John Chweya, a former child waste picker who now leads Kenya’s waste pickers’ association, is pushing for the rights of millions of informal recyclers to be enshrined in the upcoming UN global plastic pollution treaty. Chweya recalls his childhood scavenging on the Kachok dump in Kisumu, using a magnet to collect metal scraps for a pittance.
Today, as plastic waste has soared, waste pickers like Chweya have become the invisible backbone of recycling, collecting an estimated 60% of all plastic recycled worldwide, according to the UN. Yet they remain unrecognised, unprotected and vulnerable to disease and discrimination.
Chweya, representing 36,000 collectors in Kenya, will attend treaty negotiations in Paris this month. He insists the treaty must include provisions for healthcare, fair income and better working conditions for the world’s 20 million waste pickers.
Richard Gower of the NGO Tearfund, which supports Chweya, noted that the treaty is increasingly seen as a human issue, not just an environmental one. Chweya himself lost many childhood friends to accidents and illness on the dump, and he now carries their memory into the negotiation rooms.
