What Role Do Informal Actors Play in Waste Management?

Informal actors play a crucial and often unacknowledged role in Kathmandu's waste management system, particularly in resource recovery and recycling.

• Primary Recyclers and Resource Recovery: The informal sector is the core to recycling of solid waste in the city, as formal waste segregation and recycling activities by the municipality are limited. They are responsible for collecting, sorting, and recovering valuable recyclable materials such as plastics, metals, and paper.
• Significant Contribution to Waste Diversion: Estimates suggest that informal waste pickers handle a substantial portion of the city's waste, diverting it from landfills. They are responsible for treating 15% of household waste and recovering 25-30% of recyclables from total solid waste in Kathmandu Valley. For example, a 2019 study found that waste pickers recovered more than 10 tons of plastic waste per day in Kathmandu.
• Economic Value and Circular Economy: Their activities create a circular economy for discarded materials, providing raw materials to recycling industries in Nepal and India. The economic value of materials recovered by the informal sector in Kathmandu Valley was estimated at USD 18 million in 2017. This also saves the national economy significant money (estimated at NPR 371 million annually in 2003) by reducing the amount of waste sent to landfills.
• Gap Filling in Municipal Services: They fill critical gaps left by inadequate municipal services, especially in areas where formal waste collection is poor or non-existent. They have been operating in Nepal for more than 50 years and have helped many families survive by providing job opportunities to low-educated or unskilled labor.
• Promoting Waste Segregation: Itinerant waste buyers (IWBs) play a role in changing household behavior towards waste segregation, as they purchase dry recyclables directly from households.
• Prolonging Landfill Life and Environmental Benefits: By reducing the volume of waste sent to landfills, the informal sector helps prolong the lifespan of landfill sites like Sisdole and contributes to lessening environmental impact, including reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
• Support System for Industries: They serve as a crucial supply chain for recycling and manufacturing industries, particularly for materials like plastics, metals, paper, and glass, often providing them at a lower cost than nascent resources.
• Everyday Functioning of Waste System: They are an integral part of the daily waste flow, from door-to-door collection to segregation at transfer stations and landfill sites, and the subsequent sale to scrap dealers and recycling industries. The informal waste recycling sector is highly organized in its sorting and recovery activities, operating parallel to the formal system.