The "informal waste sector" refers to individuals or small and micro-enterprises that participate in waste management without being officially registered or formally tasked with providing waste management services. This sector plays a critical and indispensable role in managing waste, particularly in urban areas like Kathmandu Valley, where municipal systems are often overwhelmed.
Key characteristics and roles of the informal waste sector include:
- Job Creation and Economic Activity: It provides job opportunities and economic activities to a large number of people, including low-educated or unskilled laborers, and helps many families survive. Many informal waste workers are poor and marginalized, including rural-urban migrants, who rely on waste picking for income and survival.
- Recycling and Resource Recovery: Informal waste workers collect or help recover high recyclable materials from various sources like households, garbage bins, streets, dumps, transfer stations, landfill sites, and scrap centers. They are often the primary means of recycling in low-income countries. This sector is responsible for treating about 15% of household waste in Nepal and diverting significant amounts of plastics, metals, and paper from landfills. This contributes to a circular economy and reduces greenhouse gas emissions.
- Categories of Informal Waste Workers: The sector is not homogenous but organized hierarchically. Common terms used to describe individuals within this sector include:
- Waste Pickers (also known as scavengers, rag-pickers, salvagers, reclaimers, or IWWs). They are at the bottom of the hierarchy and manually segregate and clean recyclables. They collect dry wastes like paper, plastic, metal, and glass from various public and informal disposal points.
- Itinerant Waste Buyers (IWBs), commonly called "Feriya" or "Kabadiwala" in Nepal. These individuals purchase specific dry recyclables directly from households and commercial establishments through door-to-door collection. Their collected materials are generally of better quality and market value. They are often of Indian origin or from the Terai region of Nepal.
- Small, Medium, and Large Scale Scrap Dealers ("Kawad"): These dealers buy recyclables from waste pickers and itinerant buyers, further segregate them, and sell them to larger dealers or directly to recycling industries.
- Middlemen: Facilitate the (often illegal) transportation of recyclables, typically from Nepal to recycling industries in India.
- Recycling and Manufacturing Industries (in Nepal and India): These industries transform recyclables into end-products, with a significant portion going to India due to limited capacity in Nepal.
- Operational Aspects: Informal waste activities have been ongoing for over 50 years in Nepal. They function largely outside legal and institutional frameworks, often in challenging and unsafe conditions without proper safety measures or formal employment rights. They may process waste within residential areas, which can appear messy.
- Relationship with Formal System: The informal waste sector often runs parallel to municipal waste services and fills gaps where local governments or formal companies cannot provide services sustainably or cost-effectively. Their contributions are largely unrecognized in official statistics and policies, leading to neglect and lack of support from authorities. There is often a sense of mistrust between informal operators and local governments, as the latter are perceived as being primarily interested in levying taxes and creating bureaucratic hurdles.
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