12 ISA BAUD
(Cointreau-Levine, 1982; Furedy, 1990). Local residents also perceive street pickers as
socially undesirable and seek to reduce their access to local sources of waste.
Waste pickers, itinerant buyers, traders and small-scale recyclers of waste materials
carry out their activities in close co-operation and conflict. They depend on each other
for credit and informal social security arrangements, but the informality also allows
‘free rider’ behaviour to go unpunished. All such activities take place in semi-legal
conditions, with many enterprises remaining unregistered (van Beukering, 1994; Baud
and Schenk, 1994; Jordens, 1996) or only going partially through the process of full
registration (Baron and Castricum, 1996).
Finally, spontaneous private-private arrangements occur in collection, transport and
disposal. These have emerged mainly in reaction to the lack of effective public sector
provision (Mwangi, 2000). They suffer from a lack of recognition of their activities by
local authorities, and may also not conform to the public standards for transportation
and disposal.
Community-private and public sector-community arrangements
The role of NGOs and CBOs in working with local communities has been discussed
widely in the literature, mainly at the level of projects initiated at neighbourhood level.
Community-based organisations generally consist of residents of a particular area
organizing to improve local waste collection (e.g. clean-up campaigns) and may
include composting in their activities, emphasising ‘green’ aspects of sustainable
development (Anand, 2000). They usually do not go much beyond the neighbourhood
level in their activities, which can limit their impact (cf. Hordijk, 2000; Lee, 1998).
NGOs, coming in from outside, more often aim at socially vulnerable target groups,
such as women and street children picking waste (e.g. Hunt, 1996; Huysman, 1994),
and direct their activities towards strengthening their socio-economic capabilities.
This includes promoting co-operatives among waste pickers, providing shelter and
alternative training, and savings schemes. NGOs may also carry out activities more
generally in the area of raising public awareness about sustainable development issues
or contribute to developing alternative technology designed to promote recycling and
composting activities in a decentralised fashion (Furedy, 1992; Schenk, Bhuvaneswari
and Baud, 1998). SEWA in India is a longstanding example of this type of initiative.
1.5. URBAN SERVICES AND CONTRIBUTIONS TO SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT;
MAKING AN OPERATIONAL FRAMEWORKUrban SWM is one of the services that can make strong contributions to sustainable
development in cities. However, the underlying concept of sustainable development
has led to heated debates and aroused mixed feelings in both academic and policy