“Almost everyone handling waste on the dump site is sick in some way,” says John Chweya, the president of the Kenyan Waste Pickers Welfare Association. “In my dump in Kisumu [a western port city in Kenya], two of my colleagues passed away one week ago. From what I could see, they had the signs of cancer but we could not afford to get the medical attention.”

“Some of my colleagues are in pain without knowing why. Most of them have bacterial infections, which are rampant and have also claimed the lives of very many pickers that I know. Even me, three weeks ago I was hospitalised and diagnosed with a pneumonia that nearly claimed my life. This is happening all the time. Each and every week, there’s a case of a waste picker dying.”

Waste pickers work on the front line of a global addiction to plastics that has polluted every corner of our planet, invaded even our bloodstreams and threatens to drive the global fossil fuel economy indefinitely.

In March, 175 countries agreed to set up an international negotiating committee to agree a treaty with legally binding instruments intended to staunch the tide of plastics by the end of 2024. The landmark agreement is expected to cover the full lifecycle of plastics from design to production to disposal, and to set up mechanisms that offer financial and technical help to poorer countries.

For the first time, the treaty’s negotiating text has also recognised the role played by workers in the formal and informal economy.

Despite growing awareness of the scars that plastics leave on our health and environment, the sector’s inexorable growth resembles the Sorcerer’s Apprentice scene in Disney’s Fantasia. Global production is currently running at around 400 million tons per year, and is forecast to double by 2040. Between 1950 and 2015, 8.3 billion metric tons of virgin plastics flooded the world’s markets, with the vast majority ending up as waste. Only around 12 per cent of that trash was incinerated – itself no solution – and just nine per cent was recycled. The rest flowed to the oceans, or was dumped on land.

The full cost to the environment, society and economy may never be known, but a study commissioned by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) estimated it at US$3.7 trillion for the year 2019. That sum will nearly double by 2040 if no action is taken, according to the report.

For waste pickers in places such as east Africa, the situation is acute, says Patrizia Heidegger, the European Environmental Bureau’s director for global policies and sustainability. “Waste pickers in the informal economy there have zero personal protection and the waste they work in develops toxic fumes on its own, even without being burned.” Often the symptoms from the resulting illnesses are difficult to diagnose without medical access.

Dumps such as Nairobi’s vast Dandora site even have tainted water supplies, according to the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP). Around 200,000 people living in a nearby informal settlement called Korogocho were hit by a cholera alert in 2018 after the deaths of two local people, one a 13-year-old girl.

Thousands of waste pickers work on that site – sometimes whole families – sifting for metals, plastics and electronics over a mountain of rubbish which stretches for 30 acres, and can rise as high as 20 feet in places. “If we were not reclaiming these recyclables, it would touch the sky,” Chweya observes. The rancid odour in the slums around Dandora is so bad that “it can choke you even before you get there,” he says.

“We now have enough data to prove that plastics are both a human health crisis and a climate change crisis,” says Jane Patton, campaign manager for the Washington DC-headquartered Center for International Environmental Law. “Seeing how that emerging set of data and research and lived experience from people around the world plays out in negotiations for a global treaty will be another key battleground.”

Arduous work and social stigma

In downtown Nairobi, Tom Nderitu, a young waste picker, says that the main illnesses he fears are malaria and the flu. The latter is an occupational hazard due to his starting work at 4am. The former is a by-product of the swarms of mosquitoes stirred up when he picks through piles of garbage. But Tom’s only protection comes from several layers of clothing – a sweater, t-shirt, jacket and, sometimes, an overcoat.

When he is unwell, Tom buys over the counter drugs at poorly equipped government dispensaries. “Picking means walking over long distances so as to collect a load of at least 10-15 kilos by 2pm when it gets too hot to continue,” he tells Equal Times. But starting work so early can be risky because “you can be attacked [by criminals] or accused [by the police or public] of being a criminal,” he explains.

Picking waste from private premises is a no-go for workers like Tom, unless they have received express permission from business owners. “The risk of being branded a thief comes with heavy consequences. Also, many people think that you and your cargo are smelly, so they do not want you in their premises.” He continues: “People who operate businesses hardly want to see us and residents do not want us near their houses.”

Typically, waste picking is a last-resort job for people with little schooling and fewer options but a cost of living crisis in Kenya has forced even graduates into this life.

Patrick Nyamu, 27, qualified for a Bachelor of Arts in counselling psychology at Nairobi’s Africa International University in 2018 but was denied a degree certificate because of an outstanding balance in his fees of nearly €4,000.

Now he collects waste – metal, paper, plastics and bones – in the alleyways and open drains of Nairobi’s Kasarani and Mwiki estates under the baking sun. He then sells his wares to agents who in turn sell it on to recycling factories. Orphaned at 17 years old while in his final year in high school, and raised by his uncle, Nyamu is still cheerful, and content that he can put food on his table. On a good day he may earn €4. On tougher days he has to contend with as little as €1.50, just enough to keep going.

“My major aim is to one day earn and save enough money to clear the fees arrears, get my degree certificate, and look for a job using the papers,” he says. But amid spiralling food inflation and a temporary state ban on the sale of scrap – to allow the vetting of dealers – that ambition may be beyond him.

No groups or nations have proposed a blanket ban on plastics but Nyamu says that he fears such curbs in an international agreement would harm thousands of his contemporaries. “What we need is for all parties involved to think about us as well before they bring [in a] ban. They should remember that we earn our livelihoods from recycled plastics and we also benefit neighbourhoods by collecting the waste, by cleaning the environment,” he says.

Patrick Nyamu with his load of paper and plastic waste at the Maji Mazuri area of Kasarani in Nairobi, Kenya.

Photo: Maina Waruru

A seat at the table

More than 6,700 workers have so far been organised by Kenya’s waste picking union and Chweya says that they should have a voice at the negotiating table. “We’ve never been visible,” he says. “Our government has never noticed us or thought of us being important in the whole value chain and so my biggest concern now is how this treaty will be negotiated and implemented.”

Unions want to see a formalisation of the informal sector emerge from the treaty negotiations with rights for medical insurance, protective equipment, recognised hours and collective bargaining for all, he says. Some of these issues may also provide a platform for organising workers in Kenya, with strikes and demonstrations very much under discussion. “We will be heard and when the time comes to make the government know that we can push for our rights in a hard way, we will probably do these things,” he says.

Rebecca Okello, a climate policy advisor at the Central Organisation of Trade Unions-Kenya (COTU-K), also wants to see a new extension of workers’ rights. “Any negotiations for crafting a plastics treaty should happen within the framework of just transition, and in an inclusive manner where the United Nations does not leave anyone behind and where everybody is listened to,” she says. “This means that negotiations should include bodies and institutions such as trade unions so that voices of workers are heard.”

More than 100,000 people work in Kenya’s plastics and rubber industry in formal and informal jobs. And in the past, waste pickers were not consulted about critical decisions such as a 2017 ban on plastic carrier bags that caused more than 300 job losses in the formal sector (the number in the informal sector is unknown). The unemployed were left with no alternative means of livelihood, a major issue for informal workers, some of whom also fear that the formalisation of their sector could lead to their work being outsourced.

Down and out in Ho Chi Minh City

On a Friday night in Ho Chi Minh City, Dung, 50, is pushing her old cart, laden with the harvest of her last few hours: a broken fan, some plastic bottles, cardboard and a piece of broken hard plastic.

She is one among thousands of ve chai (informal waste pickers) – mostly women – who try to find value in the trash left on Vietnam’s busy streets, and in its dustbins. This job was her last choice when she left her parents’ house ten years ago and moved to the city looking for opportunities. “I started doing this because I am very poor and I have to pay for my rent,” she tells Equal Times. “I start going in the streets every day at 6am and I finish around 8pm, sometimes later, even at midnight.”

Aside from metals – a rare find – plastic bottles are her most valued items, the ones most likely to be bought by small scrap dealers that will in turn sell them to bigger dealers. The price they pay changes every day but is around 3,000 dong (€0.12) per kilo of plastic or glass bottles. On a very good day Dung may earn 50,000 VND (€2), but on a normal one, no more than 30,000 or 40,000, just enough to pay for her rented room and some basic meals. “I often get free meals from charity,” she says.

Waste prices are determined by the dealers and Dung says her life would be better if she received a minimum price per kilo for the trash she collects. Despite spending the whole day in the streets, breathing traffic fumes from one of South-East Asia’s most polluted cities, and dealing with waste in insanitary conditions, Dung insists that: “Nothing is dangerous in the job, I use gloves and a mask. I also have a stick and I use it to segregate the waste.”

Dung’s mask and gloves are dirty. She cannot afford to replace them and she walks in the trash with no footwear other than her old flip-flops. She cannot afford to go to the doctor and relies on advice from the pharmacist when she feels unwell. Her greatest fear is the police, who sometimes shoo her away when there are too many waste pickers in one area, to give the neighbourhood a “better” image.

To Dung, plastic provides a livelihood and she recoils from the idea of reducing consumption: “If there is less plastic in the street it will be very difficult,” she says. “People like me will have no jobs and we will just become beggars.”

Not every waste picker faces the same hardships. For 45-year-old Le Thi Thong, waste picking was a choice. She could also have decided to work for a factory near her hometown in northern Vietnam or to become a maid in Ho Chi Minh City. Her waste picking trade brings in about 7 million dong (€280) per month, enough for her to rent a small but decent and well-equipped room, and save some money.

When she initially set up, friends in the trade helped Thong find a network of restaurants and companies, which sell her waste that she in turn sells on at a higher price to scrap dealers. Thong doesn’t care that some view her job as dirty, because it allows her more flexible hours than she would have in a factory, and similar wages. Each day, she decides whether to pick up waste or buy it from restaurants and companies to sell on to collection centres.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, she was not allowed to go out waste picking for several months – a time in which, as an informal worker, she received no relief package. She got by on her savings and the generosity of her landlord who, fortunately, reduced her rent.

‘As important as the Paris climate agreement’

For workers like Thong and Dung, negotiations for a new plastics treaty hardly figure in their lives. But its impact could be “potentially as important as the Paris agreement [on climate change],” one well-placed EU official who asked to remain anonymous told Equal Times.

Just like the Paris deal though, different countries are vying for different outcomes. In the run up to the UN Environment Assembly conference in March which agreed the treaty timeline, an ambitious resolution drafted by Peru and Rwanda was initially opposed by a more limited Japanese proposal to focus solely on marine pollution.

Insiders say that countries in Africa, Latin America and Europe are generally seen as more ambitious than those in Asia, such as Japan, India and China. National divisions largely reflect the interests that different countries have in the plastics production, refining and disposal sectors.

Demand for petrochemical feedstock – which comes disproportionately from the manufacture of plastics – made up around 14 per cent of oil demand in 2017. The International Energy Agency says that this will be “the key driver” for oil growth in the next three decades as emissions from other sectors are cut back.

The agency expects nearly half of all oil demand growth in the years to 2050 to come from petrochemicals.

But the fossil fuels sector industry is also a major player in the negotiating process and negotiators warn of its ability to influence the talks. “I think their lobbying power is quite strong,” the EU official told Equal Times. The EU’s strategy would be to “keep our current narrative,” the official added. “Whatever we do isn’t anti-plastic per se. It’s actually trying to promote the use of plastic that is compatible with a circular economy but to identify and, if possible, eliminate the plastics use that is bad for the environment.”

Europe’s focus for action will thus be on single-use plastics and those likely to quickly leak into the environment, rather than non-toxic plastics for long-term use, such as in buildings that will be in stock for 50 years.

Microplastics

Most plastics do not degrade. Instead, they fragment into smaller particles known as microplastics and nanoplastics. Microplastics have now been found almost everywhere from the placentas of unborn babies to the world’s deepest sea trenches. One newly discovered amphipod in 2020 found at a depth of over 6,000 metres in the unfathomably vast Mariana trench was named after the plastic that had contaminated its gut, Eurythenes plasticus.

Plastic debris laced with chemicals kills marine life, clogs waterways and has created a floating vortex of trash in the Pacific that with an estimated surface area of 1.6 million square kilometres, is three times the size of France. On land too, plastics buried deep in landfills can leach harmful chemicals, which seep into groundwater sources, and impact human health.

Manufacturing workers and others may be particularly exposed to high concentrations of often carcinogenic monomers, such as bisphenols. Scientists link exposure to this substance with breast cancer, infertility, early puberty, diabetes, obesity and neurological disorders in children.

Additives such as phthalates, commonly used in the production of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), have similarly been linked to reproductive disorders, insulin resistance, asthma, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Much of this damage is classified as “endocrine disrupting” because monomers and additives can mimic the behaviour of human hormones – the endocrine system – which signal body changes such as growth, sexual development and metabolism shifts.

One study estimated the health cost of endocrine disrupting chemicals in Europe alone at between €150-€270 billion a year.

Key battlegrounds

In this context, the question of whether an eventual plastics treaty’s text includes the production and polymerisation of plastics from feedstocks such as oil and gas as part of its full lifecycle will be “a key battle,” according to Patton of the Center for International Environmental Law. Another clash is likely over the issue of mandatory obligations. “The treaty is going to be less effective if some of its key provisions – such as for redesign and reduction targets – are voluntary,” she says.

But industry attempts to popularise green-washing concepts such as ‘plastic neutrality’, ‘plastic credits’ and ‘chemical recycling’ are now expected by environmentalists, and they could influence negotiators. Fossil fuels firms are already lobbying to water down the treaty’s eventual outcome, according to Patton, and their efforts will probably ramp up when negotiations start in earnest.

“For many years now, oil and gas companies have seen plastics and petrochemicals as their lifeline in the face of greater awareness of climate change,” she tells Equal Times. “These companies are looking for their future profit margin and finding it in petrochemicals and plastics. This treaty could be a bulwark against the destruction,” she says. “So will they fight it? Absolutely!”

Many civil society groups – and some states – have also begun to call for a provision capping of the production of the most toxic virgin plastics. “There’s the question of what plastic materials and products we can rapidly phase out altogether, because we can live well without them,” says Heidegger of the European Environmental Bureau. But the unnamed EU official warned that “if that [proposal] comes, it will be a major fight.”

The EU’s current preference is for national action plans to impact the volumes of plastics in circulation. “It is not the same thing as saying one wants legally binding restrictions on production and consumption,” the official said. Heidegger advocates returning to a system of “reusable food packaging for all food and beverage products where alternatives are available – and these are for most”.

The most harmful plastics are often the most difficult to recycle and packaging materials at present are rarely designed with reuse in mind. Crunch debates also lie in wait over financial mechanisms and models to help poorer countries move away from the plastics economy.

But for the first time, the negotiating text for the agreement recognises “the significant contribution made by workers under informal and cooperative settings to collecting, sorting and recycling plastics in many countries”.

Tom Grinter, the IndustriALL Global Union’s chemicals and pharmaceuticals director, says that a successful outcome would depend on government investment and legislation to build circular economy infrastructure, and to upskill workers so that no-one is left behind.

“All transitions can be managed through good faith social dialogue and unions must have a seat at the decision-making table, with access to the information and full consultation rights,” he says. “Agreements between employers and unions can establish mechanisms for all of these aspects at the plant, company, national and global levels. Nothing about us, without us.”