil their EPR obligations, brands can then commit to purchasing recycled plastics or choose to finance waste collection by buying plastic credits, thereby offsetting their pollution impact.

This approach aims to improve the price of waste, increase wages and encourage collection efforts, while attracting investment to fund infrastructure and technology improvements.

However, market-driven approaches exacerbate existing inequalities in market access. Efforts to prioritise traceability and transparency – with the aim of improving market efficiency and regulatory compliance – often disadvantage informal workers, who lack the resources and technical capacity to adopt complex monitoring systems and thus find themselves excluded from formalised processes. Venture capital-funded start-ups and large companies, then, take over the recycling sector.

What’s more, multinationals prefer to partner with technology start-ups that offer “value-added” services such as environmental indicators and dashboards, enabling companies to perform sustainable brand identities. These new entrants, whose owners and employees are often educated and from privileged backgrounds, compete with existing informal workers, subordinating them in the process.

Women and members of ethno-racial and religious minorities, who make up the majority of workers in informal waste economies, face additional obstacles. These include entrenched social stigmas that limit their ability to participate on a level playing field in these emerging markets. They often remain relegated to the same arduous manual tasks, albeit under slightly improved working conditions.

The plastics industry maintains the “status quo”

Despite good intentions, terms such as “inclusive circular economy” are all too often used for greenwashing and even “justice-washing” purposes, while workers continue to endure difficult conditions. A study by Circle Economy points out that most jobs in the circular economy sector remain ad hoc and informal and lack the guarantees of a decent job.

Ultimately, informal workers are faced with a difficult choice: either accept exploitative terms of inclusion or risk losing their livelihoods altogether.

Current systems of production and consumption shift the burden of waste onto indigenous and ethno-racially marginalised communities, creating areas that are called sacrifice zones. This shift sustains profitability while perpetuating social inequalities and environmental damage.

By promoting unproven chemical recycling technologies and expanding plastics markets, petrochemical and plastics companies are appropriating the language of the circular economy. This enables them to give their proposals a green veneer while maintaining the status quo on inequalities.

Meanwhile, the High Ambition Coalition, several NGOs and even some waste pickers are also invoking the circular economy as a solution to the plastic crisis, with an emphasis on repair, reuse and inclusive recycling.

Holding polluters accountable rather than relying on market efficiency

For the circular economy to go beyond simply protecting fossil capitalism, it must take into account informal waste collectors and recyclers in the Global South and recognise the limits of market-driven approaches. This is as true for the effort to agree an international treaty on plastic pollution as it is for regional approaches such as the EU circular economy action plan.

Indeed, any market-based, profit-driven strategy to combat plastic pollution is likely to reproduce these patterns of inequality and, at the same time, perpetuate the systemic injustices that sustain the status quo. Market-driven approaches such as plastics credits pose environmental risks and uncertainties and might fail to deliver on the required pollution reduction. For a truly effective and just transition, the fight against plastic pollution must not become an opportunity for economic growth or profit.

We need an approach focused on reparation. This begins with recognising the historical contributions of informal plastic collectors and the harm they suffer. Then, we must develop policy solutions to redistribute power and resources to those most affected and create systems that prioritise environmental restoration and social justice over corporate profit.

A well-funded circular economy should first empower workers, improve infrastructure capacity and reduce the concentration of toxic chemical waste, rather than relying exclusively on market-driven solutions that exacerbate inequality.

The real solutions lie in holding polluters accountable and adopting circular approaches based on sufficiency and reparations, not market efficiency.