Where can global awareness root locally? The Case of Informal Sector Inclusion in Integrated Solid Waste Management

This paper examines the informal recycling sector working on solid waste in Asia, with a focus on India and the Philippines, but with illustrations drawn from across the world. There is increasing awareness around both the role of the sector, particularly wastepickers, in solid waste management and recycling, as well as their marginalized socio-economic status. This paper proposes for a number of reasons, this awareness will be unable to change the situation in the countries without local innovation and local initiative, apart from adequate, inclusive laws that are a part of the larger vision of Integrated Solid Waste Management. The paper argues that awareness can only be converted into change via the such factors.

Both India and the Philippines have significant informal sector actors undertaking recycling. In each of these countries, a combination of national policies and rules, and innovative local initiatives, or the lack of the above, have resulted in noteworthy results that the paper will briefly examine. The paper also uses data to show how informal sector populations have remained out of the ambit of law and therefore, inclusion in ISWM, in other parts of the world, despite heightened awareness about the sector.

The paper finally examines the common threads amongst the countries with good policy or operational practices and therefore spells out some key aspects of SWM that are required for making such inclusive laws, as the key learnings for other cities.