Solid waste management: How can private, public and informal collaborate for mutual benefit?

Technology hardware companies are — or should be — concerned about e-waste. The same goes for consumer goods brands and packaging waste. Likewise, apparel companies and textile waste. Our research into solid waste management in the informal sector indicates that these verticals are mirrored by the informal sector: where there is a concentration of e-waste , circumstances mean waste pickers make it their focus, however dangerous and damaging to their health.?

Yet regardless of the sector, end-of-life waste from linear consumer systems is a major pollution concern. In the Global South, informal waste pickers collect between 50 and 100% of cities’ waste. They are shouldering the bulk of waste collection, sorting and recycling work , sometimes alongside public authorities and private companies. But, dangerous and detrimental to waste pickers’ health as it is, this work is far from receiving the recognition, compensation and labour protections it needs.

Our team sees a need to look deeper into solid waste management per vertical, from tech to textiles, and into how the informal sector’s expertise and efficacy can be valued by private and public entities. Building on previous work with informal waste workers (such as co-creating service models in the sanitation space for SC Johnson and designing incentive schemes for Mr. Green Africa), led by our Paris team, we developed our knowledge and research methodology on solid waste management for a recent project with C40 Cities ’ Inclusive Climate Action program. The resulting report provided city authorities in Lagos, Nigeria, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and Accra, Ghana with analysis and recommendations for city-led actions to make waste management value chains more inclusive, green and socially just. Specific focus was placed on vulnerable populations within the informal sector in each city, including women and migrants.?

As solid waste management is a challenge common to these cities (and many others), C40 partnered with us to provide these public authorities with insight on how to improve working conditions and worker representation, and drive more equitably just and sustainable waste management systems. Below, we unpack how our team was able to identify quickly achievable solutions and mutual incentives in complex, data-poor landscapes. We also share our take on the main challenges still unsolved. These include the vast financial losses cities face without inclusive waste management value chains and tech’s potential to facilitate the logistics of urban solid waste management.??

Unpacking our methodology

Bridging the gaps to identify achievable solutions

Informal waste pickers’ work generates economic, environmental, health and social value . While some cities we studied are engaging with the informal waste sector (Accra and Rio de Janeiro are strong examples), there remains a challenging but necessary gap to bridge. Private companies have a duty to monitor the pollution caused by their outputs’ end-of-life. Public authorities need to keep cities clean and all residents safe, alongside overseeing selective waste collection and recycling. Informal waste workers need recognition of their work (in a professional sense) and of their environmental role, as well as support from both private and public entities. Furthermore, informal workers possess significant knowledge of exactly how to achieve the waste management outcomes that both public and private entities want.?

To provide the selected cities with reality-based, achievable and inclusive waste management recommendations, we needed all stages of the value chain involved from the start. We had the capacity and approach required to speak with city public authorities, waste picker associations and cooperatives, and private companies. Creating connections where previously there were none, and fulfilling a translator’s role for both language and interests across complex stakeholder ecosystems. This positioned us to spot opportunities to shape solutions benefitting all actors, most importantly informal waste workers, while maintaining keen awareness of each city’s existing private-public waste management agreements.?

Identifying the right incentives across private, public and informal

In Accra, Rio de Janeiro and Lagos, we spoke in depth with the city authorities to understand the waste management situation at every stage of the value chain, including the roles of the private and public sectors and their priorities. We held interviews with local waste recycling organisations and local waste collectors and pickers to understand their reality, needs and aspirations. We also spoke with local organisations and NGOs, and academics working across the solid waste management value chain.?

Mutual communication and capacity-building between the informal, public and private sectors emerged as key themes. The informal sector would benefit from and work more effectively with other parts of the waste system with:

• Tools and support to self-organise and coordinate with city authorities and private waste companies
• Improved infrastructure and security conditions
• Waste management contracts and concessions?
• New compensation and employment models

While incentive design wasn’t the focus of our work with C40, we have previously worked with Nairobi-based recycling company Mr. Green Africa to create meaningful incentives for informal waste workers, including equipment, training (“street MBAs”) and insurance.?

Making intelligent recommendations in under-explored fields

Our experience working with and creating connections for the informal sector guided us in designing an appropriate methodology, focused on qualitative, primary data from a broad range of local actors. Under-explored fields are where we work best : lack of data was a consistent theme in our C40 research, so we responded by mapping from scratch, working both top-down and bottom-up.?

The term “informal economy” was coined by anthropologist Keith Hart in 1973, based on ethnographic work in Accra, Ghana since the 1960s. While by definition there is less data available and the informal economy remains under-represented and under-explored compared to, for instance, the tech and startup sectors, there are colleagues, researchers and actors building a movement of not just solidarity but strategic inclusion. Recognising the risk of romanticising, we are proud to play a small part in challenging the mental model of informality as something to fix, as part of the problem, and rather seeing it as a critical part of the system and a key partner steeped in agility, creativity and pragmatism, albeit with areas for improvement.

In Lagos, for example, we shaped an independent understanding of the (in)formal waste management system and value chain. We mapped flow and connection diagrams, identified actors at each stage, investigated waste types and tonnage, and mapped working waste pit sites. This shed light on the cities’ waste management reality, painting an informative picture for its public authority, opening up eyes and creating conversations. This was key to C40’s aim: raising awareness of the equity and inclusion barriers along waste management systems with city leaders, and the opportunities to scale up sustainable waste management mechanisms that are inclusive and socially just.?

What main challenges remain unsolved?

The informal sector is shouldering public/private environmental burdens.

The environmental role of informal waste workers is undervalued; either ignored or underestimated by most. Without the informal sector, the waste systems, including recycling, in the cities we researched for our work with C40 would not be able to fulfil even their basic function. Those involved in this research are part of a growing movement to change that.

Cities lose out financially without an inclusive waste management value chain.

Informal sector recycling has a significant financial value that is often under-considered. Informal waste workers’ diversion of waste flows allows municipalities to save 15-20% of their annual solid waste management budget . Given cities often spend 20-50% of municipal budgets on waste management, this represents major public finance savings.?

There’s no need to formalise the informal.?

Often with good intentions, public and private bodies see informality as something to be formalised. We see it differently: we should not be trying to “fix” informality. What informal workers want is the necessary addition of safer, more secure and respectful working conditions, which does not require formalisation. These additions must be adapted to the reality of informal workers: variable levels of education, numeracy and literacy; dynamic risk mitigation across various communities; working multiple jobs with changeable hours; often limited bank access, official papers or official addresses.?

That said, for city authorities (like corporate actors) to engage, co-create, measure and improve the value creation of informal workers often requires registration, communication and working with representative voices, all of which are steps towards ‘formalisation’. At Archipel&Co, we always endeavour to clarify the value of, and power imbalances inherent in, progressive organisation and formalisation, and ensure agency and options for the informal partners.

The informal sector is uniquely capable of doing what it already does. Waste pickers and city staff need to be equally recognised as experts in their fields. The issue is that neither knows how the other works, and identifying mutually beneficial arrangements and incentives requires tactful mediating. Powerful actors have an opportunity to learn from the under-sung force of the informal sector, and vice versa, to find fertile common ground.?

Cooperatives and associations are key, but not the only option.

We found city authorities were highly interested in supporting waste pickers’ cooperatives, seemingly aiming to prioritise this in efforts to shape inclusive waste management value chains. As cooperatives of informal waste pickers have legal entity status, they are currently the best structure that exists to link the informal and formal sectors. Their legal status also makes them a relatively straightforward structure for public and private authorities to work with: cities pay waste management cooperatives for their work, and cooperatives consist of informal or semi-formal workers.?

Cooperatives have our full support. At the same time, we want to highlight that bringing more informal workers into them shouldn’t become cities’ sole focus for inclusive waste management. Flexibility is needed in terms of the structures with which public and private sectors can and want to work. There are many other productive, innovative angles to consider, opening routes to empower, secure, value and support the informal sector in its effective work.?

Waste management logistics need more attention. Is tech a solution?

Logistical support is sorely needed in the waste management value chain. If waste pickers simply have a place or small vehicle to store the waste they collect, they can gather more before selling each time. Trickled through, this change would streamline value chain processes end to end.

We see potential in the crossover between apps, technology and the informal sector. Archipel&Co has built platforms for communication, measurement and incentivisation. Considered design and appropriate technology (voice, SMS chatbots, shared interfaces, etc.) are key to making this work. Tech can facilitate the logistics of moving waste around cities, particularly out of less accessible areas where it rapidly accumulates. Improving measurement, forecasting and route mapping, the combination of digital and analogue collaboration with informal waste pickers can improve coordination and collaboration between formal and informal waste workers.?

The city of Lagos, for example, has created an earn-as-you-waste app, Pakam , offering financial incentives for households to separate waste and have it collected. An integrated wallet takes care of payment, while the waste collection is carried out by semi-formal and formal actors. However, Pakam is also a potentially useful example to build from for crossover strategies involving informal waste pickers.

There are unique design considerations when creating tech solutions that need to take into account obvious issues like identity, security, privacy, literacy and numeracy, but also take into account the reality of the digital divide: devices will be several generations old with damaged screens and cameras, or access may be achieved by sharing a device between friends and family. These are not insurmountable challenges, but they, and many like them, are critical elements with which to design.

Inclusive, green and socially just urban waste management: 3 thoughts to take forward

1. Reports are the start, action is the method, impact is the goal We don’t want our research to stay on paper. We invite cities and other actors to take action on shaping inclusive waste management value chains, recognising and valuing informal sector workers. Mutually beneficial collaborations are possible with open communication and thinking. We are ready to have more of the tactful conversations with complex stakeholder ecosystems that we carried out for this research, identifying ways forward even with scarce data.?
2. Seeking partners with expertise in solid waste management? Our global team is driven to share its knowledge with actors working in, or adjacent to, this area, from private FMCG and waste companies to international NGOs and impact funds.
3. E-waste, packaging waste, textile waste, traceability of recycled materials: Are you working on it? If you’re in one of these verticals and looking at end-of-life waste management solutions, we’re keen to learn more about how you’re working with the informal sector — and ready to help improve it. Let’s talk!