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Minding the risks faced by informal waste collectors
Largely undocumented and unregulated, informal waste pickers in the Philippines who sort through open air dumpsites or travel around collecting waste from garbage bins or from the streets face intensified risks during periods of public health emergencies such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. While informal waste collectors contribute to the strengthening of the country’s still underdeveloped recycling industry by trading their salvaged trash for daily subsistence and enhancing the sourcing capacity of small and medium recycling centers or junk shops, they are also the most vulnerable.
Sorting through open air and unregulated dump sites often without the necessary personal protective equipment or formal training, informal waste collectors or pickers come into contact with various types of trash, including hazardous and possibly untreated waste, among them, improperly disposed of health care waste.
Under existing laws, hazardous and infectious medical waste (see illustration for guide) require treatment before being disposed in legally authorized disposal sites. This means that infectious medical waste should ideally be segregated, collected, and transported separately from other forms of health care waste to ensure they are not mixed up or combined.
But with poor oversight and weak regulatory systems in the country’s waste management across both national and local governments, untreated biohazardous medical waste are more often than not, disposed in dumpsites and even sanitary landfills with household and other types of waste.
While the United Nations Environmental Program recognizes informal waste collectors as the world’s biggest group of “invisible environmentalists” who contribute as much as 50% of total plastics recycled around the world, they are the most vulnerable under circumstances of improperly disposed biohazardous medical waste. Providing them proper personal protective equipment, training, and continuing education on waste handling can only do so much, assuming local authorities and national government agencies have a specific program for these largely informal workers.
Capacitating health facilities with the necessary level of awareness, skills, and equipment to manage and ideally, treat infectious medical waste at the source remains the best guard against risking the lives of informal waste pickers who often come from the poorest segments of the population.
The benefits of on-site medical waste treatment go beyond health care and even environmental protection.
Increasing confidence among informal waste collectors can capture the opportunities provided by a still infant recycling industry in the country. According to the World Bank, as of 2019 the Philippines has an 85% plastics recycling capacity gap. Ensuring a safer physical environment free from the risks of picking up infectious matter for waste collectors can definitely go a long way in closing this gap alongside formally organizing and establishing a responsive regulatory system for the informal waste sector.
With the increasing attractiveness of recycled-based commodities in the market, this means new and alternative sources of livelihood, income, and employment – opportunities that can only be captured once the safety and health of waste pickers are well protected.