14/04/2023
One day I was walking past a dumpsite near Mandela national stadium and I came across an old woman
in her late forties picking plastic waste and putting it in her bag, using bare hands. In a distance from
where she was standing, I noticed many more women and men doing the same thing. Having worked in
the plastic recycling industries for years, I realized that those people were picking or collecting plastic
and other sold waste to sell to recyclers. This dumpsite is extremely dirty and hazardous because all
solid waste collectors dump their waste here.
I took interest to pass by the second day and I noticed further that the pickers didn’t have body
protective gears. They didn’t have shoes, they didn’t have gloves, they lacked packaging bags for their
waste, they lacked space etc. this time I tried to ask them whether recycling companies had tried to
supply them with those tools and the answer was, NO!. I also wanted this time to know whether; the
pickers were working as an organized group or individuals. They told me, they were working on an
individual basis to get what to feed on and their families.
One of them is known by the names Naigaga Abatuka (now our member in the group), a widow of nine
children all living in a shanty house they call home located about 500 meters from the main dumpsite.
Four of her children between 13 and 17 years were working as street waste pickers and they had
entirely dropped out of school because she could not afford to take them to school. Many of the waste
pickers share her story and the men are not any better. It is worse for the youths because most of them
are drugs users.
I sat down later and reflected on the entire waste management culture in our community of
Bweyogerere. I discovered that while the community generates the waste, many lack the zeal and idea
of how to manage it or dispose it off safely. A lot of waste is dropped on the streets, water channels and
at times burnt. Open burning is common but also there is a hidden way of burning waste especially
plastics. Households use kavera (Polythene) for lighting their charcoal stoves.
Finally from my conversation with the collectors, I noticed that many manufactures do not regard waste
collection as a viable activity that helps them in providing raw materials for their industries. Waste
pickers provide most of the recyclers’ feedstock and yet they are not recognized. Payments for their
products are very low and the recyclers do not provide them with PPEs to protect them against
occupational hazards.
A combination of the above factors and many others underscored the need to form and register Replast
CBO to try and change the entire community waste management criteria by involving the generators of
waste and the collectors of waste. Creating awareness among the households and socializing economic
benefits of waste would reduce on wanton disposal of waste and at the same time organizing the
informal waste collectors into groups would increase their incomes and empower them to compete
favorably in the recycling supply chain. Above all close engagements with the recyclers and building
networks with other organization in this sector, would improve on the price bargains and welfare of the
waste collectors. And of course training waste collectors in other skills would further include them in
the formal recycling sector
( Story by Tenywa Paul, Chairperson Replast CBO)
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