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Street Waste Pickers and Collection and Sorting Facilities: Economic Impact on Packaging Waste Recycling in Mersin, Türkiye
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DOI：10.3390/su18147173.png)
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Abstract
En 中文
Informal waste picking has become a persistent informal sector in many developing countries. Waste pickers, among the most socially and economically disadvantaged groups in society, attempt to generate income by selling packaging waste collected from containers, while licensed recovery facilities obtain significantly higher economic returns from the same material flows. The aim of this study is to comparatively evaluate the economic and recycling impacts of informal waste pickers and licensed collection-sorting facilities on packaging waste recovery in Mersin, Türkiye. This study was conducted at a licensed medium-scale collection-sorting facility located in the Toroslar district of Mersin, Türkiye. The dataset consists of surveys conducted with 200 informal waste pickers, a one-year waste characterization study carried out at the facility, plastic fraction analyses for four selected months, facility records, and municipal solid waste recycling data calculated from official reports. Using these data, the economic and recycling impacts of informal waste pickers and formal recycling infrastructure were comparatively assessed. The findings indicated that waste pickers were predominantly male, unskilled, and lacked social security coverage. While the average monthly income of waste pickers was approximately USD 650, the facility generated a net monthly income of approximately USD 37,000 from recyclable packaging waste. The results revealed that the economic returns obtained from the same material flows were substantially higher within the formal recycling infrastructure. This study contributes to addressing a gap in the literature by providing real-time, micro-scale field data on the economic differences between informal waste collection activities and formal recycling infrastructure.
Keywords:
informal waste pickers
municipal solid waste management
packaging waste recovery
recycling economy
source-based waste management