Behind the rake and sickle of Nairobi’s wastepickers

The inseparable nature of the battles for civil and social rights can be seen in all its fullness in the struggle of Nairobi’s wastepickers, champions of mutual aid and standard-bearers of informal unionization.

Three million people of all ages – 60 percent of the city’s population – are crowded into some of the most densely populated urban areas on the planet, with an average of 28,000 inhabitants per square kilometer, and are forced to act as quasi-governmental entities to secure access to clean water, makeshift sewage systems, measures to prevent school dropouts and support for education, the taking of reliable censuses and, above all, the disposal of household and municipal waste. 

This is the reality faced by residents of the informal settlements in the Kenyan capital (the so-called slums), where “informal” refers to the absence of permanent housing and infrastructure. The administration of the metropolis, which today stands out on the continent as a commercial and financial hub, does not provide welfare services in these areas, such as a public garbage collection system.

In addition to the various associations and groups that take on this burden, the inseparable nature of the battles for civil and social rights can be seen in all its fullness in the struggle of Nairobi’s wastepickers, champions of mutual aid and standard-bearers of informal unionization. The unique nature of their profession can be seen particularly clearly in the Dandora settlement, on the city’s eastern outskirts, which has grown up around the landfill of the same name. 

The waste storage and disposal site, established in the 1970s, is organized through an autonomous system run by the workers: public companies are limited to transporting and unloading the trash, much of which comes from containers unloaded at the port of Mombasa from Europe and other non-African countries. Approximately 2,000 tons of waste are dumped daily, spread across the landfill’s roughly 12 hectares. There is no state agency to manage the sorting into categories – plastic, glass, metals, electronics, textiles – and no company, whether public or private, provides contracts or ensures decent working conditions for the wastepickers. Despite a government commitment to soon approve a reform formalizing the sector, as of today it is still the residents of Dandora who bear the burden of all this, now entirely dependent on the waste economy.

Every morning, when the trucks begin to arrive, more than 5,000 people put on their rubber boots and enter the landfill. Some sort and collect plastic bottles; others hammer away at the trash to extract metals; still others sort through glass bottles in search of the clearest ones, which are easiest to recycle. At the end of the day, each of them heads with a sack – or more, if they can manage it – to the private companies that buy the waste. Paid by the piece, based on the value of the items they bring in, they only manage to earn less than $2 a day.

These companies, notably Mr. Green Africa and TakaTaka Solutions, are completely indifferent – as is the government – to everything that takes place before the buying and selling itself, and they don’t even provide wastepickers with the necessary equipment to work inside the site. “We have to buy our own boots, protective gloves and masks. Almost no one can afford everything they need; our association tries to provide equipment and some basic welfare guarantees through fundraising, and it advocates for our rights,” Solomon Njoroge, president of the Wastepickers Association, tells il manifesto as he sits down and takes off his sneakers at the association’s headquarters next to the site, preparing to enter the landfill.

The association’s symbol, painted on the metal door, depicts a rake and sickle instead of the traditional hammer. “Of the waste brought here every day, we estimate that about 80 percent is textiles and single-use plastics. This means it’s waste that has no value and isn’t recyclable, so we can't dispose of it,” the activist continues. The result is that this debris piles up on the site, “and when it gets very hot, it catches fire on its own, releasing toxic fumes into the air that are extremely harmful to our health. Many of us have respiratory problems, and we end up dying young because with the wages we earn, we can't afford treatment.” 

But, worst of all, “most wastepickers can't miss a day of work to see a doctor, because as they're paid by the piece, that would mean they wouldn’t earn anything,” explains Njoroge. As he walks, he steps on the layers of single-use fabrics and plastics, now solidified into hills, slopes and small canyons. Beside the association’s headquarters, the wastepickers of Dandora gather after work at the pub they built inside the landfill, entirely from recycled materials. “The issue we're trying to highlight – beyond the basic social rights we're entitled to – is the extremely harmful environmental impact of this toxic waste. The landfill extends all the way to the Nairobi River, into which the contaminated water flows. This poses serious risks to Kenya's ecosystem as well as to the communities living around the site,” says Njoroge, sitting in the pub while sipping a glass of County and soda. 

The activist, like many of his colleagues, was born and raised in Dandora Phase 4, the settlement area located right between the landfill and the river. On various occasions, such as during Wastepickers Day on March 3, “we have reiterated our basic demands: a living wage, a contract with health insurance, adequate equipment and, above all, policies to combat the environmental impact of toxic waste.”

The risk of child labor is another problem that the workers themselves are the only ones to tackle head-on. “We try to support families who would otherwise have to put their children to work. We've built a children's center in the Phase 4 area, where they can leave their kids after school so they don't have to bring them along and expose them to toxins,” says Lydia Neville, a volunteer at the Ndoto Zetu center.

In Dandora, wastepickers perform a public service by managing the city’s landfill, and although they are aware of the health and environmental risks, “we don't want the site closed or relocated. There is an entire community that depends on the waste economy. All that's needed are adequate tools for disposing of toxic materials, an awareness campaign on the environmental impact of improper waste management, and providing welfare benefits for our sector. Here it becomes even more obvious how the harmful effects of pollution primarily affect the poor – we're also trying to build class consciousness,” explains Evans Otieno. 

The importance of wastepickers is less outwardly visible but equally evident in the city’s other slums as well. From the Ecological Justice Network at the Mathare Social Justice Centre to the Whisper Champions youth initiative in Kibera, slum dwellers are organizing themselves to clean up their urban areas, dispose of waste and create a source of income for the community.

“We're in contact with various sector organizations in many countries,” Njoroge notes. “We try to maintain an internationalist stance: wastepickers of the world, unite!”

© Il Manifesto Global