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Interview Transcript

Mitch Ratcliffe  0:10

Hello, good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are on this beautiful planet of ours. Welcome to Sustainability In Your Ear. This is the podcast conversation about accelerating the transition to a sustainable, carbon-neutral society, and I’m your host, Mitch Ratcliffe. Thanks for joining the conversation today. We’re going to talk about waste pickers.

The way most of us picture recycling is a municipal one — a truck, a sorting facility, a system run by a city or a company — but across much of the world, that’s not the right picture. In South Africa, the overwhelming majority of plastic and paper that actually gets recycled is recovered not by any formal program, but by informal waste reclaimers, an estimated 140,000 people who move through cities and landfills on foot, pulling trolleys, collecting and sorting recyclable material, and selling it to survive. Each one diverts as much as 24 tons of waste from the country’s landfills every year. Collectively, they’ve saved municipalities hundreds of millions of rand in landfill costs and built the backbone of a recycling economy, all without recognition, protection, or a place in the official system.

It is some of the most environmentally valuable work being done anywhere, and it’s performed by some of the most marginalized people in the country. Reclaimers face social stigma and frequent harassment, and they work in unsafe conditions, exposed to chemicals and traffic. And because they are unorganized, they are often exploited by the middlemen, who buy their materials for a fraction of what it’s worth. The environmental service they provide is quite literally free, and the people providing it are largely invisible to the public they serve.

Our guest today has spent 15 years trying to change that. Sifiso Gumbi is the founder of Urban Surfer South Africa, a Johannesburg-based social enterprise built on the simple conviction that the people already doing the work of recycling should be supported, equipped, and recognized, not replaced. Urban Surfer designs and provides the tools of the trade, starting with a collection trolley developed alongside reclaimers over two years and 50,000 kilometers of real-world use, and that’s complete with a personalized number plate that gives its owner a sense of belonging and a measure of public legitimacy. The organization runs sorting and baling camps that connect reclaimers to offtake agreements and producer responsibility rebates, cutting out the middlemen and raising what reclaimers actually earn. It offers training, protective equipment, and mental health support, and it tracks the whole operation through GPS-enabled trolleys and a live reporting dashboard, turning work that was once invisible into measurable, documented impact.

Running underneath all of this is a word that Sifiso returns to again and again in his speeches and writing: dignity. Urban Surfer’s mission is framed not first in tons diverted, but in belonging — the right of a reclaimer to be seen as an essential worker rather than a nuisance, with a special focus on women and youth, who make up much of this workforce. That framing has earned Sifiso recognition as South African Environmentalist of the Year and Entrepreneur of the Year, a TEDx Johannesburg stage appearance, and the endorsement of city and provincial governments that now rely on his data to plan their own waste systems.

So, we’ll talk with Sifiso about what 15 years among reclaimers has taught him that no policy paper could, why he believes dignity and recognition are inseparable from recycling rates, and how a better trolley changes the way a person is treated on the street. We’ll also dig into how his camps and offtake deals reshape reclaimers’ income, why he built a data infrastructure into grassroots work, and how he persuades corporations to see reclaimers as partners rather than a line item. Then there’s the big argument that his work makes: that a genuinely circular economy has to be built on the people who already live in it, not by bypassing them.

To learn more about Urban Surfer, visit urbansurfer.co.za — Urban Surfer, all one word, no space, no dash. That’s urbansurfer.co.za. What would it take to see the people who already recycle most of a nation’s waste not as invisible labor, but as the foundation for the circular economy? Let’s find out right after this brief commercial break. Welcome to the show, Sifiso. How are you doing today?

Sifiso Gumbi  4:36

I’m doing amazing. How are you, Mitch?

Mitch Ratcliffe  4:38

I am well. I am well. Now, you’re in Johannesburg, and you’ve spent 15 years working alongside informal waste reclaimers in South Africa. Can you take us back to that moment when you first realized that there was an opportunity and a need to organize informal recycling?

Sifiso Gumbi  4:53

I was 19 when I realized, because that’s when I was really starting out, you know, into the whole space as a waste reclaimer. And the one thing I realized was that I could actually grow within, you know, the industry, because I could just see all around me. Growing up — I come from Soweto — we used to have a massive challenge with illegal dumping sites, and on close examination of all the waste, you know, that was being dumped, it was actually waste that one could, you know, actually recycle. And what I then realized was that, you know, there will always be waste for as long as there are people, because for as long as there are people, there’ll always be consumption. And I just saw this as an opportunity that really guaranteed a career for me, because all I needed was, you know, access to the waste.

Mitch Ratcliffe  5:41

You literally saw a greenfield opportunity in waste — that there was just so much of it lying around of value that it could be, if organized correctly, a lot more valuable to the waste reclaimer, and there’s sufficient profit for you to grow an organization.

Sifiso Gumbi  5:59

Absolutely, that’s what it was. I didn’t realize the many challenges I was going to come across as, you know, an informal reclaimer.

Mitch Ratcliffe  6:07

For listeners who have never seen South Africa, can you explain the society in which a reclaimer works, and what a typical day looks like for one of them?

Sifiso Gumbi  6:16

So, a typical day for a reclaimer — they start their day very early. We do have a waste management system here in South Africa. Each metro has one, and each local municipality has one. So, how it works is that there’s a municipal bin truck that comes through on every business day to collect waste. The municipal bin truck will come and collect a bin, it gets tipped into a truck, which is a compactor truck, and that truck takes all of that waste to the landfill. So they usually come in the morning, so your typical waste picker has to get to the bin before the municipal truck gets there.

So a day in the life of a South African waste picker consists of waking up very early, so that you can get to people’s bins before the municipal truck gets there, you know, open those bins and literally go through such bins to recover recyclable waste material before the municipal bin truck gets there. And then from there you load it up in a makeshift trolley using bulk bags that, you know, are normally used for sugar, soy, maize, even manure. I think maybe you do use those bulk bags in America, but that’s what waste pickers use here in South Africa. So they use them as containers to load up all the collected recyclable material.

Then from there, the material is taken to informal waste sorting sites. You know, they don’t sort where they collect. So where they collect, they just collect everything and just tie it up into the bag, load it up on the trolley, pull the trolley to, you know, whatever informal setting they have — any piece of land that they find, they use for sorting. So there the sorting takes place: you know, the plastics are separated, the paper is separated, the metal is separated, aluminum is separated. And then once the material is separated and carefully segregated, it is then, once a week, sold off to the buyback centers or the neighboring recycling companies.

Mitch Ratcliffe  8:27

So does that produce a better-sorted load for the recycling off-takers, the organizations that buy the material? It sounds like it’s competing with the municipal system to do a better job of sorting.

Sifiso Gumbi  8:39

The municipal system is not concerned about the recovery of waste for recycling. The municipal system is mainly concerned with the recovery of waste for disposal, so that the waste is removed from, you know, people’s backyards and, you know, people’s bins. So that’s what it’s all about, you know. For the longest time — the City of Johannesburg, the City of Ekurhuleni, the City of Tshwane, I can think of all the major metros and all the local governments — we’ve relied heavily on the use of landfill space, which we are now running out of. So, the system was really simple: collect and dispose. Waste pickers are the only ones that are collecting for value, you know, and collecting with the intent of recycling, because that’s their livelihood. They actually make their money from the recycling. The municipality really doesn’t, and they didn’t really care about that, you know, because they make their money anyway.

Mitch Ratcliffe  9:33

So, in a way, this is a self-organizing solution for recycling that was simply being ignored by government.

Sifiso Gumbi  9:39

Absolutely. It’s been around for more than 30 years, largely informal — I would say totally and absolutely informal. If you look at the current South African statistics, when it comes to recycling, the main contributors are waste pickers. The reason why we have a recycling rate at all is due to the efforts of, you know, informal waste pickers.

Mitch Ratcliffe  10:01

So these people do really, really important work, and your tagline is empowering people and transforming waste, but you talk a lot about dignity, not just recycling rates. Why is dignity at the center of how you think about this work?

Sifiso Gumbi  10:17

Because that’s where we have to start. Before we get to anything else, we need to first recognize waste pickers, not only as essential environmental custodians, but firstly as people. Dealing with waste reduces you to a level, especially in this country — and I think it may be the same thing in other countries — it reduces you to a state where people don’t even see you as a human being. They see you as a vagrant, they see you as the scum of the earth, because no one wants to, like — I mean, if you think about it, no one wants to deal with rubbish, no one wants to deal with waste, no one wants to handle all of that grimy stuff, you know. So when you do, instead of being recognized and applauded for, you know, such a huge sacrifice, one is usually seen as being of the same value as that waste you are dealing with.

So the first thing, you know, we try and advocate for is the humanization and dignity of reclaimers. And how do we do that? Firstly, it’s by kitting them out, or providing them with the correct PPE, so that they are presentable and they are more approachable and they are more visible and they’re more humanized. Because most waste pickers you come across, they deal with waste on a daily basis, so of course they won’t look as glamorous as someone who drives an Uber or someone who works at a restaurant or someone who works at a hotel or someone who works at a factory, you know. They’re waste pickers, they deal with waste, you know. So usually, you know, because they don’t earn even as much, you know, their clothing items are usually soiled, the way they look is usually dirty, because of the work that they do. You know, if you deal with a mechanic, a mechanic looks like a mechanic — he will be covered in oil. If you’re dealing with a waste picker, a waste picker will look like a waste picker, because he has to deal with waste on a daily basis, you know. And because of that image, you know, the public perception around waste pickers is really, really negative.

So we advocate for their dignity and recognition first, before anything else. We want people to understand the work that waste pickers do, we want people to understand that waste pickers are humans, we want people to understand that they’re doing an amazing job, not only for these communities that do not see them as people, but for the environment as a whole.

Mitch Ratcliffe  12:30

What you’re describing is so important to understanding where the opportunity to raise up people lies in the circular economy. I’ve been involved in a little bit of this kind of work in South America, and the organization that I was consulting with paid a generous rate to trash pickers. They supported local programs that included decorating their trolleys, which gave them a real sense of pride that recognized their humanity, as you’re talking about. Tell us about how you work with a group of reclaimers to develop the trolleys that make their work easier.

Sifiso Gumbi  13:07

The first trolley that we developed was an amazing solution, and I’ll touch base on that as I expand into the whole picture that I’m going to paint for you. Most waste pickers use makeshift solutions. From the trolleys that they use — it’s all makeshift — to the PPE that they come across. They don’t have any PPE, you know, so if they find an apron that, you know, is protective gear, anything to use — from even a, we call them balaclavas here in South Africa, some people call them ski masks, you know — they wear those as protective wear. So it’s all very makeshift.

So we decided to engage them and understand, you know, what type of trolley they would, you know, like to have, and you know, what features it would have. And we realized that most of the reclaimers we were, you know, interviewing at the time were camping in open fields. And they did that because one would leave their respective township to go and try and, you know, make a living from recovering waste from the affluent neighborhoods like Sandton and Bryanston, you know, all these fancy suburbs, you know, that are away from the townships. That’s where they usually find the most waste. And because it’s so far from the township, they were now forced to, you know, camp in the open, you know, to store their recyclables, sort their recyclables, and then maybe sell their recyclables. So they couldn’t, after collecting, take their recyclables back to their townships, because the townships are like 30 kilometers away, or even more.

So, one of them said — I think several of them said — you know, if I could perhaps be able to sleep inside my trolley, that would be amazing. And so we designed a trolley that, firstly, could accommodate a bulk bag that was specifically designed to store recyclable material, you know, that could fit the trolley and carry as much as 300 kilograms onto the trolley. Secondly, we then came up with a solution to have a foldable tent that one can, you know, keep in a compartment on the trolley as they go out to collect on their daily activities, and then later on, one could be able to deploy that tent over the trolley, and they could have overnight shelter as they camped in whatever spaces they had found to store their recyclables in and camp. So when we started out, all of our trolleys had shelter — those temporary tents they could put up at night, impermeable to water, so they were protected whenever it was raining, and quite warm enough for winter.

But with that solution, what we found was that most of the reclaimers became really comfortable with that functionality in their trolleys, and they then ended up using those trolleys as mobile homes instead of using them for recycling. So what they would do is that they would park those trolleys, you know, with the tent fully set up, and then take their makeshift trolleys and go into the field to collect recyclables, which created a massive problem now for the municipality, because all of a sudden now you have all these, you know, temporary homes springing up all over the show, and we unfortunately had to cut that solution.

Sifiso Gumbi  16:30

So, what we now do is the trolleys that we roll out to reclaimers, they have personalized plates that have the waste picker’s nickname, you know, for relatability, and they also have a back panel that usually has a logo of, you know, whatever sponsor, you know, comes in to help us, you know, on a project that supports reclaimers. So what we found is that people really love the number plates and the look of the trolley, so it allows the public to get to know their neighborhood reclaimer without necessarily talking to them — because you see the trolley, it’s written “Sifiso,” then you’re like, oh, that guy is Sifiso, he’s been operating in my area the entire time. And then the other thing we have — we have GPS trackers fitted on each trolley, so as to track the movements of all the reclaimers. We are very big on data, so that we know where they are at any given time, and should there be any case in any neighborhood that they operate in, we are able to maybe, with authorities, share that. Okay, maybe at this point one of our reclaimers was there — perhaps ask him what happened there. So the reclaimers have become an added security feature, or like an intelligence network for civilians, you know, in that.

Mitch Ratcliffe  17:46

Could you also use that system to deploy people to where there is uncollected material?

Sifiso Gumbi  17:52

Absolutely, we can. As a matter of fact, we are getting requests, you know, from community associations to come and collect from them, so whenever they do, we just send through the nearest reclaimer.

Mitch Ratcliffe  18:07

You have the sorting and baling camps — are these sort of ad hoc homes for these communities of mobile workers? Tell us about how that works, and particularly, how do you aggregate enough material that you can pay them a better rate than the middlemen who would have purchased this material before?

Sifiso Gumbi  18:25

So we have recycling hubs that we’ve set up with the idea and clear understanding that, you know, most of the reclaimers we support not only just need collection equipment and PPE, but they also need working facilities where they can store their material and sort it. So now, what we have added into those facilities is processing machinery, so that the reclaimers don’t only just sort the material, but they are able to have access to a baling machine, which then compacts their material. And once the material is compacted, they can sell it to the recyclers, the recycling companies, at a better price, because they are no longer selling loose material.

So one thing we also organize for the reclaimers is corporate collection sites where they can collect from and have more access to waste. So we try and give them as much access to collection volumes as possible, because the more waste they collect, the more money they make. But the challenge is that we are only sitting on four recycling hubs so far, and there are so many waste collectors in Gauteng alone, not even mentioning in the country, so we’ve barely scratched the surface. So these recycling hubs are a great need for many of the other, you know, waste collectors, and it’s a bit of a challenge right now for us to, like, get access to land. And even if we do get access to land, we’re in constant need to perhaps get a funder to help us buy equipment, to help us set up the structures on site, and to bring in all the other necessary infrastructure to make a recycling hub operational.

Mitch Ratcliffe  20:07

I hear the beginning of an approach that would allow companies to partner with informal recyclers to collect even specialized materials, like e-waste, for instance, to create a local closed-loop system. But that also suggests that needs to happen everywhere. Do you see Urban Surfer as a model for an infrastructure to enable the circular economy globally?

Sifiso Gumbi  20:31

100%. So, the one thing that we’ve been able to crack on the ground is we have managed to become the bridge between the formal side of things and the informal side of things. So informal recycling people work as individuals — they are barely organized, they’re just concerned with their survival. So, how we’ve come in, we’ve now become the bridge between the private sector and the informal sector, we’ve become the bridge between the government and the reclaimers on the ground. So definitely, from what we have done in our own capacity, with a very small team and quite limited resources, I think our model is well proven and is well positioned to be the blueprint for replicating the same solution globally.

Mitch Ratcliffe  21:22

This is a fascinating opportunity. I want to take a quick commercial break, and we’re going to come back to continue the conversation. Stay tuned, folks.

Welcome back to Sustainability In Your Ear. Let’s continue the conversation with Sifiso Gumbi. He is the founder of Urban Surfer, which organizes informal recyclers in South Africa. Sifiso, the first time I became aware of informal trash pickers was actually in San Francisco, and it was common for older Asian women to pick bottles out of everybody’s trash before it was collected, just as you described earlier. But what I noticed is they all got on buses and then went to the most dangerous neighborhood in the city to sell their bottles, and I always wondered why nobody enabled them to drop it at an aggregation point where they would be able to collect sufficient volume to make a good profit on the material, while paying those women a fair rate for what they had collected. You’ve built this GPS-tracked trolley system, you’ve got live reporting — that’s a lot of technology for grassroots work. Following on the conversation we were having before the break, how do you see using technology, or technology’s ability to let us see into deep, complex problems, to organize a new recycling system?

Sifiso Gumbi  22:40

Listen, Mitch, we are living in a digital age, and I think the aggregation of data is quite essential, especially when you are dealing with projects like the ones we are involved in. Firstly, we saw it quite important for us to have a live data reporting system and also to fit GPS trackers on the trolleys of all the reclaimers that we support, because, one, if we are working with a project sponsor, we need to have a system that is able to measure the impact and the progress of each project that we have activated. It is important, one, to know how far waste pickers travel, where they collect, how frequently they collect from those neighborhoods. That, for one, gives us the pattern and actually gives us the general idea of, okay, which neighborhoods produce the most waste, because waste pickers only target the neighborhoods that produce the most waste, you know. So, for future reference, that data can help us maybe engage such communities more, and perhaps workshop them on how to better separate their waste, so that they help the reclaimers to collect more waste. Right.

Secondly, we record all the volumes that are brought in by our vast network of reclaimers. In all of our recycling hubs, we record the volumes of what recyclable materials they bring in — is it plastic, is it paper, and what quantity? And then, secondly, we record how much they’ve made from each recyclable item. So there’s a lot of, you know, solutions that have been brought in, like carbon credits, plastic credits, and because we already have all the data, we are in a position to bring those solutions in and have them as add-on incentives for reclaimers through the data that we collect from them — which includes the miles they cover, the volumes they recover — that can be packaged and perhaps accredited as a carbon credit that reclaimers can almost immediately start benefiting from, or it can also be credited as a plastic credit that waste pickers can start benefiting from, and which they should be benefiting from. They did the—

Mitch Ratcliffe  25:01

Work.

Sifiso Gumbi  25:02

They did the work, you know. So it was important for us to collect the data from the very beginning, so that when all of these solutions come to the fore, we already have all the data, and this is transparent data, this is real-time data. There’s absolutely no greenwashing, and these are accurate volumes. So, with that data, we are hoping maybe in the future to use it as leverage to have waste pickers benefit, you know, from all there is to benefit within the climate resilience and sustainability space.

Mitch Ratcliffe  25:38

You’re describing a remarkably advanced view into the reverse logistics economy, and I can imagine reclaimers organizing to address what we would think of in Uber terms as surge opportunities — a major football match, for instance — you could send people in to collect particular sets of material, and you have almost unprecedented visibility into local material flows. Are you also thinking about using that data as the basis for providing research, both to government and to corporations, about where those materials might be for profitable recovery?

Sifiso Gumbi  26:16

Absolutely. I mean, if we’re really talking about closing the loop, the best people to talk to, as far as R&D is concerned — let’s say you have a new product on the market, and you are looking for the best packaging solution. For one, the packaging for your product — you must make sure that it can be easily recovered for recycling, and the best people to engage on that are the waste pickers themselves, because they’ll tell you that, okay, this I can definitely recover, and this is how much I will get from it. So, if I’m well incentivized on that, you’ll definitely get to see the circular economy activated with whatever packaging material you put out into the environment. But because currently no one is really engaging, you know, the main volume drivers on the ground, people are mainly concerned with certifications, ISO standards, and this and that. But if you take a closer look at what is currently being produced as packaging material for most of the items that we consume as households, it’s only a limited portion that actually circles back into production. The rest is piling up in our landfills. And why is that? Because there isn’t any incentive for the waste pickers to collect that, you know, as a recyclable material. There isn’t.

Now, in South Africa, the best material, or the hot material, like, right now, to collect as a waste picker is aluminum cans. Aluminum cans are collected so effectively and aggressively, it is difficult to find one on the ground, just as it is difficult for one to pick up $1 in today’s economy, like, on the floor, right. Why is that? It is largely driven by the incentive behind collecting just a kilogram of aluminum cans. Currently, in South Africa, you collect a kilogram of aluminum cans, you can get up to 28 rand, or even 30 rand a kilo. Now, if you have 30 rand, that is enough to buy you a bunny chow and even a Coke.

Mitch Ratcliffe  28:23

What you’re describing is a world where we actually pay attention to the flow of materials, ultimately recognizing the value of the people who do that work. As you talked about earlier, the reclaimers face a lot of hardship — there’s the stigma of the job, the dirtiness of the job it’s associated with — but they’re harassed, a lot of them struggle with mental health issues because of the tensions of the work, and I found this in some of the philanthropic consulting I’ve done: people in many of these communities don’t trust outsiders. How do you help them work with these corporations in a way that they don’t feel like they potentially are going to be exploited?

Sifiso Gumbi  29:00

And that’s where we step in, you know. I get interviewed quite a lot. There’s a lot of media houses that want to come and interview, you know, reclaimers, you know, on site, but because they’ve been ridiculed and humiliated by the public so long, whenever someone comes and wants to stick a camera in their faces, it feels as if they are just parading them like freaks to the public, you know, because of the current stigma that is still active even today by the public. It is very difficult for them to trust anyone, and we have now established ourselves to a point where we are one of the main mouthpieces for them. And as much as I would like for them to open up a bit more, I think it will take more engagement on the ground — engagement by industry drivers, you know, CEOs, you know, ministers. We need to see more ministers visiting waste-picking camps. We need to see more CEOs engaging with waste pickers on the ground. They need to start feeling comfortable with the powers that be, even with the general public, you know, because they still aren’t, you know.

I still get a lot of, I still get a lot of hate, man. People say, “Hey, you need to make sure these people get out of the road, you need to get these people away. These people are vagrants, these people are dangerous.” You know, so we need a whole lot more engagement, we need a whole lot more interaction, you know, just with the public, with waste pickers, you know, at the heart of the discussions, at the heart of the engagement. I think we need to first get that right. We need a reconciliatory exercise: first reconcile the waste pickers with the public, and then reconcile the waste pickers with the policymakers, then reconcile the waste pickers with, you know, the relevant corporations that are interested in supporting their work. We need to get to that first before they can ease up to the idea of allowing anyone to come and be in the space and understand the work that they do.

Mitch Ratcliffe  31:00

Looking at projections about the value of the circular part of the economy — the collection and reuse components — the projections are, even just in the United States alone, between $1.5 and $2.2 trillion a year in value. Globally, it’s probably two or three times that. If you organize this class of people and give them the economic power, do you see those ministers in particular, but also corporate leaders, as feeling threatened by the rise of that power? Is that something that you need to help them overcome?

Sifiso Gumbi  31:37

They shouldn’t be threatened at all, Mitch. They shouldn’t be threatened. I think it’s an exciting opportunity. I think even for, you know, the corporations — I mean, as it is right now, Coca-Cola can tell you how many cold drink bottles or cans they produce, but they can’t tell you how many cold drink bottles or cans they’ve actually recovered back. They can only tell you the kilograms that they’ve recovered back, right, but they can’t really tell you how many of what they’ve produced that they’ve actually recovered back. They don’t even report along those lines, you understand. But if they were to start supporting reclaimers, they will know exactly that. If I produced one bottle of cold drink, right, and from the factory it left and it went to one province in South Africa, and it was bought by a client, perhaps, in that province — what happened to that bottle after the client was done consuming the contents of that Coke bottle? They will know right to a T, and they would know that, hey, that bottle registered back into our factory.

Mitch Ratcliffe  32:40

Well, and we’ve had conversations with GS1, which is the global nonprofit that runs the Universal Product Code system, and they have the ability now to track to unit level an individual can — we made it here, it was picked up here. Do you think that the reclaimers could scan every can that they picked up in order to get to that granularity of reporting that you’re describing?

Sifiso Gumbi  33:04

Absolutely, if they’re incentivized for it, definitely. Because, I mean, GS1 — I know about GS1 very well — but their technology, which is amazing, if you ask me, can only go so far. They are missing that element of including the people that are actually tasked, or appoint themselves, as the first responders to the waste.

Mitch Ratcliffe  33:27

There’s a bigger idea in everything we’re talking about, and that’s that the people already doing this work should be built into a new system rather than replaced by it. Absolutely. How do you think about reclaimers as the foundation for the real circular economy? And this kind of goes back to the question I was asking about the threat that ministers might feel. They also represent, as they organize and become more prosperous, a new voting bloc — or is that exactly the voting bloc that people should be thinking about cultivating, because it represents the future of our economy?

Sifiso Gumbi  33:57

Mitch, there’s already more than 100,000 reclaimers — I could say half a million, just a ballpark figure — here in South Africa. South Africa has a high unemployment rate, especially amongst the youth and women, you know. And already there’s this massive opportunity in waste. There’s a massive opportunity in waste that, if formalized, could really present an opportunity for people to sustain themselves at a massive scale. Right, what does that do for a government? The government can start accumulating data that they can use for their reports whenever they meet at the next COP in Geneva. They can use that data to say, okay, we have empowered X amount of people, and they are collecting X amount of waste, and as far as our carbon objectives and our climate action objectives are concerned, this is where we are, and this is where we’re going. But currently, right now, it’s a top-down approach where people are just making estimations at the top. There isn’t any real work that is being done to support those on the ground who are actually doing the real work, you know.

So, it’s an opportunity for the ministers, it’s an opportunity for the business people, it’s an opportunity for everyone. I think there isn’t any threat. If anything, there’s a big opportunity — there’s a really positive story, you know, to be achieved from all this, and South Africa has an opportunity to become the leading country as far as that is concerned. And that can be used as a blueprint, you know, to get all the other developing countries within Africa to also steer their climate objectives, their carbon objectives, and also, you know, deal with their high unemployment rate. You know, it gives us an opportunity also to explore other technologies and explore what other recyclable material we can get — you know, what can we do with carbon waste, what can we do with this, what can we do with that. But all it needs is just a little bit of support for those on the ground, you know, understanding the foundation, you know, of those dynamics, and then from there, a lot will be achieved, Mitch, I promise.

Mitch Ratcliffe  36:05

I am really struck, particularly, by the opportunity for youth and women to build the foundation for economic progress. We’ve had Georgie Badiel, the model, on several times, and she has run a program in Burkina Faso through the Georgie Badiel Foundation where women are trained to build local solar-powered water wells. But Georgie’s point is that once they have that income, that ability, and those skills, which they can sell in other contexts — so, you know, people in town need something fixed, now these women know how to do it — that drives local economies and women’s services, hairdressers, things like that. So you actually start laddering up the local opportunity. How do you see reclaiming as potentially a path out of poverty for a young person or a woman?

Sifiso Gumbi  36:50

Look, it was a path out of poverty for me, because I started in high school, Mitch. I was able to buy myself sneakers every now and then, you know, all due to the fact that I was, you know, I would say, ambitious enough to see that, okay, I could make a bit of money from collecting scrap metal, you know — and I bought my first smartphone from that. So, there’s a real opportunity for families to feed themselves. There’s a real opportunity for even varsity students to, you know, be able to support themselves while going through varsity. There’s an opportunity for one to even establish a career in this thing, because, you know, I’m here, you know, getting interviewed by you today because I walked the journey, you know. I established a career for myself within it, so you can even grow within recycling, because, you know, it’s not just recycling — there’s a broader activity even beyond that.

Mitch Ratcliffe  37:46

The economy extends into that population, the population contributes back to the economy. It’s a virtuous circle.

Sifiso Gumbi  37:53

Absolutely. It’s really an opportunity that is so untapped, and it’s just waiting for everyone to come to the party.

Mitch Ratcliffe  38:06

Sifiso, when you’re standing in front of an audience, like when you presented at TEDx, what do you want people to take away? What’s the most important point that you would like them to understand about the opportunity that we’re talking about?

Sifiso Gumbi  38:18

What I really try and perhaps galvanize people around is to start caring about how we — or how you, as the public — affect the environment that we live in. You know, we live in a world where everyone is concerned about the materialistic value of everything. No one is really concerned about the material once they’ve had their way with it, or once they’ve used it, you know — out of sight, out of mind. You buy the bar of chocolate today, open it up, eat it, you throw away the wrapper. What memory do you keep? How sweet the chocolate was, how delicious it was. But no one ever pays any attention to what happens to the wrapper, because once you’ve put it in the bin, it’s out of sight, out of mind. Right now, there is a group of people that are actually concerned with what happens to that wrapper — that chocolate wrapper that you toss in the bin — because that wrapper is their livelihood. That’s their salary, that’s their bread.

What I want people to see is that those people are not vagrants, those people are not animals — those people are actually essential. I always equate their value to that of bees, because without bees there’s no pollination, without pollination there’s no plants, and with no plants, we all die. Without waste pickers there’s no recycling — yeah, in South Africa, you know, it’s a fact. Without waste pickers there’s no recycling, and without recycling, then all the landfills would have been filled up by now. Joburg is running out of landfill space. Gauteng, as a whole, is running out of landfill space. South Africa, as a whole, is in trouble, you know, with landfill space, and the only people that are delaying the crisis are waste pickers. So, what I always try and get people to see is that, hey, those people matter.

Mitch Ratcliffe  40:13

Dignity for a set of critical workers whose work is not currently recognized, but such an important mission. What’s next for Urban Surfer, and how can people find out more about the program and support the work?

Sifiso Gumbi  40:27

We are trying to get as much support to replicate, you know, the model nationally. We want to touch as many lives as we can, we want to support as many reclaimers as we can, equip as many reclaimers as we can. So, as far as the mission goes, what we’re largely focused on right now is just expanding nationally within the next few years, and perhaps, you know, throughout Africa, to also start supporting the other reclaimers, even outside of our borders.

Mitch Ratcliffe  40:59

Can people simply send financial support to help you accelerate the project?

Sifiso Gumbi  41:04

You know, that is actually something we’ve never thought about, like GoFundMe. We’ve never had, like, a donation wallet. We always, like — maybe whenever we find a project, we identify a group of reclaimers that need to be supported. What we would do then is we draft the proposal, and then we’d approach maybe corporate SA, or perhaps government, or perhaps public benefit organizations, or PBOs, or NPOs to say, hey, can you come in and support us? We’ve never really thought about how we can perhaps get the public involved as far as donating to the cause, you know. So, maybe that’s something worth considering.

Mitch Ratcliffe  41:39

I certainly think your site is packed with insight that people would be happy to support, and so I encourage you to think about that. But Sifiso, this has been an absolutely inspiring conversation. I thank you for your time.

Sifiso Gumbi  41:52

Thank you for providing the platform, Mitch, and for helping us, you know, crystallize, you know, the message and get it out there to the masses. I really appreciate the time and the opportunity. Thank you, Mitch.

Mitch Ratcliffe  42:11

Welcome back to Sustainability In Your Ear. You’ve been listening to my conversation with Sifiso Gumbi. He is the founder of Urban Surfer South Africa, the Johannesburg-based social enterprise that equips, organizes, and advocates for the informal waste reclaimers who recover most of that country’s recyclable material. And you can learn more about Sifiso’s work at urbansurfer.co.za. It’s a great site — check it out. There’s a lot of fascinating stories.

Let’s start with the fact that reframes our perspective on recycling, because we look at this from an advanced recycling — even though it needs a lot of work — perspective here in the United States. Between 80% and 90% of South Africa’s post-consumer plastic and paper that actually gets recycled is recovered by informal waste pickers, and that’s according to the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. Sifiso put it plainly: the municipal system collects waste simply to dispose of it, and reclaimers collect it for the value, and that value is passed on to the rest of society in the form of materials that stay in circulation. The country has a recycling rate at all because more than 100,000 people decided, one trolley at a time, that other people’s bins were their livelihood. Now, it’s not a glamorous job, but neither was recycling when it started in the United States, and frankly, it probably isn’t considered that glamorous by most people today. South Africa’s system was self-organized over 30 years while the government ignored the issue, and Sifiso’s 15 years inside it began at age 19, when scrap metal collected after school bought him his first smartphone.

Material recovery is driven by incentives, and the proof is lying on the ground — or rather, it isn’t, as Sifiso said. Aluminum cans fetch 28 to 30 rand per kilogram in South Africa right now, and reclaimers collect them so thoroughly that he says finding one on the street is as rare as finding a $1 bill on the sidewalk. Materials with weak incentives pile up in landfills, and Johannesburg and Gauteng are running out of space. The lesson is simple: if you’re a company that doesn’t want to bury its customers in waste, when you’re designing your packaging to be recovered, ask the waste pickers what they’ll bend down for, and what picking it up must pay for them to be attracted to do so. They are the R&D department that nobody consults. And meanwhile, brands chase certifications without constructing the reverse logistics infrastructure that makes a recyclability claim legitimate. There’s so many things labeled as recyclable, but you have to have a system nearby you in order for it to be collected and processed. As extended producer responsibility programs expand, the incentive structures at the street level will determine whether those policies result in more material recovery or just more paperwork.

Next, let’s talk about that data layer that Sifiso talked about. Urban Surfer fitted GPS trackers to its trolleys, and they log every kilogram by material type and price across all of its recycling hubs. Sifiso built that infrastructure before carbon credits and plastic credits arrived on the market, and that means when those instruments mature, reclaimers hold verified, real-time records of work that they’ve already performed. As he said, we can have a recycling system with no greenwashing, based on actual transparent data that everybody could see. That’s the same verification standard that my recent guest, Martin Johnston of EarthRating.ai, argued that sustainability reporting lacks, and here it’s being built from the ground up by the people with the most to gain from that information being believed. The unit-level vision could go even further. A beverage company today can report kilograms recovered — it’s referred to generally as mass balance reporting — but it can’t tell you how many of its own bottles, or which bottles, actually came back. Reclaimers scanning what they collect as they collect it could close that reporting gap, but they need to be paid for that data, and it’s not expensive.

And the last and most important idea is that dignity is a design requirement, not a slogan, when building a circular economy.

Mitch Ratcliffe  46:12

Urban Surfer trolleys carry personalized number plates with each reclaimer’s nickname, so a neighborhood comes to know them as workers rather than strangers to fear. And the hard limits that Sifiso points out are trust and scale. Integration of last-mile services — or, in the circular context, the first mile of that return journey that packaging takes — requires a reconciliation of the public, policymakers, and recycling workers, and it’s time to unlock these opportunities to collect and keep materials in use, as well as pay a fair rate, to keep our world cleaner than it currently is. A circular economy can be built on the people who already live it, and that’s the argument that Urban Surfer makes with data, trolleys, and baling machines. So, we’ll be watching whether that model can be replicated nationally and across Africa, and whether EPR rebates and plastic credits actually reach the hands doing the collecting. Stay tuned.

If this conversation changed how you’ll think the next time that you toss a wrapper, share it with someone else who needs to meet the people on the other side of the bin. And you can help the show, too, with a rating or review on Apple Podcasts or any of the podcast host sites. You folks are the amplifiers who spread more ideas to create less waste, and our archive of more than 550 episodes is waiting on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Audible, or whatever purveyor of podcast goodness you prefer. Thanks for your support. We really appreciate you helping spread the word.

I’m Mitch Ratcliffe. This is Sustainability In Your Ear, and we will be back with another innovator interview soon. In the meantime, folks, take care of yourself, take care of one another, and let’s all take care of this beautiful planet of ours. Have a green day.

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