TRADE AND RECYCLING OF URBAN INORGANIC SOLID WASTE IN NAIROBI 189
returning there. Thus, despite the relatively lower number of immediate returns,
buying land and/or building a house ‘at home’ is a formalised means of claiming their
position in the rural community. Social allegiance through family, clan or ethnic obli-
gations is thus demanding on income. The stated levels of income or profits may there-
fore not be the most useful means of determining the socio-economic feasibility of
small-scale waste metal recycling.
8.10. CONTRIBUTIONS TO SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Changing relations between actors in recovery and recycling
Although traders are friendly with waste pickers, they are at the same time authorita-
tive and stern, especially during sale transactions. Most maintain meticulous records
of the waste amounts bought and money owed to the waste pickers. There seems to be
a high degree of trust in their transactions. Other relations include the provision of
interest free loans to pickers which are repaid with waste or by performing tasks for
the dealer. Whether or not this phenomenon entails ‘tying’ or ‘bonding’ of the picker
to the dealer is not clear but it is apparent that some sort of over extraction may result.
The agreements through which indebted pickers repay either through waste materials
or labour (performing such tasks as cleaning, sorting, packing or transportation of
materials for sale) seem to be capriciously defined.
Dealers maintain strong connections with other actors in the commodity chain. The
need to keep themselves abreast with information on the purchase and sale prices as
well as the demand for various waste materials is underscored. This information is
used to determine sale and purchase prices of various materials and may be selectively
passed on to the pickers who in turn adjust their picking preferences accordingly. Cash
tips and other inducements have sometimes to be given to factory employees in charge
of sourcing raw materials, in return for which the regular purchase of high volumes of
materials from the particular dealer is enabled. The extent to which this can ensure the
dealer’s survival however has been constrained by decreases in the consumption of
local waste materials by large-scale waste reprocessors. There are also too many
dealers who are all similarly skilled and eager to buy these rights. This means that the
amounts required for the numerous trade transactions are rising and cannot be justified
by the profits earned. Moreover, factories now prefer clean, sorted materials unlike
earlier when factories undertook the cleaning and sorting processes themselves. A lot
of dealers have now found it necessary to undertake these in order to make their deliv-
eries much more attractive to the factories. This has further increased operational costs
for the dealers.
The relations between small-scale metal recyclers and dealers seem to have changed
markedly causing distortions in the commodity chains to the advantage of large-scale
reprocessors These changes seem to have been orchestrated by the latter in an effort