Lindner, Allison;
(2025)
An Example of Sustainable Development (In)Action: The Case of Waste Pickers at a Buy-Back Centre in Johannesburg.
Journal of Environmental Law
10.1093/jel/eqaf004.
(In press).
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Abstract
This article discusses the difficulty in achieving sustainable development for South African waste pickers (informal collectors and sellers of recyclable materials) through an empirical case study. Waste pickers recycle for their survival due to a lack of job opportunities. As this study shows, the social enterprise that waste pickers sell recyclables to also faced economic constraints that prevented the fulfilment of its unique plan to improve waste pickers’ lives through technical and life skills development. Ultimately, company personnel who were in a position to translate waste management laws and policies that waste pickers needed to comply with to take advantage of opportunities to improve their low socio-economic position did not do so due to a lack of resources. This meant that the vulnerable socio-economic position of waste pickers was maintained, further illustrating how sustainable development fails through the actions of people, and contributes to the disruption of socio-economic development.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | An Example of Sustainable Development (In)Action: The Case of Waste Pickers at a Buy-Back Centre in Johannesburg |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1093/jel/eqaf004 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1093/jel/eqaf004 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author(s) 2025. Published by Oxford University Press. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Laws |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10207588 |
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