Those of us who live in cities are quite used to them.  The diligent poor who pick through our bins on trash and recycling day, looking for paper and plastic and glass aluminum cans they can sell to make money.  And in cities in developing countries, trash pickers are often the only form of recycling service, helping to reduce rubbish on the streets and lessen the amount of material that goes to up-to-capacity landfills. 

According to Bharati Chaturvedi, founder and director of the Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group in India, writing in an op-ed piece in the New York Times, the world's 15 million informal recyclers not only clean up cities, but they even reduce climate change by saving energy on waste disposal methods such as incineration.   

Yet now trash pickers, too, are suffering due to the worldwide recession.  As the cost of housing along with the cost of oil has fallen, so has the price of scrap paper, metal, and plastic.  So informal recyclers, already the poorest of the poor, are losing income.  Chaturvedi says in her article that in Delhi, nearly 80 percent of families in the informal recycling business have cut back on what they call “luxury foods,” namely fruit, milk, and meat to feed their children.  And what's even worse, trash pickers are often harassed and looked upon as vagrants in many cities, despite the valuable service they provide.   

In some cities, however, including Buenos Aires, Bogotgá, Columbia, and several locations in Asia, informal recycling is at least partially supported by the government.  Brazil and Columbia have the largest and most established national cooperatives of trash pickers; at least 12 countries in Latin America participate in the Latin American Waste Pickers Network. 

Brazil has the world's largest aluminum recycling rate, close to 90 percent, thanks to the county's waste collectors.   The cooperatives have improved the conditions of these workers who eek out a living collecting, sorting, and selling recyclable materials. In Duque de Caxias, Brazil, a100-person cooperative run by the city government along with state-run energy company, Petrobras, salvages close to 165 tons of scrap from a nearby landfill, and each worker earns more than $700 a month, at least three time's Brazil's minimum wage.  And the company helped to build the cooperative a facility where the members can work under an awning with nearby restrooms and a kitchen. 

In India, the Trade Union of Waste Pickers In Pune is a decentralized organization that offers house-to-house waste collection.  And in Cambodia part of the waste collected by its recycling cooperative is used by its embers to make crafts such as flowerpots from discarded rubber tires and stationary from paper to be sold in markets. 

In the spring of 2008, the Botgotá Association of Recyclers hosted the First World Congress of Waste Pickers to exchange experience among hundreds of waste pickers from more than 40 countries, and to develop national and international alliances to help them from being taken advantage of by local governments.  The conference showed that while trash recyclers continue to be marginalized and harassed, they are becoming increasingly better organized in many places. 

Still, despite these efforts, most trash pickers operate alone and are deeply affected by the recession.  Chaturvedi suggests in her editorial that governments could raise the cost of buying scrap materials by paying a small subsidy to waste dealers so they could by the recyclables from the trash pickers at something like 20 percent above the current price. 

More importantly, informal recyclers need to be recognized and integrated into the business sector to gain insurance and reliable pay.  Since they're already doing such a commendable and necessary service, isn't it time to incorporate these individuals into society on a global basis?

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