As Ghana and other African countries pursue cleaner cities, circular economies, and more sustainable urban development, one truth must remain central: waste pickers are not peripheral actors in the waste sector; they are essential to it. Across cities and metropolitan areas, waste pickers recover recyclable materials, reduce the volume of waste sent to dumpsites and landfills, support local economies, and provide an environmental service that is too often overlooked. Long before recycling, climate action, and resource recovery became dominant policy conversations, waste pickers were already doing this work under difficult and often dangerous conditions.
Evidence from global and developing-country contexts makes their importance impossible to ignore. Waste pickers represent about 1 per cent of the urban workforce globally, amounting to between 15 and 20 million people worldwide. In low-income countries, they commonly collect between 50 and 100 per cent of city waste at no direct cost to municipalities. Their contribution goes far beyond collection alone. Waste pickers help reduce pressure on overstretched public waste systems, recover valuable materials for recycling, cut transport and landfill burdens, support livelihoods for poor households, and contribute directly to climate change mitigation by diverting waste from disposal and keeping materials in circulation.
Yet despite these contributions, waste pickers remain among the most vulnerable and excluded workers in the urban economy. Many operate without protective equipment, stable income, legal recognition, or access to social protection. They are often exposed to contaminated waste, hazardous working environments, disease, exploitation by middlemen, and public stigma. Women waste pickers face even deeper inequalities, including lower earnings, greater exposure to insecurity, and the additional burden of unpaid care work. In too many cases, the very systems waste pickers help sustain do not recognize, protect, or include them.
This is why the future of waste management in Ghana and across Africa must be built on inclusion, not exclusion. If we are serious about sustainable cities, decent work, public health, and environmental justice, then waste pickers must be integrated into formal and inclusive waste management systems. That means adopting data-driven strategies to understand who they are and where they work; planning for their spatial and infrastructural needs; ensuring safer working environments; improving transport options; supporting waste picker associations; promoting separation at source; involving waste pickers in policy and decision-making; and creating fair payment and formalization pathways that improve livelihoods without destroying existing survival systems.
The case for inclusion is not only social; it is strategic. Better conditions for waste pickers can improve recycling rates, expand service coverage, reduce unmanaged waste, strengthen urban resilience, and advance key development goals. We must understand that improving waste pickers’ livelihoods contributes to poverty reduction, good health and well-being, gender equality, decent work, sustainable cities, responsible consumption and production, reduced inequalities, and climate action. In other words, supporting waste pickers is not charity. It is smart urban policy, sound environmental governance, and a practical pathway toward a more just circular economy.
Rather than modernizing waste systems in ways that displace informal workers, we should build systems that recognize their expertise, strengthen their dignity, and improve their livelihoods. Waste pickers already form part of the solution to our sanitation, recycling, and environmental challenges. The question is whether our policies, institutions, and public attitudes are ready to catch up with that reality.
If we truly believe in leaving no one and no place behind, then waste pickers must no longer remain invisible. They deserve recognition as workers, inclusion as stakeholders, protection as human beings, and respect as vital contributors to Ghana’s and Africa’s sustainable future.
