Ammon News - By Mohammad Aljaradin/ Sweden
Jordan has seen a large increase in population during the past five decades as a result of population growth and forced migrations, and also, accompanied with this increase, a cultural and economical development that has improved the standard of living and changing consumer habits in the community, resulting in a clear increase in the volume of waste.
This rapid increase in solid waste doesn't walk with development of waste management resources, especially the proper landfilling, which poses negative effects on health and environment. The adoption of the integrated waste management: reduction, reuse and recycling (Troschinetz and Mihelcic 2009; Jones 2010), recycling of waste materials in developing countries is growing and is driven by economic necessity associated with poverty (Haque, Mujtaba et al. 2000; V. Femia 2009).
Recycling is generally accepted as for implementing municipal waste management strategy, it reduces the total amount of waste that is disposed of, and conserves natural resources(Shekdar 2009). The most important environmental and economic benefits of recycling are to increase material and energy utilization of solid waste and to reduce environmental pollution from the disposal of waste at landfills. Recycling reduces solid waste and produce beneficial materials; this represents an important business with a high potential for future development. In Jordan recycling is very limited and undertaken by the informal sector; a vast part of the recycling is done inside the landfills.
These operations are not regulated and expose worker to hazards conditions. Sorting of different types of solid waste at generation source is not yet practiced in Jordan, so considerable amount of recyclable materials are sent to final disposable sites. There are many recycling initiatives going on for various components of the solid waste stream at different stages of the waste management process in Jordan.
These initiatives are under taken by informal sector. However this process is not well managed. Some of the recycling activities are carried out before the solid waste reaches the final disposal sites for the separation of recyclable materials, paper, metals and plastics; much is done at the disposal sites by children and young person’s whom can be identified as scavengers.
Scavenging have been recognized recently as an effective way for managing waste Scavenging actually reduce the cost of formal waste management systems as it reduce the quantity of waste for collection (Abu Qdais 2007), resulting in less money and time spent on collection and transportation (Wilson, Velis et al. 2006). Thus, scavenging improves efficiency in a society’s use of natural resources, a necessary step toward minimizing the impact of human society on the environment and toward sustainable development (Medina 2007). Despite the severe health and social problems associated with informal recycling, it provides significant economic benefits that need to be retained.
Child labor is a growing problem in Jordan. Officially 32000 children are working in Jordan in many fields, but other unofficial statistics says that more than 53000 children are actually working (Alsrhan 2006). Child labor has always been of Governmental concern, especially children engaged in hazardous situations or conditions, such as scavengers, but much have so far been done to reduce child labor.
The authorities in Jordan consider scavenging as uncivilized practice and present a bad image for the country. In a country where 14.7 percent of the population lives below the poverty datum line and unemployment officially stands at 12.7 percent, scavenging has become a way of life for many and turning into profitable business. Scavenging cannot be wished away, however, nor can it be ignored. In each case a solution must be found that recognize the scavenger presence and maximize their role (Thomas-Hope 1998).
The Study Area
Tafila is a rural centre in the south of Jordan, with a municipal population of 80,000 people, Tafila governate is consists of four municipalities. The solid waste generation in Tafila city which is the main municipality with a population of 49,000 people is around 40-45 tons/day or 0.9 kg/capita/day.
The responsibility for municipal solid waste (MSW) collection and transportation to the final destination sites lies with the Greater Tafila municipality, while the operation and management of the final disposal sites is the responsibility of the Common Service Council (CSCs) in the governate.
The solid waste is collected by compacter vehicles; these vehicles are owned and operated by Tafila Municipality. Each compacter has its crew which is usually two employees and a driver. Each round of service for each compacter takes around 5 hours; they start to collect waste from the containers which are distributed all over the entire city early morning about 5 am, but another round usually for markets, shops and poultry industry in the evening. After finishing each round the compactors take their load to the disposal site directly.
Tafila waste disposal site (Jurf aldarweesh) is an area of 550000 m2, situated 35 km from the center of Tafila. The dump site receives 120 tons/day from the four municipalities of the governate. The area of the dump site is mostly rocky, which makes it difficult to dig trenches for the daily cover. Trenches are opened through the rocky ground and the waste is dumped without compaction and without lining. The waste surface is covered daily with a thin layer of soil.
However, before the covering process some scavenging is done inside the dump site by the employees working there. In the past municipality used to rent the dump site to private contractors. The contactors dug up the waste and collected the recyclable materials then loaded it on trucks and sold it to interested companies.
The physical composition and typical percentage distribution of MSW in Jordan. It can be noticed that the major fraction of composition is food wit 62% and paper waste with 12% (organics which implies a high value of moisture content), as expected, since Jordan is a developing country, and food is the major component of the solid waste stream generated in developing countries (Mrayyan and Hamdi 2006). Also one can notice that 80% of the total municipal solid wastes are decomposable and recyclable, and the remaining part is inert matter. In general terms, MSW in Jordan is characterized by a high organic content, with combustible matter (consisting of plastic, paper and kitchen garbage).
The role of scavengers in waste management is currently increasing in Jordan and in many Arab countries but without the proper and sustainable apparatus for organization processes of the various waste collection and separation activities. The materials most often collected are aluminum, plastic, paper, cardboard, glass, copper, and iron, then sold to trash dealers and by them to companies. The prices of the sorted materials depend on the international prices for the used materials for example plastic is solid with 300 JD per ton and aluminum with 110 JD for Ton.
Methodology
This work is based on data collected via personal interviews with scavengers. The interviews were conducted during October 2010 in the Tafila region. The data collections targeted scavengers at work and at home. Therefore, the interviews were conducted on the streets and it was designed to answer these questions; the social demographic characteristics of the scavenger; age, sex, level of education, marital status and then the source, amount, type and place of the waste collected, purpose and benefits from the collected waste, the negative effect of working with waste on their health and finally the society acceptance of their work.
More than 100 scavengers were interviewed during 10 days in the Tafila region. Most of the interviewed scavengers originally
come from this region.
Result:
Analyzing the social, economic and demographic data we can see, most of the scavengers interviewed are children with 75% percent and 22% percent teenagers and 98 percent are male were 88 percent are single.
The most common type collected during a working day form all the scavengers in the study is soft drink cans with around 150 Kg, and scrap metals around 90 Kg.
Many scavengers specialize in collecting aluminum cans (soft drinks), and work individually in the city streets. This work is done usually by teenagers. They work for 2-5 hours every day before and after schools, beginning at 6-7 in the morning and from 2-5 in the afternoon, they walk long distance every day. The quantity of material collected every day ranges from 2 to 5 kg of aluminum cans, depending on the scavenger efforts. Other specializes in collecting waste directly from rubbish bins and containers located in front of restaurants, cafes and public markets and sometimes between houses in the neighborhoods. They collect almost everything except the food waste. This work is usually done by the children of lower ages.
However, one of the interviewed was an old man he coming from Amman daily with his mini truck 160 km from Tafila, he buys almost everything directly from families in neighborhoods and from children (scrap metals, electrical devices, electronics, used car batteries, used furniture and aluminum strips, copper wires) and he had prices for everything. For example the price for an old washing machine is 0.5 JD, the price of scrap metals is around 0.04 JD per Kg and for copper around 1.0 JD per Kg. For 1 Kg of soft drinks cans he gave 0.60 JD, the man has been retired from the government for 10 years with an insurance salary that doesn’t exceed 190 JD per month. This is not enough to support his big family with 11 children, four of them studying in universities. This is the reason why he works with trash, as he said. When he gets back to his home, he sorts things and then sells it to big dealers in Amman and Zarqa.
None of the respondents were using the scavenging income as the only mean for supporting their family members. Instead, it was considered as a supplementary income to the family and sometimes just for the scavenger himself. 92 percent of them are still in schools, not thinking of leave their school.
Since most of the scavengers live with their families, a question of their families income was posted, 79 percent answered that they have less than 250 JD which is the average salary for the public sector worker in the country. One interesting answer came from a young man who had a family of 10 Person. he said his father worked in the public sector and his salary was 190 JD. The family paid 100 JD for the monthly home rent and 75 JD for bank loans he had taken to support the older sons studies, so how can we live with 15 JD which is not enough to buy a bride and I have three young brothers setting home without any job; this is the reason why I work with waste since I cannot find a better job.
Answering the question about what is the purpose from you work 84 percent said that they were working to help their family whom asked them to do that, 10 percent said I work just to get money for buying Mobil or new clothes and I work behind my family eyes.
81 percent of the interviewed were aware of the negative health effect of working with waste, One of them said that he was wearing gloves when he worked now and didn’t eat or drink anything he found, but another said he almost drink everything he found left in the soft drink cans especially the ones left in front of restaurants and shops.
Answering the question about the society acceptance of their work, 68 percent said yes it was acceptable and sometimes they got encouragement from relatives and neighbors, 10 percent did not agree, they said that even their school mates did not accept to play with them and some time their relatives ignored them when they face them in streets by accident collecting cans they looked down on them. Also 22 percent answered they did not know. They either did not understand the question or they did not want to answer. Some of them said they had been forbidden by some families to enter their neighbourhoods because of the bad behaviors of the other scavengers whom left the garbage scattered in a mess behind them instead of leaving the garbage like it was.
Conclusion:
This rapid survey shows that scavengers in Jordan have an important role in the informal solid waste management especially in term of waste reduction, minimization and material recovery.
Significant values from the scavenged material make the scavenging a profitable business for poor people and could track more in the future.
There is no societal recognition of the importance of the scavengers in the waste reduction process and the scavengers usually have no concept of the essential role their work plays in reduction and recovery process. As a result, their social status is very low. However; nowadays it became more socially acceptable because of the poverty in most of the rural areas in the country besides being a profitable business.
The scavengers usually perform their work in a very primitive way and without any protective measures for their health and safety consideration. They are exposed to hazards and unhealthy work place environment which they are not aware of. This could lead to high risk of infection and disease transmission. Scavengers could be potential carriers for many pathogens that may be in the waste. If so, they can pose a great threat to the society.
Present still the scavenging is not considered as the main source income for families of scavengers at the study area, it is
practiced mainly by school students and it is considered to be supplementary income for them.
There is no legislation in the country forbidden scavenger from practicing their work but the Ministry of Social Development always tracks these children and turns them into specialized centers for rehabilitation. Yet, in the absence of an integrated program for sorting waste in the country, the containers containing a valuable recyclable material becomes a breeding place for scavengers.
There are no official records for number of the scavengers in the country or the quantity of the recovered material.
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