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On the scrap heap? Better livelihoods for Bangladeshi waste pickers

Can the sustainable livelihoods approach (SLA), developed to study rural livelihoods, be adapted for an urban environment? Can it be fine-tuned to capture information and livelihood strategies of marginalized and illiterate children?

These issues are explored in a report by Loughborough University’s Water, Engineering and Development Centre (WEDC) which uses the SLA to look at the lives of waste pickers in Dhaka. The study contributes to better methodological understanding of the SLA and adds to the relatively small body of work relating to practical sustainable livelihoods of the poorest of the urban poor.

Waste pickers, most of them seven to fourteen year old boys, collect and sell paper, plastics, glass, bones and metals from landfill sites, skips and street dumps. Most live on the streets or in slums where they have little access to infrastructure, a low status in society and an uncertain future. They work in the morning when pickings are best and as a result few attend school. The slum areas in which they live are at risk from fire, flooding and demolition. Seasonality charts prepared during focus groups indicated that life is particularly hard in the wet season and better after Eid festivals when the quantity and quality of waste increases.

In line with the holistic approach of the SLA model used by the UK Department for International Development, the study looked at the pickers’ livelihoods from four related concepts: vulnerability (including trends, shocks and seasonality), livelihood assets (human, social, natural, physical and financial capitals), transforming structures (institutions and legislation which impacts their lives) and livelihood strategies and outcomes.

The findings indicated that:

Waste pickers have complex livelihoods and livelihood strategies.
Variation in the circumstances of pickers and the nature and quantities of waste shows that pickers cannot be conceptualised as a single group.
Pickers are aware that better-paid work (especially in the garment industry) is available but the opportunity cost of not working for the time taken to acquire skills is prohibitive.
The relationship between the pickers and dealers who buy products for recycling does not appear to be exploitative, but rather supportive.
The key to empowerment of pickers is improving human capital.
Successful SLA involves pictures, humour and entertainment and avoids listening only to the confident and ignoring those with ‘quiet voices’.
Rather than stick dogmatically to the concepts of the SLA it is more important to put the ideas behind it into research practice.

Among the pointers for policy-makers and donors is the need for:

afternoon schooling or a loan system to make the opportunity cost of education or skills acquisition more affordable
acknowledgement of the tension between wider environmental and development interests and the interests of pickers - improved solid waste management could cause waste pickers to lose their livelihoods and their social networks and support structures
scoping how pickers could become door-to-door collectors in an improved municipal waste collection scheme
further research, with a wider sample of pickers, to disentangle the impact of gender, caste and age on livelihood activities and strategies.

Source(s):
‘Waste Pickers in Dhaka: Using the sustainable livelihoods approach – Key findings and field notes’, by Jonathan Rouse and Mansoor Ali, WEDC, Loughborough University, 2001 Full document.

Funded by: WEDC

id21 Research Highlight: 25 April 2001

Further Information:
Jonathan Rouse
WEDC Loughborough University
Leicestershire LE11 3TU
UK

Tel: +44 (0)1509 222885
Fax: +44 (0)1509 211079
Contact the contributor: J.R.Rouse@lboro.ac.uk

Water, Engineering and Development Centre (WEDC), University of Loughborough, UK

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