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6.5. PARTNERSHIPS IN INORGANIC MATERIAL RECOVERY AND RECYCLING:
CONTRIBUTIONS TO SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT?
In this section, I turn to the question of what contributions the reuse, recovery and
recycling of inorganic materials can make to the different aspects of sustainable devel-
opment as applied to household solid waste management in developing countries.
In chapter 1, the different aspects of what constitutes sustainable development were
unravelled in their component parts, as applied to urban domestic solid waste manage-
ment. The main areas of contribution were covered under nine headings: the environ-
mental aspects, which included minimisation of waste, recovery and recycling (as part
of other processes), safe disposal of wastes, and socio-economic aspects, which
included good co-ordination, financial viability, safe and healthy employment, clean
urban environment and legitimacy. Here, I examine the question what different kinds
of partnerships (or what we have termed elsewhere alliances (Baud et al., 2001)) can
contribute to specific aspects of sustainable development.
The major type of ‘partnership’ found in recovery and recycling are the forward and
backward linkages within the variety of commodity chains found. The contributions
of any type of commodity chain to the extent of recovery and recycling depend highly
on the economics of the firms using waste materials as raw material inputs. This
means that the fluctuations in the price of secondary materials for such firms deter-
mine in large measure the size and composition of the ‘recovered materials’ flow.
Fluctuations are influenced heavily by alternative sources for (and quality of) raw
materials, and prices for imported materials (Karanja et al., chapter 8). As these
factors lie outside the purview of municipal authorities and outside those of national
Departments of the Environment, unexpected changes in the amount of recovered
materials can take place outside the knowledge and influence of these organisations
(cf. van Beukering, 2001). This means that further research is necessary on such
external factors, in order to understand those parts of the system. Also research on the
use of secondary materials in different industrial sectors should be extended in order
to obtain a better understanding of firm strategies with regard to the use of secondary
materials as resource.
In the area of socio-economic aspects of sustainable development, the recycling
commodity chain makes fewer contributions. There are few contributions to better
co-ordination with the official urban SWM system, as the local authorities usually
refuse to deal directly with the recycling commodity chain in an effort to increase the
environmental aspects of sustainable development of the system. The creation of
employment by those in the commodity chain is obviously widespread, but of varying
quality. Particularly the question of safety and health aspects remains an area in which
much could be improved, with the situation being worst for the street and dump waste
pickers, and best for the permanent workers in the recycling firms. The legitimacy of
the commodity chain is also a vexed question, with the most vulnerable groups in the