ARO

Gaining recognition in an invisible trade

Mantoa Khoali, a 45-year-old single mother of one, is among 90,000 reclaimers (informal waste pickers) in South Africa who scavenge recyclable waste from garbage bins. Like many other reclaimers, she relies on a makeshift trolley to get around, carrying up to two bags of garbage.

South Africa faces an escalating waste management problem. The country generates around 107.7 million tonnes of waste annually, of which only 21% is diverted from landfills.

The reclaimers play a vital role in minimising waste that enters the environment, collecting around 80 to 90% of post-consumer packaging waste in South Africa. Yet, they face discrimination because informal waste picking is not an officially recognised profession.

“There are some residents who don’t understand what we do. They call us names and insult us when we [reclaimers] come to take waste from their bins. They think we are criminals.” says Khoali. Reclaimers, especially women, also sometimes face the threat of physical violence.

Getting fair compensation is also another challenge. In December, when recycling plants and businesses wind down for the holidays, the buying price for recyclables drops significantly, sometimes by more than half.

Uplifting reclaimers

The African Reclaimers Organisation (ARO), a non-profit organisation, was founded in 2018 to address the challenges reclaimers face. It provides operational facilities to help reclaimers sort and sell their recyclables at reasonable rates.

ARO also helps reclaimers better manage occupational risks. In the past, reclaimers had to rely on a makeshift base of operations under a highway overpass to sort the recyclables. Using ARO’s facilities, reclaimers can not only sort and manage their waste under safer conditions but also process larger volumes due to the bigger space provided.

To ease travel for reclaimers, ARO also provides them with sturdier trolleys.

Currently, ARO has over 6,000 registered reclaimers in its network. While it primarily operates in Johannesburg, with two sorting facilities in the metropolitan areas, ARO also has a sorting facility in the rural province of Mpumalanga, located in the North-East region of South Africa.

ARO helps households manage their waste more efficiently so that there are more recyclables to collect.

“In South Africa, municipalities collect recyclable waste from households about once a week, but they do not separate waste at the collection point; residents have to do it themselves,” says Noluthando Tutani, Programme Manager at ARO.

“The reclaimers only have a small window to collect recyclable waste at households before the scheduled waste collection trucks arrive to empty the bins,” she says.

To address this problem, ARO organised community engagement sessions for residents to educate them about separating their waste at source. It also incentivised residents by providing them with reusable bags to deposit their recyclables.

From the margins to the mainstream

“South Africa has a very mature recycling industry, but it also faces many difficult challenges with waste management due to the lack of resources and bureaucratic inefficiencies,” says Tinashe Machiridza, who oversees the project as Senior Advisor of Africa Programmes at the Alliance.

Recognising ARO’s ambitious goals and hurdles, the Alliance partnered with the organisation to provide operational and funding support. This included the funding of two collection trucks and three balers to increase plastic waste collection. “With these resources, we found that the reclaimers can transport an additional 500 kilogrammes of waste per day,” says Tutani.

The Alliance also helped ARO develop a safer working environment by implementing health and safety rules and by providing personal protective equipment. The Alliance also helped ARO develop a safer working environment by implementing health and safety rules and by providing personal protective equipment.

In addition, Alliance enabled ARO to expand its initiatives by helping it to develop working relationships with municipalities and producer responsibility organisations (PROs).

PROs are established by waste-generating companies to help meet Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) regulations. South Africa introduced EPR regulations in 2021, requiring producers to take full responsibility for their products’ lifecycle—including post-consumer waste—while advancing circular economy goals and sustainable waste management.

“PROs are key stakeholders in promoting circularity as they have been tasked to develop collection and recycling infrastructure and pay collection service fees to reclaimers registered in the South African Waste Picker Registration System (SAWPRS),” says Machiridza.

SAWPRS issues identification cards to registered reclaimers, which formally recognises them as waste pickers within the national waste management framework. The PROs are expected to pay SAWPRS-registered reclaimers 15 cents for every kilogram of recyclables they sell. With support from the Alliance and the World Bank, ARO registered 3,000 of its reclaimers with SAWPRS.

Elevating livelihoods

Through the Alliance’s support, ARO has been able to scale and strengthen its waste management operations and improve the livelihoods of the reclaimers. Machiridza says that ARO’s success is driving a just transition for the reclaimers and offers a model that can be potentially replicated nationwide—and even across the continent.

“Thanks to the Alliance, the reclaimers are bringing in larger volumes of waste and waste that is of higher value. Through the reclaimers’ work and ARO’s efforts in encouraging residents to sort their waste, we diverted 14,500 tonnes of waste in 2024,” says Tutani.

She adds that the Alliance’s support has also enabled ARO to buy waste from reclaimers at prices above the prevailing market rates during the downturn in December.

Tutani acknowledges that more can still be done—for instance, stronger legislation to empower informal waste pickers and better enforcement of EPR schemes. ARO is also seeking to reach more communities and launch more sorting facilities to help more reclaimers.

For reclaimers like Khoali, there is much to feel optimistic about. She is now more confident when approaching residents. “By wearing the ARO uniform, I feel more comfortable than before when I’m at work. It gives you dignity,” she says.

Tutani has observed that the residents are now more welcoming to reclaimers.

“Some provide drinks and water to reclaimers. A few even allow reclaimers to use the toilets in their houses,” she says. “Reclaimers also no longer have to compete with the collection trucks because the residents would have already sorted the waste beforehand.”

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