So why am I so interested in rag picking?

What ho!

With less than a week to go before I jet off to Delhi, in this post I will try to explain why I am so interested in the issue of rag picking. I’ll try to keep this post shorter than the last one and so I will, without going into too much detail, just mention some of the topics that are related to rag picking and that I think make rag picking such an interesting phenomenon. Hopefully I will find some time in the future to add some posts more specifically dealing with these issues.

Anyhow, why is it that I think that rag picking is so interesting? When I was first reflecting about this post and the best way to briefly describe what rag picking signifies to me, one word kept popping up in my mind: “CONTRAST”.

The world in which we live is rapidly urbanising. More and more people migrate to the world’s cities and soon, more that half of the world’s population will be living in urban areas. As a consequence most cities are growing immensely fast… and in any direction. Skyscrapers are getting higher and higher, land is reclaimed from the sea, and in some cases, traditional rural settlements are literally consumed by cities. When that happens, people who have for generations been farmers and fishermen (and women) no longer have to migrate to the city. The city comes to them.

Our growing cities are very often portrayed in terms of their wealth, culture, and architecture. And it is true that, some urbanites have become increasingly wealthy and can afford to live in one of the many redevelopments, or in one of the posher gated and privately supervised areas. Yes, some can even afford one of the luxurious penthouses with a stunning view over the most glamorous city-districts. Unfortunately however, this is only one side of the coin. In fact the cities’ “middle-classes” have started to crumble. This means for some an entry into a financially more secure life. For the majority, however, the reality is bleaker.  Slums are growing like never before and jobs become less and less secure. Thus, cities emerge as arenas of immense contrast.

In my view, rag pickers are a perfect example of this contrast. Oftentimes, they live in shantytowns or slums and struggle for daily survival, only miles or even yards away from very striking representations of wealth and “human progress”. And yet these people have to rely on other people’s waste in order to survive. Waste is something that richer people no longer want. It is something that is of so little value that it can be discarded off without much thinking. Rag pickers thus survive on something survive that most of us consider as a nuisance. Some people gladly pay so that their waste is collected and they never have to think about it again… In some cases rag pickers pay to get better access to waste. I think you get the idea; our whole concept of what constitutes “waste” is shaken. Something in that we no longer see any value suddenly is the basis for somebody else’s physical survival. The saying “one person’s trash is someone else’s treasure” could probably not be illustrated in a more powerful manner.

Yet, rag picking does not just make the difference between little income and no income for some. In fact, the impact of rag picking goes much further. Firstly rag pickers, especially in developing countries, contribute to the removal of solid waste in the streets of the cities. The municipalities of cities in developing countries often struggle to accomplish this task on their own. Rag pickers thus contribute to the management of solid wastes and in some cases even substitute official waste collection.

By collecting waste and selling it as a recyclable good, rag pickers furthermore play an essential part in the creation of secondary raw materials. The use of secondary raw materials is considerably cheaper for the industries than expending raw materials gained from primary sources. Rag pickers thus positively impact upon the economies of developing countries. As, the usage of secondary raw materials reduces energy consumption, carbon emissions are lowered. Rag picking therefore additionally bears benefits for the environment. And this is even without mentioning that rag pickers reduce the amount of garbage that gets disposed at open dumps.

However, rag picking often remains attached to a negative stigma, originating from the association of “waste” with dirt. This oftentimes overshadows the positive contributions, which rag pickers make, to the economy, the environment, and to society more generally. I think it is important that we do not make this same mistake!

Anyway, I hope that this entry has given you a rough idea about the vast implications of rag picking. I hope that I was able to show that there is more to rag picking then one might at first think.  Of course I wanted to say much more than this, but yet again I do realise that this entry has once again become rather long. Before I end, I just want to mention Mike Davies excellent account on the growing numbers of slums in a book entitled “Planet of Slums”. It’s an excellent and really interesting read and I can thoroughly recommend it to anybody who was interested in what I had to say in the first part of this post.

Thanks for your interest!

All the best,

Sven