Inclusive management of municipal landfill

Originally published on Waste Pickers Makhanda

Waste Pickers Makhanda demand to be included in waste management strategies in Makhanda.

The pickers have been working on the site since 2017. They have seen many private companies who manage the site come and go. They have also seen multiple recycling and buy-back companies start up and dissolve. As all these parties come and go, the waste pickers remain, consistently doing their part in the circular economy without any recognition.

Waste pickers in Makhanda has participated in several workshops and seminars at Rhodes University. Further, Mzamani Nyalungu had several interviews with many waste pickers over the years and engaged with the buy-back centres. We have visited the landfill numerous times for research, organising and discussing media representation with the waste pickers. We have collaborated with two members of WIEGO. They have engaged with the previous and current site managers. They have engaged with municipal departments.

The organisation believes that any decision-making about public services must be participatory and inclusive of the communities whose lives are directly impacted by the services or systems implemented or the sites occupied. The landfill is no exception.

Participation involves recognising the communities living on the landfill, as well as

recognition of the informal economy existing in the waste management system.

The extreme poverty forces people to become waste pickers and the significant contribution to our society and deserves proper recognition.

Their call is not for donations or ad-hoc feeding schemes but for systemic inclusion. The report explicitly stresses that waste pickers must be included in whatever decision making to do with waste management. This is well addressed in the integration for waste pickers in South Africa report.

The government has good theoretical policies in place - but unfortunately, they never get implemented until community action is taken. While several stakeholders were approached to generate our report, we must not digress from our focus in attempts at objectivity. We must consider the imbalance of power of marginalised groups in media representation and within formal knowledge systems.