We’ve all seen the pictures: heaping trash mounds with men and women sifting through the discards. This challenging situation has increased international pressure over environmental and public health concerns from these dangerous sites. Open dumps, unlike sanitary landfills, are not engineered to protect the environment and human health.
But there is one major issue: the response does not take into account that these sites are important sources of economic survival for expert recyclers – the world’s waste pickers – who earn a daily living there and feed our waste into the global recycling chain.
An unprecedented socio-environmental crisis
Open dumps are the most prevalent form of waste disposal in the Global South. Workers in these waste sinks are subject to appalling sanitary conditions. A report from Human Rights Watch “As if You Are Inhaling Your Death – The Health Risks of Burning Waste in Lebanon”, investigates the impact on both open dump waste pickers’ health and communities surrounding the dump. The report explicitly focuses on the improper disposal of waste and the risks workers and community members are exposed to. It also highlights the need to apply the principles laid out in international human rights treaties.
We are entangled in an unprecedented social-environmental crisis: On one side, the challenges of addressing poverty and on the other, the effects of human power in undermining natural balances. This has meant a stretch of our ethical responsibilities encompassing not only inter-human relations and collective well-being, but also our relationship with the biosphere.
With the increasing concern over climate change municipalities have taken to making sweeping decisions to close open dumps entirely, very often partnering with other players with a monetary stake, including the World Bank and private waste companies, in the adoption of new solid waste systems, such as waste-to-energy technologies.
We are entangled in an unprecedented social-environmental crisis.
But there is another side to this story: the right to work, one of the fundamental human rights. The shut down of open dumps without offering of alternative work is a violation of this basic human right.
How can we conciliate all of the relevant rights – a right to a healthy environment, to public health, and the right to work? To start, we need to articulate a discussion between human rights, citizenship, public health, and sustainability – and include waste pickers in these discussions. Membership-based organizations of informal recyclers have a vision of sustainable development that merges both environmental and livelihoods protection – and their views need to be a more systematic part of the process.
Monitoring human rights conditions of waste pickers
Since 2017, WIEGO has been monitoring the human rights conditions of waste pickers. This monitoring has been carried out in a project called “Protecting the Human Rights of Recyclers in Latin America”, whose objective is to contribute to better working conditions for waste pickers through a human rights perspective and to seek to influence the legal framework on solid waste in order to protect these workers’ rights. In addition, the project aims to facilitate the process of bringing forth complaints on violations on human rights to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
With the increasing concern over climate change municipalities have taken to making sweeping decisions to close open dumps entirely, very often partnering with other players with a monetary stake, including the World Bank and private waste companies, in the adoption of new solid waste systems, such as waste-to-energy technologies.
Reports from six cities in the project show numerous violations, including to the right to work and right to livelihoods for waste pickers working in open dumps in the cities of Manágua, Nicarágua; Santiago de Los Calleros, Dominican Republic; Mexico City, Mexico; and Guatemala City, Guatemala, amongst others. These workers were denied access to dumps, without offering alternative work or without encouraging the creation and implementation of associations and cooperatives, which would enable these waste pickers to re-enter the labor force in the short to medium term.
Another dimension of human rights violations regarding work in open dumps is related to sanitary conditions and health risks, particularly since these workers are exposed to situations that can increase illness, contaminate both the soil and water, and increase intoxications and work accidents given the handling of waste.
Towards Change
One of the basic principles with moving from open dumps to sanitary landfills is that while it is extremely important for environmental, sanitary and human rights reasons, viable alternatives for waste pickers need to also be an integral part of the solid waste plan.
An example for a way forward comes from Brazil. WIEGO was part of an international monitoring committee that oversaw the closure of the Estrutural dump in Brazil’s capital city, Brasília. In that city, a livelihood protection plan was designed in order to address the livelihoods of dump pickers. Under its Focal Cities program, WIEGO is also monitoring other processes, such as the Kpone dump in Accra, Ghana, and the Mbeubess dump in Dakar, Senegal.
One of the basic principles with moving from open dumps to sanitary landfills is that while it is extremely important for environmental, sanitary and human rights reasons, viable alternatives for waste pickers need to also be an integral part of the solid waste plan.
When eliminating open dumps the negative impacts on waste pickers livelihoods should be assessed and proper mitigating measures offered. Any suppressed activity should be replaced with another of at least equal value. For example, municipalities can integrate waste pickers through door-to-door collection of recyclables and other income-generating activities, such as in Pune, India, and Bogotà, Colombia.
A future in balance
We have come to an understanding that human survival depends on our efforts to care both for the planet and for the human rights and well-being for all people. The moral imperative formulated by the German philosopher Hans Jonas, under the “imperative of responsibility” serves us right: “act so that the effects of your action are compatible with the permanence of genuine human life”.
The existence of human labour at open dumps illustrates a double call for responsibility: to waste pickers and to nature. These two imperatives are intrinsically linked and one should be addressed always in relation to the other. Failure to address the risks posed by open dumps – both to nature and to human health – and failure to protect livelihoods in the process, are equal threats to human rights.
Feature photo: Waste pickers at the Kpone dump in Accra face an uncertain future but have been organizing to raise their concerns with officials. Credit: D. Saffron
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