Joburg’s trolley surfers: Cleaning up and creating jobs

In the unforgiving climate of Johannesburg’s urban landscape, thousands of women and men are up at the crack of dawn, surfing the streets with make-shift trolleys, collecting recyclable goods from the bins of the affluent.

Now the City of Johannesburg and Gauteng provincial government wants to invest in the informal recycling sector and move to regulate the industry in a way that can create sustainable jobs for its participants and help eliminate its numerous safety risks.

Between 80% and 90% of South Africa’s consumer plastic and paper waste is collected by informal waste pickers, according to the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. But participants complain they don’t benefit from the bulk of the industry’s profitability thanks to unscrupulous waste buyers and a lack of protection from government and the law.

Sifiso Gumbi is a former waste picker who later helped found Urban Surfers with co-founder John Cullinan two years ago. Together they hope to provide solutions that will help the waste industry to create as many jobs as possible in this sector.

According to Mvuselelo Mathebula, head of Waste Policy and Regulations and COJ, the metro is working with provincial government to empower waste pickers through a number of initiatives including, finding shelter for the homeless waste pickers and creating a central picking site.

The government officials were speaking at a recent event to launch a project where comparison site Hippo.co.za has partnered with a Gauteng-based waste pickers’ organisation, Urban Surfer to provide marginalised waste pickers sponsored trolleys, collection bags and protecive gear to help them gather recyclable waste in Sandton, Ferndale and other areas surrounding their communities.

“We hope to help the Urban Surfer team to achieve this goal by sponsoring safe and reliable equipment as well as clothing and accessories to their team of 50 informal reclaimers,” says Hippo CEO Bradley du Chenne.

“We’re investing in a CSR project by helping to change the narrative about informal reclaimers in the hopes of inspiring more corporates to help support this.”

The city also wants to bolster its roll-out of recycling bins in the suburbs so that more residents and businesses can have organised waste bins for pickers to operate easier and safer.

Also Read: Waste pickers vital to economy

“We want to ensure that they end up being part of the waste mainstream, especially through ‘separation at source’.As the Coj we want to register all the waste pickers within the city so we know how many there are and where they are. Once we have done that we want to provide protective clothing. Our target is that all waste pickers must be registered within the Coj, have protective clothing and they must get training.”

Provincial government also wants to arrange for municipalities to be able to pay a stipend to waste collectors.This is according to Palesa Mathibeli, Director for Pollution and Waste Mangement at the Gauteng Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (GDARD).

A heavy load to carry

Female waste pickers who spoke to The Citizen say that they face the risk of losing potentially lucrative picks on a daily basis, because they are heavy and the men can carry them better. The 50 new ergonomically designed trolleys provided by Hippo will be a relief to them, but more needs to be done.

From facing hostile threats from security guards and law-enforcement agencies, to the cut-throat competition they face on the streets, waste pickers in Johannesburg have grown accustomed to making a living despite being treated like a nuisance and like common criminals by members of society.

A 2020 study by the Department of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries and the Department of Science and Innovation found that the waste sector already contributes 1.6% to South Africa’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

But with inclusive growth strategies by the private and public sector, this industry could do more for its impoverished participants. The report found that waste picker integration can empower the sector to contribute to the country’s GDP while mainstreaming and ensuring inclusive growth.

Over the past few years, the waste and recycling sectors have been growing at an average annual rate of 23% with each informal reclaimer diverting an estimated 24 tons of packaging waste from our country’s landfills per year.

But without the help of such initiatives as that of Urban Surfers, life on the recycling hustle is tough on the men and women who bear the weight of a day’s worth of waste on their backs with little help from any formal organisation.

They sell to small and large players in the local industry, some of whom don’t always play fair with their vulnerable merchants.

A recent study of waste pickers working at nine landfill sites across South Africa found that 60% lived at landfill sites or in informal structures, the veld, or the bush.

Simnikiweh@citizen.co.za