Disclaimer: Radio Workshop is produced for the ear and designed to be heard. If you are able, we strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes emotion and emphasis that’s not on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. The official record for Radio Workshop’s podcast stories is the audio.

Aphiwe: My name is Aphiwe Vilakazi, I’m 19 years old. I’m working here in Workshop

Lesedi: Aphiwe works at a shopping mall called The Workshop. It’s in Durban, a city along South Africa’s East coast. The mall is big. It has about 90 stores, but you won’t find Aphiwe working inside any of them. Her job is in a room most shoppers never get to see.

{sound of plastic box being broken}

Behind an unmarked door, Aphiwe sorts through all of the mall’s waste. She separates paper from plastic, cardboard from aluminium. Right now, she’s working her way through a mountain of cardboard boxes. Aphiwe grabs a box, tears the edges, flattens it, and tosses it in a pile.

Aphiwe: Um, taking the box, put it in the bundle.

Lesedi: The bundle is ready to be sold to a recycling center when it’s about five foot high.

[MUSIC]

That’s almost as tall as she is. Even though she just finished high school last year, Aphiwe is already the sole breadwinner of her family. She supports her two siblings and her elderly grandmother. Waste picking pays for her family’s food, medicine, and transport.

Aphiwe sees value in the trash that people so carelessly throw out.

I’m Lesedi Mogoatlhe, and this is Radio Workshop. Aphiwe is a waste picker. She’s one of about 20 million people around the world who collect, sort and sell recyclable materials. South Africa has over 50,000 waste pickers. They divert 25 million tons of recyclables away from the country’s landfills and towards the recycling industry.

They even sift through household bins before the city’s garbage trucks collect them. This extends the life of landfills, prevents the release of harmful emissions, and supports the waste economy. Waste pickers work, work, work, but the city doesn’t pay them. It’s an entirely informal industry that’s run by the workers themselves,

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Lesedi: We wanted to see how it all works, and so Aphiwe took us to meet the woman who taught her everything she knows. Her grandmother.

Mam Maria: My name is Maria Vilakazi. I’m staying at Inanda, Uh, I’m a waste picker.

Lesedi: Mam Maria is Aphiwe’s grandmother. They live in Inanda, a large township in Durban. At first, Mam Maria worked as a cleaner at a local hospital. To make some extra cash, she also collected recyclables on the street.

Mam Maria: It is nice to be a wastepicker ’cause you are working yourself. You’re not working for the boss.

Lesedi: But she soon realized that waste picking paid her more than her cleaning job, and so she resigned. Over the next 20 years, Mam Maria worked only as a waste picker.

[MUSIC]

She started on the street, going through bins for recyclables, and then one day, a manager at the workshop shopping mall asked her to sort through waste for the mall. They gave her a room filled with boxes and other recyclables.

Mam Maria’s granddaughter Aphiwe, who was just a young kid at the time, would join her at work on the weekends.

Mam Maria: She likes to go with me on Saturdays, and then I’m teaching her how to make a bundle.

Lesedi: Mam Maria taught Aphiwe how to make tiny bundles of cardboard, like baby bundles.

Mam Maria: I make it small, small, small, small. Like this.

Lesedi: After selling Aphiwe’s little bundles, Mam Maria would put the money in a piggy bank.

Mam Maria: The second time, I buy her shoes, I said, this is your money.

[MUSIC ENDS]

Lesedi: Mam Maria’s been taking care of Aphiwe and her two siblings, since their mother passed in 2013, raising them, putting them through school, all on her waste picker income.

Mam Maria: buying food, clothes. And transport to go to school. I’m doing all that. Yes, myself alone. Yeah. No father, no mother, nothing.

Lesedi: But it goes beyond her own family. Mam Maria even passed on her knowledge to other women in her community.

Mam Maria: I don’t, I don’t like to see someone is lying there. I say, please wake up, do this, and then you get money.

Lesedi: For two out of three people who become waste pickers, it’s their only source of income. It’s low pay for very important work. Waste pickers are part of a global campaign to achieve zero waste. The push to keep trash out of incinerators, landfills, and the ocean. Asiphile Khanyile leads the Zero Waste campaign for Groundwork, Friends of the Earth, South Africa, and she works closely with waste pickers.

Asiphile: They are actually the experts, so us. It’s about working with them to demonstrate zero waste, amplifying their voices, and making sure that they get access to decision-making spaces, and they are fighting the fight of environmental justice on the ground.

Lesedi: The goal, no waste at all or as close as possible. In South Africa, waste pickers are the country’s most effective recyclers. They recover up to 80% of the plastic packaging and paper that gets recycled.

Asiphile: That has been one of the most beautiful partnerships we’ve ever had in the zero based project because we are working with the people that are directly working with waste.

Lesedi: And for those people on the ground, their work as waste pickers comes with all sorts of challenges. In March this year, Mam Maria went to work, just another day, but the next morning when she woke up, something was terribly wrong.

Mam Maria: I couldn’t walk. Yes, I went to hospital. I sleep there one week. They said, they want to cut me? I say, no.

Lesedi: Mam Maria was diagnosed with diabetes. Her leg was badly infected and doctors wanted to amputate, but she refused. Since then, Mam Maria hasn’t been able to walk. That’s left Aphiwe in charge of taking care of the family

Aphiwe: um make a breakfast for my granny because she is, can’t work. Can’t walk, just can’t do anything.

She’s just stay in the bed.

Lesedi: Aphiwe struggled to explain in English how this makes her feel, so she switched to her mother tongue, Isizulu. We asked Asiphile from Groundwork to translate for us.

[Aphiwe in Isizulu]

Asiphile: I do get scared

because at home I am the oldest, and as I’m holding the space for Gogo, I always, I do think about what would happen to my siblings, my brother and sister if I was not working, because they will need, uh, money.

Lesedi: Waste pickers are an easy target for criminals. They mostly work alone at odd hours and earn cash from selling recyclables.

In her first week on the job, Aphiwe was robbed on her way home, she lost her phone, her ID and money, but the following week she was back at work.

[MUSIC]

She has no other choice, even though she’s still scared.

[MUSIC ENDS]

[AMBI]

At work, Aphiwe wears her granny’s old clothes. A green shirt, green apron, gloves. Mam Maria’s boots don’t fit, so Aphiwe wears her own shoes. Each week, she handles about 500 kilograms of waste. Waste that would’ve ended up clogging drains and filling landfills. Aphiwe sells what she collects to recycling centers.

She earns about 500 rand a week. That’s less than 30 US dollars. But there’s no fixed price. And so she negotiates. Asiphile from groundwork says, many waste pickers get ripped off.

Asiphile: So some buyers have favorable cost and some buyers don’t. And in some instances you find that waste pickers do a lot more than what they earning, and sometimes you find that they actually provide even a free service and they’re not paid for.

Lesedi: The work of waste pickers is essential in South Africa. They are the backbone of the recycling industry and they’re environmental champions, yet their work goes largely unnoticed and unappreciated. So what would happen if waste pickers stopped working?

Asiphile: Oh wow. That would be a problem. Um, we would see uncollected waste lying around.

Um, when it’s gonna rain, that’ll be even worse because waste does block the drains and as a result that increases, um, flooding, and I don’t wanna even mention the impact of flooding on its own. But also you would have the smell.

Aphiwe: This one is Puma box for the sneakers

Lesedi: Aphiwe picks up another box. Pauses, what was this? A shoebox? Headphones.

Aphiwe: Maybe it’s for the clothes.

Lesedi: Well, now it’s her next income.

[MUSIC]

She breaks the edges, flattens it, adds it to the pile. By keeping recyclables out of landfills, waste pickers help us do less harm. They also save the government money.

The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research says municipalities save between 300 to 750 million rand on landfill costs. That’s about 40 million US dollars. All thanks to waste pickers like Aphiwe.

[MUSIC ENDS]

[MUSIC]

This story was produced and reported by Mo Isu with production assistance from Naomi Grewan. This episode was edited by me Lesedi Mogoatlhe, with help from Sarah K Kramer and Dhashen Moodley. Special thanks to Asiphile Khanyile and Groundwork, Friends of the Earth, South Africa. Original music by Qhamani Sambu at Edible Audio in Cape Town. Sound Engineering by Mo Isu, Jo Jackson and Mike Rahfaldt.

Jo Jackson is our managing producer. Mike Rahfaldt is our executive producer. Vuyo Lutseke is our executive director. This episode and the work of Radio Workshop would not be possible without support from the. UMI fund. Special thanks to Hindenberg for supporting our projects across Africa with audio editing software.

We can only tell these stories because of your support. You can make a donation at radioworkshop.org.

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