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Ethnographic insights into people's working lives can help us envision social policy to build dignified workspaces. This article explores the interlinkages between work and social protection, by drawing attention to two dimensions of pheriwale's everyday working lives: first, how they relate to their work, and second, how they are situated within the Indian welfare context. Pheriwale are a group of traders in Delhi, India, who collect and sell secondhand/used-clothes. Like much of the Indian workforce, pheriwale's work is classified as 'informal', since they remain outside social security tied to formal employment, they largely rely on irregular flow of income and primarily belong to the lower-caste groups. Low-income groups in India are entitled to various welfare schemes; however, accessing and receiving these welfare benefits may not always be consistent or dependable. In Delhi, pheriwale have been trading used/secondhand clothes for almost a century and they are one of the visibly women-dominated trading groups in the city. This article builds on four months of qualitative fieldwork at pheriwale's marketplace in West Delhi, between 2017 and 2019. By following pheriwale's work experiences through the conceptual lens of relational autonomy, this study highlights two key findings. First, due to the nature of self-employment, pheriwale shared how they have relative control of time and energy in their working routines. Second, in the face of an unreliable welfare state, pheriwale rely on building familial means of social protection to sustain lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article presents a study on the working conditions and perception of informal recyclers in the city of Cali. The results show precarious working conditions, occupational hazards, and health problems that affect the quality of life of the workers. Despite the difficulties, recyclers have a high perception of the importance of their work and its impact on the environment. It is concluded that interventions are needed to reduce health risks and perceived socio-economic inequities. The study highlights the importance of strengthening public policies to reduce the social and economic gap that affects this population. [Extracted from the article]

Waste electrical and electronic equipment has become a thing of great challenge in the city of Port Harcourt, Nigeria, and globally. Informal recyclers appear to be the key actors in this recycling sector in the location, but they lack the right skills and knowledge. This study sheds light on the consequences of informal recycling in the mobile telephone network phone village at Rumukurushi (a location believed to accommodate about 30 informal recyclers) in Port Harcourt. The level of education, health, and safety awareness of the informal recyclers, their willingness to obey government guidelines, and their knowledge of waste electrical and electronic equipment management were investigated. Data collection was achieved with the help of questionnaires and the analysis was done graphically. The outcome of the questionnaires administered to twenty-five (25) participants shows that the informal recyclers are more conversant with their primitive style of practice. They lack knowledge and awareness on waste electrical and electronic equipment management best practices. Other findings include the informal recyclers' lack of awareness on the use of personal protective equipment and the application of health and safety in the discharge of their duties. They are willing to obey government guidelines on waste electrical and electronic equipment management. Informal recyclers are willing to quit other waste electrical and electronic equipment management processes if they can be paid by the government for gathering them. The study recommends that the activities of the informal recyclers should be restricted to gathering only. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing adoption rate of photovoltaic power generation shows that renewable energies have a bright future. Yet, this could be overshadowed by the unintended consequence of increased generation of Waste of Electric and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) at the installations’ End-of-Life (EoL) stage. As countries find themselves dealing with the increasing WEEE issue, they may adopt different practices which, if wrongly implemented, could potentially backfire, creating additional issues especially among vulnerable social groups. This work proposes improving the WEEE management system by including the Informal Recyclers in the equation, benefitting social groups and material recovery through by delivering materials along different streams in the closed-loop supply chain. The proposed model intends to support the circular economy approach on waste management systems.

The increasing adoption rate of photovoltaic power generation shows that renewable energies have a bright future. Yet, this could be overshadowed by the unintended consequence of increased generation of Waste of Electric and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) at the installations' End-of-Life (EoL) stage. As countries find themselves dealing with the increasing WEEE issue, they may adopt different practices which, if wrongly implemented, could potentially backfire, creating additional issues especially among vulnerable social groups. This work proposes improving the WEEE management system by including the Informal Recyclers in the equation, benefitting social groups and material recovery through by delivering materials along different streams in the closed-loop supply chain. The proposed model intends to support the circular economy approach on waste management systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the entrepreneurial opportunities and value-adding activities of buy-back centres in the recycling industry. Using Porter's firm-level value chain framework as theoretical framework for this analysis, a concurrent mixed method design was used to collect information from 67 buy-back centres across South Africa by means of face-to-face interviews, accompanied with a questionnaire with open-ended and close-ended questions. Buy-back centres' competitive advantage is that they have the facilities to add value to the recyclables according to the recycling industry's standards and specifications. To be viable, they need to attract large and sustainable volumes of recyclables, which often poses a challenge. Increased volumes of recyclables can translate into more jobs and income earning opportunities at all hierarchical levels in the recycling industry. A recycling model that increases the volumes of recyclables recovered by buy-back centres through informal sector activities is proposed. Such a model should facilitate changing citizen behaviour and implementation of, among others, responsible separation at source programmes to increase the volumes of cleaner recyclables. Increased supplies of recyclables should, however, be accompanied by an increase in the demand for products made from recyclables, to absorb the increased supply. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the management of e-waste, mobility of e-scrappers plays a pivotal role, especially in e-waste acquisition and sales of extracted materials. This research examines the relationship between e-scrappers and the locations of their work by analysing the influence of environmental and social factors on their mobility behaviour in Nigeria. A qualitative analysis of video material collected from 29 male e-scrappers in Nigeria between 2014 and 2015 reveals that e-waste has inherent properties that intermittently mobilise e-scrappers to search for recyclable and valuable electronic trash. Applying the new mobilities paradigm and the new materialism theory, we present that e-scrappers' mobility occurs within an interdependent network of connections. An assemblage of things consisting of workspace, social network, poor infrastructure, and weather conditions both produce and interrupt mobility among e-scrappers. As vibrant material, e-waste is capable of eliciting reactions from both organic and inorganic organisms. We conclude by arguing that the mobility of e-scrappers strongly determines the quality of extracts and the channel by which valuable extracts are sold. Therefore, mobility is one of the keys elements of successful e-waste management in Nigeria, providing economic stability and social recognition for e-scrappers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The landfill areas of Tondo and Payatas located at the outskirts of Metro Manila are used for the dumping and dismantling of e-waste in the Philippines. The dismantling of e-waste by informal recyclers causes the leaching out of harmful substances such as heavy metals thereby contaminating the environment and the human population living in close proximity to e-waste landfills. This study was done to assess the contamination status by measuring the heavy metals in the hair of informal recyclers compared to heavy metal levels in the control group. Hair samples were collected and analysed using atomic absorption spectroscopy. Ten heavy metals were considered including essential minerals, Zn, Mg, K, Fe, Mn as well as Cd, Cu, Cr, Pb and Ni (toxic metals related to e-waste). The preliminary investigations establish the presence of heavy metals in the hair samples of e-waste recyclers, which confirms the absorption of heavy metals from e-waste into the body. The concentrations of metals (copper, lead and potassium) were significantly higher in the hair samples of the informal recyclers than the control group. Pb was significantly higher than the permissible limits in recyclers from the Payatas dumpsite and Cu, Ni and Cd were significantly higher than the permissible limits in recyclers from the Tondo dumpsite. The results prove that human scalp hair can be used as biomarker to assess the extent of heavy metal exposure to informal recyclers engaged in e-waste recycling activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inclusive recycling is the inspiring slogan of a project relying on a cross-sector (public–private–civil society) partnership implemented in Latin America with the objective to improve the socioeconomic conditions of recyclers. Through a qualitative study in Santiago de Chile, this paper seeks to understand how inclusive inclusive recycling is, by assessing how organised recyclers perceive the goals, the process, and the outcomes of this project. The main findings converge in observing a general low inclusion of recyclers, but they also enable to decompose the notion of inclusion into three dimensions: “inclusive goals” refers to the extent to which the goals of the recyclers are taken into account when designing the collaboration project; “inclusive process” refers to the extent to which recyclers are involved in the process of implementing the project; and “inclusive outcomes” refers to the capacity of the partnership to acknowledge the achievements of recyclers organisations before (and during) the project and to take into account the ongoing local dynamics when evaluating the project. These findings contribute to better understand the position and challenges of recyclers in this type of partnership and more generally to shed light on the potential power imbalance in waste management cross-sector partnerships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses upon informal e-waste recyclers who subsidise the environmental costs of Bangalore’s information technology boom. It illustrates how improvement schemes devised by development agencies, to make Bangalore’s e-waste disposal practices more sustainable, reproduced the effects of bourgeois environmentalism and effectively cast off informal recyclers from having a substantial role in the city’s emerging regime of e-waste management. Being cast out and rendered superfluous has been a deeply degrading experience for Bangalore’s informal recyclers. In order to foreground this experience I draw upon the notion of abjection and show how informal recyclers are constituted as abject residents who must be confined to collecting and processing waste from the most marginal frontiers of the city’s e-waste circuits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Apocalyptic and millennial rhetoric is recycled in countless contemporary literary and cinematic works and is central in versions of progressive political critique. The first part of this essay describes Cormac McCarthy’s The Road as a dystopian allegory mired in Judeo-Christian temporality and which, as a consequence, promotes a sentimental version of human salvation. The second considers the ways in which analogous renditions of catastrophism permeate (new) new left social and political critique. It argues that apocalyptic imagery and discursive structures stunt analysis by indulging simplistic patterns of history and event. The final section of the essay documents a project by Johannesburg-based artist, Jacki McInnes, and the photographer, John Hodgkiss, concerning the lives of the city’s informal recyclers. Their daily journeys are presented in (discursive and visual) counterpoint to the epic southward trek of the father and son in The Road. “Recycling” is presented as a trope of a contrary temporality, which suggests some of the ways in which apocalyptic logic is too teleological to capture the complexities of the lived realities of late-capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The contribution of recyclers to the environment and the local economy is not recognized and they are not remunerated for the service they provide to the city. It is well known that informal collection contributes to the recycling of resources in a positive way, but it is also associated with several environmental, health, and social problems. In Colombia, these recyclers work informally. In 2016, Decree 596 was issued, which regulates the utilization of the public cleaning service and the transitory regime for the formalization of informal recyclers. The objective of this work is to evaluate the social and technical impact of recycling in the city of Bogotá three years after the regulations were issued. A study was carried out in order to study how recyclers have been affected by the new regulations after three years of validity as well as understand their perceptions of the evolution of recycling in the city. The study consisted of a series of surveys of recyclers from a statistical sample with 0.05 error that applied a mixed approach. Qualitative and quantitative analysis were included. This analysis was done in order to mix statistical results with deep analysis. The survey indicated that a low percentage of users (good 28%) performed good processes of separation at the source, which lowers the recovery of materials and prevents the potential use of many others. Likewise, it was evidenced that for a material to be sold or commercialized it depends significantly on the separation at the source. In addition, according to the perception of the respondents, society tends to discriminate against them, which leads to the conclusion that discrimination still exists between both the government and society. Finally, the current legislation has not been effective in its implementation and court declarations regarding recyclers as people with inherent rights have not yet been applied in Colombia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]