Valuing waste and value of waste: Contestations and collaborations between waste pickers and producers

Material recovery from waste does not only rely on ethics of sustainable recycling or circular economy. Waste management is highly labour intensive and the types of materials recovered are determined by their supply and demand, and negotiations on their prices. While producers are considered responsible for the full life cycle of the product, much of the global solid waste management is done by informal recyclers who collect, sort and facilitate the transportation of massive amounts of end-of-life materials. Recent studies show that producers must cooperate with waste pickers to devise effective means of material recovery on a global scale. Waste pickers organisations and environmental civil society actors have been demanding the producers to facilitate the recovery of materials that have low market value so they do not end up in landfills and pollute the environment. This project examines the social, ecological and economic valuations of waste that emerge in the mediations between producers and waste pickers. Actor network analysis will be employed to examine how logics of valuations regarding waste are negotiated among the various actors in the supply chain. The main methodological tools are document analysis and qualitative interviews with two key actors: waste pickers organisations who collaborate with producers and, civil society organisations who work with producers and waste pickers.

This project is funded by Veteskapsrådet