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Making a living off the dump

Themba is in his 30s and is a waste reclaimer living in Diepsloot. He travels through the settlement with his wooden cart and large bags, searching the dumpsites for cardboard, paper, plastic and metal. Glass bottles, he says, are not worth collecting “because you need to collect tonnes of it to get little money”. Every day, Themba takes the material he collects back to his shack, where he puts them into his storeroom. He sorts these materials and takes them to the buy-back centre once a month to sell them.

Themba says he makes up to R7 000 per month through recycling. When he needs a little bit of cash during the month, he takes a few items he finds to the local middlemen that live on the dumpsite, who give him money for it.

Themba does not belong to an association of waste reclaimers but rather works independently. “No, I am not a member and I don’t know about such groups,” he says. “But I am too busy to attend meetings and those kind of things anyway, so I don’t want to be a member.” He laughs off the idea that the municipality or industry can assist waste reclaimers or reward them for the work they do to divert recyclables from landfill.

Themba’s work on the illegal dumpsites shows how they can be a resource and livelihood to people like him, as well as other community members. At the dumpsite where he stands, children pick up objects that other people have discarded; a woman rescues a wooden board she finds on the dump, maybe to patch up her shack. Once Themba has finished his work on the site, he wheels his cart up to the spot where the middlemen are sitting and sells a few high value finds in return for cash. How might people still have access to other people’s discarded items, for a livelihood or other reasons, without this polluting the environment or inviting rats and flies?

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Published: 16 July 2023

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