What Life Is Like For 20 Million Waste Pickers | World Wide Waste Marathon | Insider Business

Globally, garbage collectors outnumber official

waste

workers by 4 to one. They collect more than half of all the plastic that is recycled

world

wide

. They are essential, but most are unpaid and many live in poverty. Now, a 30-year fight for fair and legal wages. protection has given wasti collectors their first international union. This push to organize follows efforts in places like Colombia and Brazil, where workers fought and won to be recognized by the government, but

what

will it take to organize more than 20

million

people in dozens of countries and how will it affect the way the

world

handles garbage?

The Bantar Bang landfill near Jakarta is the size of 200 football fields. It is one of the largest in the world. Around 6,000 people live in slums at its base. Indan has been living here for two years at first. He was afraid to eat the food he collected on the mountain, but now, a few houses away, he is preparing to leave for the day in Fore. 1,300 trucks arrive here every day, mostly from Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia. The people who do this work call themselves B. which translates to scavenger they work independently but need permission from the government to enter the landfill the biggest dangers on the job are the excavators owned and operated by the provincial government of Jakarta move the garbage so that this mountain does not collapse Dan Kwan has been operating one of them for 18 years.

He once came close to doing so, but continues to work around them because they usually operate where new garbage arrives. Yes, recycling facilities mostly accept cardboard and metal bottles, but local artisans will pay good money for bones. making jewelry methane is an invisible threat in barar giang the gas comes from rotting food, wood and paper when there is too much people can suffocate and can cause deadly eruptions in 2005 trapped methane exploded in a landfill in java and triggered an avalanche that buried It destroyed dozens of homes and killed 143 people, most of them scavengers living near the landfill, but nothing stops Theine from coming to work.

She earns about $25 a week, or about a third of Indonesia's minimum wage, but still more than

what

farmers earn. She sells her products to middlemen like ADI, who then sells them to another garbage buyer. As many as 20,000 families here depend on barar bang for their livelihood. This land used to be mainly forests and rice fields until the 1980s. Garbage has been accumulating since Ridin has five children and dreams. They may get out of here one day and India has a message for the rich. Recyclers in many places have no other way to make money. Rummaging for rusty metal is one of the only ways widows in Jakarta can earn the money that women seek. for iron and steel from ships used in one of the most polluted waters in the world, she is 63 years old, but she has been the main supporter of her three children since her husband died.

Everything she touches has poisonous layers of rust. Ship recycling is a multi-billion dollar global industry and huge shipyards around the world break down everything from cruise ships, cargo ships and oil tankers to naval warships, but these women make only about $2 a day selling small parts, so , why are there so many widows trapped scavenging like this and what? makes it a very risky

business

every morning. Dri leaves her 10-month-old granddaughter behind and goes to work. She has always had a job, even before getting married at age 19, but things have been difficult since her husband died 13 years ago.

They often have a hard time finding work in Indonesia because many believe they can bring bad luck, but the owner of this ship breaking company allows widows to scavenge for free. Women are only allowed to collect small pieces like these. The largest pieces belong to the boat owners to sell or reuse. most of the valuable pieces are underwater near the boats the three use a magnetic stick to find the metal 13 rivers flow into Jakarta Bay carrying with them sewage toxins and all kinds of garbage the gloves and thick socks of the three do not always protect her once she stepped on a nail that went through her foot.

Welders are constantly sewing together hot pieces of metal, so you have to be careful. Dri says that although the job is dangerous, she is still proud of earning her own money. Around noon, the women escape the heat. with a short lunch break there are around 10

million

widows like them throughout Indonesia and most live in extreme poverty some resort to sex work to survive others are forced to send their children to work to make ends meet Amina wanted to avoid that, so she took this job at the junkyard 37 years ago. Today, at 61 years old, she has many health problems, including severe arthritis, and is afraid of running out of breath and drowning because she has heart problems.

On a really good day, she collects up to 200 kg. and she sells it for almost $3 with that she can buy about four cups of rice for dinner her salary is not enough to pay for her treatments but she is too sick to find another job nowadays her children work but Amina still helps with all the bills and prefers to look for garbage rather than go into debt widows sell Rusted's remains to a middleman this is one of the two ship breaking yards in Jakarta it takes 20 workers at least a week to dismantle an entire ship depending on its size most of the Ships have a useful

life

of 25 to 30 years, after which they are retired, but they have hazardous materials inside things like asbestos and pipes, heavy metals and paints, biological hazards from sewage tanks, radioactive material from meters and the list goes on, if left unchecked they can leach into the soil.

Beach and water near shipbreaking yards destroy local marine habitats, but there are also many usable parts of a ship, including metal bars and plates, which are recycled and sometimes used to make new ships or machinery. heavy. Experts say this is a greener alternative to producing new steel. which uses a lot of energy and also saves the planet from more metal mining, so while workers like Dri and Amina play a crucial role in building a more sustainable industry, the profits and praise don't reach them. Both widows live in this neighborhood. It is one of the poorest areas of Jakarta, most of her neighbors also break down boats at the scrapyard or fish along the coast, she raised her three children here, mostly alone, her husband died when the youngest was only 11 years and she never considered remarrying.

Her children are grown, but she shares her home with one of her children and helps support his wife and her baby. Hers other children of hers also depend on her. Dri says her faith in God has helped her get through difficult times for many people around the world. Children and teenagers in India Students break down e-

waste

after school to earn cash Most of India's e-waste ends up in the Cumur neighborhood of northeast Delhi. Nearly 50,000 people scavenge here every day, many of them teenagers, and all of them looking for old cell phones and computers. and video game controllers Gulzar's hands are so damaged after years of separating them that his fingerprints have worn off Few have gloves or other safety equipment Health risks are one of the reasons Gar hasn't told him to his mother who still works here for the most part Some of his friends also make a living by searching for food like Alen, who stopped going to school because his father contracted tuberculosis 3 years ago, that's why his family sent him to work despite who was only 16 years old.

Now Alim breaks down up to 150 of these phones every day. Electronic products have high levels of mercury, cadmium and lead, which can damage the kidneys, but they also contain precious metals. Alim can usually collect up to 11 pounds of trash mix that she sells for $6 a day to a middleman at the Gafar market. He is famous for the cheap electronic products of him. many electronic devices are refurbished and sold here China, USA and India are the largest generators of electronic waste, but only 177% of electronic devices discarded globally were recycled in 2019, much of it being sent illegally to developing countries where informal workers classify them, but they do not.

I don't have the knowledge or tools to handle it safely, so many end up in landfills. Sustainability expert Pani Verma says that this is polluting the environment, air, water, soil, all three are being seriously affected, sometimes they burn the waste and cannot resell it. enters the nasal passages causes stunted growth in children causes miscarriages in women causes organ damage causes loss of bone density and most electronic devices are encoded in flame retardants which release poisonous gases when burned too affects the skin of the human body diseases, different types of cancers, are occurring due to pollution, the waste has also contaminated water sources such as the nearby yina river, they acid wash the motherboards to remove the metals, precious metals, and then they simply drain them into any type of body of water.

Global e-waste is expected to increase by 38% by the end of the decade. India implemented new rules to regulate recycling facilities, but they do not affect informal workers or address child labor in the industry. Children up to 14 years old are allowed to work. in India, but not in dangerous conditions like these, it has become a job of generations, you know, from one generation to another, there has to be conversations about these little children who work to go to study, but go to school It is not an option. For Alen, his mother Gulan Bano sells vegetables to survive Alim Gar's friend still goes to school and he dreams of a better

life

Thousands of people risk their lives collecting garbage in one of the largest landfills in India They sort all types of waste , including used syringes In recent years, fires have become increasingly common and threaten people who work here and live nearby.

The Balwa landfill burned for 2 months starting in April, when temperatures rose to over 110°F in New Delhi. Sahab lost plastic and scrap metal that she had been collecting for years. Firefighters extinguished the flames after about two weeks, but people here still have difficulty breathing because they have lived next to the plumes of smoke all the time while garbage piles up and the planet warms. Landfill fires are expected to get worse. We went to India to meet the people who make a living next to a burning mountain of waste around the world every day. The tens of millions of people living in the city of Delhi generate 10,000 metric tons of waste.

Almost all of it ends up in one of the three surrounding landfills that are now most common. of these landfills have exceeded their capacity and are full of waste and that is the real problem today. Bala was supposed to close more than 10 years ago, but continues to accept up to 600 garbage trucks each day. Backhoe operators like Rahul move their waists to make roads for trucks to drive to the top around 75,000 people known in India as rag

pickers

make a living in delicatessen dumps the average rag picker earns between 200 and 300 rupees a day between 3 and 4 dollars, with plastic and metal being the highest valuable items collected even when not on fire landfills pose significant health risks Dr.

Jasa has been treating patients who work at the landfill bossell for more than 20 years Daily balwa does not have a proper drainage system, so runoff from the landfill makes its way into the groundwater and scientists use the air quality index or aqi to measure air pollution and India has one of the worst measures in the world, one study said air pollution caused more than 1.6 million premature deaths in 2019, then there's the smell, not to mention the everyday dangers of rag picking so how did the fires start in the landfills? The lithium-ion batteries that increasingly enter the waste stream can explode spontaneously, but in India, the brutal heat wave was the most likely culprit, in addition to plastic and other debris, methane from decomposing garbage . fuels the fire and these FES contain all kinds of chemicals that can cause tuberculosis in the short term and cancer if inhaled over a long period of time.

The fires make the situation worse. has lived andworked at bwell all his life. He set aside a large pile of scrap metal and plastic as a kind of life savings that he planned to exchange, then the fires came. Putting out these fires requires a lot of manpower and equipment. It took 80 trucks and 2,005 firefighters to put out the flames that burned from April to June, but these fires mostly extinguish themselves and only get better in certain months that they are in and around Monson. After the monsoon, you will find that due to heavy rains, the particles decrease and the air quality simply increases a little, so the respite is for a short period.

Locals want these sites removed and the local government was awarded almost $65,000 for failing to take adequate measures to prevent the fire. The Delhi government told us it is working to remove the 8 million metric tonnes. of waste from this site by the end of 2023 since 2019, the government has operated what are known as trls that separate recyclable trash from that that can be burned to generate energy; the rest of the leftovers are supposed to be moved to a different landfill. Deli plans on opening another waste processing facility here by 2025 and is supposed to expand services for rag

pickers

. Campaigners say one solution to growing landfill is to separate waste before it gets there, if the amount of waste can be reduced by removing recyclables and heavy waste. or the bowte very small amounts will go to landfill despite the growing garbage problem the amount of waste that Indians create per person is much less than that of the richest countries every day the average American throws away eight times more plastic garbage than the average Indian, but India's recycling industry is kept afloat by informal rag pickers who earn a few cents a day for years.

India's federal government has tried to crack down on waste with stricter laws. Ban on most single-use plastic. I think everything is prescribed, but unfortunately it is the state government and the municipal population. who are not following the rules right now while these solutions are being debated and parts of the landfill continue to burn the people who depend on it go out to work another day because they have no other choice as there are millions of mines and unexploded grenades scattered all over Afghanistan. Now people like Saleem Pandel scavenge the ground for weapons containing treasure. Saleem sells the copper to scrap yards from there. transported to factories in Cobble for processing and recycling.

Locals should be careful because this land may never be completely cleared of explosives. This boy was years old when a bomb shattered half his skull, so how did such a risky

business

become the only option? For many people in Afghanistan, life in a small town northeast of Cape finds most of its weapons in the Tangi Valley, one of the most mined areas in Afghanistan. This was always an important pass for the troops because it connects two important provinces near the capital, Kab Saleem. he carries the explosive remains six miles away to his small hideout to do the dangerous work of disarming them.

These are mortar shell bases. The six-turn design shows that they belong to the Soviet army that fought here from 1979 to 1989. Saleem breaks the copper. Outside of guns, he can sell them for about $2 a pound. Some of these pieces can also cause status, as they are covered with decades of rust. High caliber bullets like these can be explosive for years. He has been around the ones that most countries have already banned. land mines, but the Russians placed hundreds of thousands of them here and the Taliban used some of those old mines to fight the US when they invaded in 2001.

The US military says it didn't use any during the 20 years of war, but he left behind other lethal soldiers. Debris like unexploded grenades and mortars, many of them end up in scrapyards like this one. Muhammad Amin runs the largest in the valley. He buys everything from old buckets to tarps and rubber, to one of the most valuable things he trades in. He says there are about 25 people. They come to him daily, some even find weapons in their homes, such as bullets that contain lead and can cause skin rashes, and even cancer collectors like Saleem sometimes bring their scrap metal here, they can get just over $3 for about 15 pounds and then transported to the factories in Cobble as fuel. costs are increasing they try to load as much as possible in one trip omed Basher works for one of the largest steel mills in cables that turns scrap metal into metal bars the factory does not accept weapons because it is too dangerous but processes metal pieces if they are already separated of explosives, they throw the scrap into the furnace, but sometimes mistakes occur, the molten scrap is turned into steel bars that are used for construction, the rest of this potentially explosive scrap is collected by mining organizations that dispose of it safe.

Official efforts over the years to remove landmines in Afghanistan have been few and far between. NOS and Halo Trust have intervened. Approximately 160 people are killed or injured by explosive remnants of war every month in Afghanistan and in 2021 almost 80% of the victims were children. The last salahudin has worn this hat for almost 3 years. He was throwing rocks with his cousins ​​when one of them hit a bomb. The explosion fractured his skull and damaged his brain. He had to learn to walk again, so Salah has warned his friends to be careful, but Saleem has to take risks with this job because poverty has increased since the Taliban took power in 2021.

Western countries cut off foreigners and A financial crisis hit the country. 97% of the population is expected to fall below poverty. row before the end of this year, even this simple food that Saleem and his family are eating today is rare and if he didn't collect scrap metal, he says they would have no food at all trying to survive. Waste pickers are providing an essential service to activists. We argue that we don't want our waste, we reject our waste, but there is a lot of value in it. Luc Fernández is the Secretary General of the International Alliance of Waste Pickers, an organization that represents workers from 35 countries.

We hope to have speakers. their own union and to standardize to have proper recognition of the profession and recognition with protection. Doing this job requires a lot of time on the road and she has collected memories along the way, as you can see, it's like a patch, so she recycles herself. from the dam and my mom transformed this into the curtain in my children's bedroom. Lucía says that just a few policy changes can transform the lives of waste pickers, for example, if you retire you have a pension because you have been cleaning your city for 40 years. years or something so social protection is very important at home in Mont videoo uguay she does everything she can to make sure she sorts her own garbage for the waist Pickers so you can see my sister say I'm a rich, recycled hipster girl and I pay an extra fee for some private company, but still the problem is that this shouldn't be something I have to pay for to be able to recycle my food, it should be a public system, but it's not right, here we go, so far.

The movement to organize has been successful in many countries in Colombia, in Brazil, in Argentina, in South Africa, in India, in some places in North America, they are beginning to be recognized by their governments or by the municipality, which is excellent in Brazil. The collectors have worked as part of the municipalities. waste collection since 1993 this team was trained to sort garbage after the 2014 World Cup in Colombia workers successfully amended the Constitution are now paid as formal workers within the recycling system in parts of Mexico Waste pickers wear uniforms but do not They receive salaries survive on tips In November 2023, Lucía will head to Nairobi, Kenya, to participate in negotiations for the first global treaty that could restrict the production and disposal of plastic waste.

She is pushing for it to include recognition of the enormous contribution of informal recyclers. Our plan is to push the government lobby in a good way, but to convince governments that there are good models and good cases that we want to make and if they want to do something meaningful to reduce plastic pollution, they need to partner with their peers to obtain the best possible result. is that the Recyclers are mentioned in the text once people learn more about the lives of the Recyclers. Lucía hopes that they will focus on things that can really make a difference to recognize them and help them fight for rights and An adequate, uh, decent income, is something that ideally we need to have governments on our side to help us achieve that goal.