Chapter 2. Collection and recycling, the realm of the informal sector
(cf. Chapter 1.1.) to recognise that informal waste recovery actors make a substantial contribution to their city’s environmental performance. However, when informal recovery is integrated into the municipal service, the formal agents who had previously engaged in this business sometimes feel cheated: for example, waste collection agents who had supplemented their salary by selling certain materials. The reference cities thus envision different trajectories to improve their recycling rates, with a reliance on informal actors. The African cities focus above all on organising primary collection services to improve their collection rates, but at the same time they also promote the recovery of recyclables. The Asian cities seem to opt for the same method, yet do not recognise the role of informal actors and prefer to rely on residents’ associations at the neighbourhood level. In Latin America, the role of informals is significant and even legally recognised, which amounts to a sort of formalisation of informality.
III.
Recycling: the privileged realm of informal actors
Selective collection of household waste is almost non-existent in municipal policies. Yet, a sizeable share of recyclable waste is indeed collected. This is carried out by informal operators and not part of any public action. This intervention by the informal sector is not uncommon in waste management and the practice is widespread in all the economies of the reference cities. The Indian National Statistics surveys estimated that 80% of workers were operating in the informal sector in 2012, while in Peru 74% of the economy is thought to be informal (CEPLAN, 2016).
1. The nascent structuring of recycling channels Difficulty in estimating the quantities of recovered waste As recyclable waste is mainly collected by informal operators, this makes it difficult to measure the quantities collected. High-value materials seem to be collected in large amounts. Metal, which is barely present in the characterisations of domestic waste, is almost systematically skimmed off by waste recovery actors upstream of any collection. It is retrieved from dustbins and dumpsites, or comes directly from households or small enterprises. Moreover, some itinerant buyers specialise in metal waste. In Lomé, 75% (in weight) of recycled waste is metal (60% iron, 10% aluminium, 2% copper, 1% bronze and 1% zinc), while the rest mainly comprises plastics (12%) (Garnier, 2016). Plastics are the second type of material recovered by informal actors given that plastic has a listed value on the secondary materials market (value indexed on the barrel of oil). Recyclables may account for up to 36% of household waste (Surabaya). Unsoiled paper and cardboard are also recovered. In Lima, 90% of recovery is informal, with over 8,554 tonnes recovered each month (Rateau, 2015). Adding the 1,030 tonnes recovered formally, this totals over 4% of all municipal waste generated, equivalent to 17% of the collected waste that is potentially recyclable. While this figure leaves room for improvement, it is nonetheless significant given the difficulty of collecting recyclables. The second difficulty resides in the economic viability of the activity as in all of the reference cities (except Bogotá) it depends solely on the resale price of the materials. Aside from the on-the-ground reality of selective collection, recovery activities for the purposes of recycling (direct resale) and re-use (to avoid producing waste) are underestimated, albeit very common in households. Although not official, this practice involves materials that enable
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