The dumpsite itself full of grey, craggy mountains of rubbish, dotted with yellow excavators that sift through the waste. Despite being officially declared \u201cfull\u201d in 2001, Dandora remains Nairobi\u2019s main landfill site<\/a>, with an estimated 2,000 metric tonnes of waste flowing in each day from the rapidly-growing city of six million. Acrid smoke billows from the site\u2019s crevices, while goats and cows graze around its edges, searching for something nutritious. <\/p>\n In the middle of it all are the waste pickers. They come in their thousands each day from the surrounding slums to pick through the garbage with the hope of finding something valuable to sell. Metals, plastics, bones, and even food<\/a> leftovers all fetch a price, which \u2013 while very low \u2013 can be lifeline in a country where some estimates put the unemployment rate at 40 per cent. <\/p>\n Health problems related to the work are common, with 71 per cent of waste pickers reporting ailments in a recent survey<\/a> led by the Nairobi Recyclable Waste Association (NRWA). These include respiratory troubles, joint pains, back pain and dust allergies related to the work, as well as tuberculosis and malaria and longer-term conditions. Some 96 per cent of waste pickers reported being injured while working on the dumpsite, including being pierced by sharp objects like syringes, or burns from acid or heated items. <\/p>\n A typical shift at Dandora is 10 to 12 hours long, with many workers single parents, and most not educated beyond primary school, according that same survey. Waste pickers struggle to afford food, rent, and school fees. Fifty-three per cent of respondents to the NRWA survey report witnessing violence on the site as workers fought over recyclables, and a further 13 per cent have experienced sexual harassment. <\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n Health problems related to waste picking are common, with 71 per cent of the workers at Dandora reporting them in a recent survey (AFP\/Getty) open image in gallery<\/p>\n Waste pickers at Dandora search for metals, plastics, bones and even food leftovers (Nick Ferris)<\/p>\n The climate crisis acts as an amplifier of the existing challenges faced by the waste pickers. Ask any of the waste pickers working at the site \u2013 or indeed in Nairobi as a whole<\/a> \u2013 and they will agree: Both wet and dry seasons have become much more intense, which in turn is making their job much more challenging. <\/p>\n \u2018Temperatures are so much higher\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cIt rains so much more now – and the during rainy seasons now, the dumpsite floods and it is hard for us to go out collecting,\u201d says 42-year-old Naimuna during The Independent\u2019s visit to Dandora recently, speaking in Kiswahili via a translator. \u201cIt becomes very muddy and you can fall slip down into holes, and they get cut. This happens to so many people.\u201d <\/p>\n Naimuna has worked at the site for the past five years, where she collects plastic waste that she then sells to recycling companies. A single mother of three children, these days she works alongside her 24-year-old son Christopher. <\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n Maimuna, pictured with her son Christopher, told The Independent that both extreme heat and floods are making work on the dumpsite more difficult (Nick Ferris)<\/p>\n \u201cThe temperatures are getting much higher than they used to be,\u201d she continues. Such high heat is very difficult to work in, Maimuna says, and waste pickers are inevitably forced to take off protective gear like boots and overalls, making them even more prone to injury. <\/p>\n Ivan Ivanov, workplace health expert at the World Health Organisation (WHO), concurs that spending the whole day exposed to the hot sun poses significant health risks: \u201cIt can increase the risk of fainting, which is a physiological reaction to the body\u2019s need to dissipate heat,\u201d he says. \u201cIf you faint, you can fall, you can land on a sharp object, you can even die.\u201d The risk of heat stroke also increases, while Nairobi\u2019s high altitude increases exposure to dangerous Ultraviolet (UV) rays.<\/p>\n A recent joint report from the WHO and the World Meteorological Organisation warned that heat stress was already having a devastating impact on workers, and requires significant interventions<\/a> from governments. <\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n Evalyne, 27, told The Independent that with more extreme weather conditions, and more competition for valuable waste, she is struggling to make ends meet for her family (Nick Ferris)<\/p>\n The other big challenge faced by Maimuna and Christopher has been the fact that economic hardships \u2013 which are partly driven by the accelerating impact of the climate crisis across the country<\/a> \u2013 have led more and more people to come to the dumpsite to look for plastic to sell. \u201cNowadays, plastic is becoming rare, and people can be territorial,\u201d she says. \u201cSometimes we are harassed, and sometimes men take our plastic.\u201d <\/p>\n Another waste picker, 27-year-old Evalyne, reports similar challenges related to extreme weather. \u201cThe weather is so unpredictable now, it did not used to be like this\u201d she says. \u201cWhen it\u2019s raining, we are no longer able to come because of the floods \u2013 and when it is hot, we take off our overalls so we are no longer protected.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cI am not able to earn enough to meet all my family expenses,\u201d she says, with there being too many workers and not enough plastic.<\/p>\n Excluded workers<\/p>\n Christy Braham from Women in Informal Employment Globalising & Organising (WIEGO) adds that because, like 83 per cent of Kenyans, waste pickers are classified as \u201cinformal\u201d, they are \u201cde-facto excluded\u201d from any occupational health and safety protections. The challenges are all set to become \u201csignificantly worse\u201d with climate change, unless the government effectively implements health and safety policy. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n The problems faced by the waste pickers of Dandora are not unique. There are an estimated 20 million waste pickers globally, a large share of whom live in climate-vulnerable countries where the impacts of extreme weather are being felt much more significantly than in the Global North. These waste pickers collectively gather an estimated 60 per cent of the plastic that is recycled globally \u2013 despite the fact that they will have contributed very little to the world\u2019s plastic problem.<\/p>\n Unicef, which campaigns on the issue, told The Independent that child labour in the sector is extremely prevalent. Children as young as five are known to work in e-waste sorting, for example – and Unicef runs a number of programmes looking to outlaw unethical work practices and integrate informal waste pickers into the formal waste management system, including in South Africa<\/a> and in Tanzania<\/a>. But all such programmes are under threat as overseas aid cuts in wealthy countries expected in the coming years<\/a> put pressure on funding streams. <\/p>\n “The UK government’s decision to cut the aid budget will put the lives and futures of millions of vulnerable children at risk,\u201d says Lucy Gordon, head of international policy and advocacy at Unicef UK, who adds that the agency is lobbying the UK government to spend at least\u202f25 per cent of the aid budget on children. \u201cExtreme poverty, conflict and climate change\u202fmean the world’s children and their families\u202fneed all of the support they can get.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n At Dandora, Copenhagen-based NGO the Danish Refugee Council is running a project in partnership with Kenya\u2019s largest plastics recycling company, Mr Green Africa, which has supported several thousand waste pickers at Dandora, as well as others working at refugee camps in the country. It formalises waste picking by providing protective equipment to the waste pickers, establishing a child daycare system and a health insurance scheme, as well as ensuring that Mr Green Africa pays a fair price for plastic, and does not accept anything that is brought by children. In return, Mr Green Africa has guaranteed suppliers to feed its recycling operation.<\/p>\n Visiting one of Mr Green Africa\u2019s waste aggregation sites in Nairobi is to find huge mounds of plastics of all different kinds, from cooking oil cartons to rice sacks, all expertly excavated from the chaos of Dandora by hundreds of waste pickers. At the time of The Independent\u2019s visit, one lady arrived with a sackful of hard yellow plastic cartons that was then weighed by material handler Daniel: 140 Kenyan Shillings (\u00a30.80) for 4.1KG, representing three days of waste picking work. <\/p>\n Despite the low wage and tough conditions, waste pickers at the site seem broadly happy with DRC\u2019s intervention. \u201cDRC trained us, showing us the value that different kinds of plastic have, and telling us that our children are not supposed to accompany us to the dumpsite,\u201d says one waste picker, Priscilla. \u201cWe are earning more money now, and can walk around with more confidence\u201d. <\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n Material handler Daniel weighed one sackful of hard yellow plastic cartons cartons when The Independent visited: 140 Kenyan Shillings (\u00a30.80) for 4.1KG, representing three days of waste picking work (Nick Ferris)<\/p>\n \u201cPeople used to look at us and shout: \u2018Look at that Chokora\u2019 [a slur that refers to someone who scavanges through waste],\u201d adds Virginia, the secretary of the waste aggregation site. \u201cBut now we have a new name. We are the child labour champions, and we are making our community green.\u201d <\/p>\n According to Alistair Cowan, head of programmes at DRC Kenya, the kind of private sector partnership that the NGO\u2019s work with Mr Green Africa will increasingly make sense in the era of aid cuts.<\/p>\n \u201cThe project from our end has now run its course, but the whole idea has been to build a private sector-led, sustainable system, which is why the systems we set up are still in place,\u201d he says. Historically, private sector partnerships with aid agencies were just about outsourcing areas of work, he adds – but the aim here was to find a way of fitting the NGO\u2019s ambitions in with the commercial aims of Mr Green Africa. <\/p>\n DRC believes that 4,000 waste pickers have been helped by the project, out of an estimated 46,000<\/a> waste pickers in the country. The project\u2019s success means that DRC is now looking to expand by working with other waste companies – but there remains a sense that the problems around waste picking are fundamentally far bigger than any one organisation can handle. <\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n Goats and cows graze around the edges of the dumpsite, searching for something nutritious in the carnage (Nick Ferris) open image in gallery<\/p>\n The number of people living in Kenya is increasing, according to the World Bank – while among waste pickers specifically, 86 per cent say that their economic situation has worsened significantly in recent years, according to a recent survey (Nick Ferris)<\/p>\n \u201cOf course what we are doing is a drop in the ocean compared to the total number of people picking plastic, and the total number of refugees, in the country,\u2019 says DRC\u2019s Joan Maitai, who led the first iteration of the recycling project. <\/p>\n After years of strong performance on development indicators, recent years have seen Kenya\u2019s progress stuttering, driven by issues including the legacy of the Covid-19 pandemic, high levels of national debt and the aid cuts and extreme weather mentioned here. The number of people living at less than $3 per day in the country increased from 18 million in 2015 to 26 million in 2022, according to the World Bank<\/a>. <\/p>\n Among waste pickers specifically, 86 per cent say that their economic situation has worsened significantly in recent years, according to the recent Nairobi Recyclable Waste Association survey, driven by increased competition for waste, low wages, and rising living costs, among other things. <\/p>\n For Naimuna, the dump is still crucial, and that won\u2019t change until there are more opportunities for other work. \u201cI pray that we get more opportunities, especially to work,\u201d she says. \u201cI don’t want to be left behind.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Health](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/GettyImages-2217962078.jpeg\")
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