Scrap warrior One man's fight to help the world's waste pickers

After a childhood scavenging at a local dump, John Chweya is lobbying for workers' rights to be enshrined in a UN treaty

- Sandra Laville

As a child, John Chweya and his friends scrambled over the mountain of stinking waste at Kachok dump, using a magnet to pull out metal scraps and earn a living.

Over the years since, global companies such as Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Nestl é have increased plastic production by millions of metric tonnes, and plastic bottles have replaced metal as the source of income for those who pick through the garbage in Kisumu, the third largest city in Kenya.

Today in the plastic industry, it is the people who live and work on rubbish mountains in Africa and across the world who are the invisible backbone of plastic recycling and enable multinational companies to meet their targets to reduce its use.

According to the UN environmental assembly, 60% of the plastic recycled across the world is collected by waste pickers like Chweya. But they are ghost workers; unprotected and discriminated against. With no ability to access healthcare, they succumb to infections, lung diseases and cancer from toxic waste, inhaling smoke from burning plastic and scratching a living in terrible conditions.

“There were a lot of children my age at the dump when I started going there. Some of them were sleeping there, in makeshift houses they had built,” said Chweya. “Most of those friends of mine from the dump died, some were killed in accidents and some died from sickness. I remember all their names.”