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Magister Legum - LLM / The unemployment rate in South Africa is alarmingly high. In the year 2018, the unemployment rate was recorded at 27.2%. Many people are forced to do desperate, and even dangerous things in order to sustain themselves. This includes people going into landfills to collect recyclable materials to sell and look for a meal. Collecting and retailing recyclable waste has become an informal source of income for thousands of people in South Africa. Waste pickers are individuals whose survival largely depends on collecting, sorting and selling recyclable waste. Waste pickers are defined as people who “collect, sort and sell reusable and recyclable materials”. They embark on waste picking as a means of survival. Given the fact that informal waste management is not regulated by the government, waste pickers are left vulnerable to exploitation and hazardous working environments. Waste pickers are denied access to landfills by either private companies, where municipalities have outsourced this function, or by municipalities themselves. Depending on the management of the landfill, waste pickers could also potentially be faced with crime on landfills with gangsters robbing them of their recyclables and/or hard earned money.

Magister Artium - MA / The local economy of the City of Cape Town supported by formal economic activities that are carried out through modern production processes whose existence is officially recognized and benefits from the protection of the authorities, and the informal activities that exist outside official control and protection systems. There is a dynamic connection between actors in the formal sector and those in the informal sector, which is seen at the levels of production, distribution and consumption of goods and services. This research investigates the linkages between informal and formal resource recovery activities in Devon Valley Landfill Site in Stellenbosch and Bellville South Landfill Site in Bellville. The two landfill sites are at the margins on the city economy where the formal and informal sectors interact and at times collide. Notwithstanding the negative health effects associated with the informal waste collections and the fact that informal waste collectors are neglected by policy makers in many developing countries in general and in South Africa in particular, evidence from Southern Africa has shown that the informal sector fosters considerable social, environmental and economic benefits that should be preserved. Informal recyclers constitute the essential workforce of the recycling business. These recyclers have undertaken various commercial and environmental tasks as a survival strategy long before the state and private entities became interested in participating in this profitable business. Waste recycling in most developing countries is a response to the inability of the formal economy to absorb a growing urban population, and the value placed on recyclable materials in the globalized economy. The study explores the various linkages between the informal sector and formal sector in the recycling industry and it examines the activities of these people involved in informal sector activities at the bottom end of the commonly neglected waste recycling chain. It also examines how waste pickers have developed livelihoods based on resource recovery activities at Devon Valley Landfill Site and Bellville South Landfill Site. This thesis is the result of an extensive literature review and primary data collection using a mixed methods approach. Primary sources of information consulted include, waste pickers, dealers, buy-back centres and manufacturing companies. This thesis attempts to establish the respective correlation between urban poverty, informal waste collection, and the recycling industries. The findings reveal that informal recycling is intricately linked to the formal recycling sector with waste pickers selling their waste to merchants and recyclers.

Magister Public Health - MPH / Background: Waste picking is not a new phenomenon in South Africa and is becoming increasingly prevalent, with rising numbers of waste pickers operating on landfills and on the streets. Although waste pickers are recognised as making an important contribution to waste management systems in South Africa, they remain at the lowest level of the waste collection and disposal hierarchy. Operating on the fringes of the formal economy with low and generally erratic income, they have limited access to safe and nutritious food. Many waste pickers are therefore prone to micronutrient malnutrition and macronutrient malnutrition. Food insecurity is a constant threat. Few studies have been conducted on this vulnerable group of people, with relatively little known about their eating habits and the impact thereof on their health. The aim of this study was to assess the dietary intake, food (in)security and nutritional status of waste pickers in South Africa, with a specific focus on landfill waste pickers. Study population and design: This constitutes a secondary study which builds on an earlier (primary) study conducted among 409 landfill waste pickers on nine landfill sites in four provinces in South Africa. Data was obtained from a cross-sectional quantitative survey conducted during the primary study which assessed the food (in)security, anthropometric status and dietary intake of waste pickers. In this study, group discussions were also conducted with waste pickers to gain more insight into activities and conditions on the landfill sites.

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Global waste generation trends are increasing at an alarming rate. Low- and middle-income countries (or the ‘Global South’) bear an increasing proportion of this burden, as the amount of waste produced in these countries is expected to surge drastically in the coming years. Since cities in the Global South rarely have formal municipal recycling systems, recycling activities are typically performed by waste pickers who are precariously employed and sell their wares in unpredictable, unregulated markets. That is to say, this economic activity is an archetype of what is commonly referred to as that taking place in the ‘informal sector.’ Although waste pickers must often confront exclusionary policies and social marginalization, some countries such as Colombia have begun to recognize the social, economic, and environmental contributions of informal recycling activities and have introduced policies that support waste pickers by trying to improve their working conditions. Bogotá has been recognized internationally as an example of ‘best practice’ in terms of creating inclusive policies aimed towards improving the livelihoods of waste pickers. To this end, the Colombian government has introduced, in 2016, National Decree 596, which recognizes and remunerates waste picker organizations as official providers of municipal recycling services. Although this decree legitimizes these ‘third sector’ organizations and has important implications for ‘alternative’ models of service delivery, it has had contradictory effects: although it successfully recognizes the important role that waste pickers play in the waste management system, it also introduces barriers that impede the formalization of waste picker organizations. For example, the decree sets unattainable requirements for the recognition of waste picker organizations and does little to mitigate the vulnerability that waste pickers experience in the face of competition from large, private (often multinational) companies. Based on one month of fieldwork conducted in Bogotá from November 10th to December 10th, 2017, this thesis explores these contradictions and suggests that these barriers originate from the conflicting neoliberal and rights-based orientations of the 1991 Constitution.

A widespread phenomenon on dumpsites in the developing world, subsistence waste picking is also a common practice at the city-owned Coastal Park Landfill (CPL) in Muizenberg. Poor unemployed people from the townships of Capricorn, Vrygrond and Hillview, situated at the foot of the tip “skarrel for scrap” every day. The word skarreling is an Afrikaans term meaning to rummage or scrabble, scuttle or scurry. Thus, if one talks of “skarreling for scrap”, it generally refers to poor peo-ple trying to eke out a living by looking for recyclables in the waste that can be put to personal use or turned into money.In the two decades since the transition to democracy, South Africa and the City of Cape Town (CCT) have formulated a number of framework and subordinate policies which express their commitment to sustainable development (SD). SD aims to achieve a balance between its three components, econom-ic, environmental and social sustainability. Thus, SD is not only about increased economic efficiency and stability, while at the same time reducing pollution and handling natural resources more thought-fully; it is also about promoting social equity by reducing poverty and empowering the poor. This study is guided by the assumption that waste pickers in developing countries play an important part in recycling efforts, and that recycling in turn is an integral component of SD, which is the guid-ing principle of South African policy-making. In an ideal scenario – as implicitly promised by the policies on SD – the management of solid waste should pursue the economic and environmental goals of SD by promoting recycling and should be aligned with the goal of creating sustainable livelihoods.However, the reality in the CCT is a different one. Landfill skarreling in the CCT, and particularly at CPL, is accompanied by conflict and a criminalisation of the skarrelaars. The CCT decided to phase out landfill salvaging in 2008, and subsequently has put a lot of effort into keeping skarrelaars away from its landfills. The implications of this decision – job losses for poor people and a potential in-crease in crime – have not been thought through. There is thus a dysfunctional triangular relationship around waste recycling in the CCT, leading to tensions between (1) the City’s commitment to SD; (2) its approach towards recycling (as part of solid waste management) in policy and practice; and (3) the livelihoods of the poor in adjacent townships. In the CCT the goals of SD are undermined by the City’s recycling strategies, with adverse effects for the livelihoods of the people who live off skarrel-ing.There are several causes for this disjuncture between policy and reality. The first has to do with igno-rance on the side of the policymakers. They seem to be badly informed about the extent and nature of skarreling, perhaps assuming that this activity is performed only by a few people who need quick cash for drugs. The second cause can be attributed to the neoliberal macro-policies pursued in South Africa, as well as to the global competition between cities for investment. This neoliberal urbanism leads cities like Cape Town to re-imagine themselves as “world (-class) cities”, in which poor waste pickers are perceived as a disturbing factor. In the CCT, this goes hand in hand with an approach reminiscent of the apartheid mindset, which saw the need to control poor, black (and potentially unru-ly) people.The dissertation therefore focuses on the core themes of sustainable development, (urban) neoliberal-ism, and informality in combination with a case study of the informal waste pickers at the chosen landfill site. Writing from a political studies angle, this study is framed as a policy critique: it argues that the policies around SWM ignore South African realities, and that the SD policies and their im-plementation lack coherence. Moreover, the conflict between the skarrelaars and the CCT at the CPL is rooted in inadequate national and local legislation which does not acknowledge the role of informal waste pickers in SWM and aims at excluding rather than including them. If waste pickers were sup-ported in their recycling efforts in both policy and practice, this would be a win-win situation for the state/city (economic benefits and less crime), the skarrelaars (regular employment and incomes) and the environment (less waste buried on landfills).The case study is primarily designed as a qualitative study, but also includes quantitative elements as it attempts a first quantification of the extent and nature of skarreling at the CPL site, one of only three operating dumpsites in Cape Town. The aim on the one hand is to estimate the contribution of the skarrelaars to waste reduction (and therefore to sustainability) in the City, especially since the waste they collect is not buried on the landfill, thereby prolonging the operational life span of the landfill. The other aim is to assess the role of the skarrelaars as an economic factor in the township, in particular the question of how important the incomes generated from skarreling are for their individu-al livelihoods and for the community as a whole. / Magister Artium - MA