SEPARATED LIVES

Kenya's invisibilised waste pickers

- EDWIN NDEKE

JANE WAIRIMU NJORORGE'S CALLOUSED HANDS reflect the physical toll of her job. A 45-year-old single mother, Wairimu has been working as a waste picker since she was a teenager, at a dumpsite in Nairobi, Kenya. Her three children help her out on the weekends, when they are not in school. To support her family, Wairimu has to work as many as twelve hours a day and, at times, all seven days of the week—sorting through trash without any protective gear, in the heat. Wairimu’s children told me that they faced stigma at school because of their mother’s job, and for working as waste pickers themselves.

I began documenting waste workers such as Wairimu in 2023, amid a raging global conversation on climate change. That year, I attended the Africa Climate Summit, held in Kenya, and photographed waste pickers for The Guardian. As I continued reading about and researching waste recycling, the absence of people like Wairimu from the narrative became all too glaring. Waste pickers form a critical, yet often invisible, link between the global recycling industry and climate change mitigation efforts. Without their labour, recycling efforts across the world would falter, severely hindering our fight against climate change. As essential workers in the informal recycling sector, they recover materials that feed global supply chains and set them on the figurative conveyor belt that feeds back into manufacturing processes.