Turkey’s plan to recycle more has made life hard for its informal waste pickers

Turkey’s 500,000 or so informal waste pickers carry out around 80% of the recycling in the country. These workers, who are also known as çekçekçi, are essential for separating out waste in a country where this is rarely done at source.

But their lives are precarious. Most of them are unregistered, lack social security, and have no access to basic services such as healthcare. And now they find themselves affected by efforts that formalise Turkey’s waste management system.

Many of the workers are migrants. But large-scale immigration over recent years, particularly from conflict zones such as Afghanistan and Syria, has contributed to a rise in nationalistic sentiment throughout the country.

This has seen immigrants – and particularly waste pickers – portrayed in a negative fashion. Waste pickers have, for instance, been labelled “şehir eşkıyası” (urban bandits) by the media. And many people have argued that Turkiye’s informal waste-picking practices should come to an end.

Yavuz Eroğlu, the president of a non-profit organisation called PAGÇEV that promotes plastic recycling in Turkey, pointed out recently that the country’s “real problem” is its informal waste collection system. In Eroğlu’s view, informal waste picking impedes the effective scaling of recycling initiatives and prevents Turkey from improving its position in the global recycling market.

Recycling facilities in Turkey require a steady and substantial supply of raw waste materials to function efficiently. But, according to the Turkish Statistics Institution, a mere 12% of the country’s municipal waste was recovered in 2018 – and it is not clear how much of this was actually recycled. This is not nearly enough to keep recycling companies afloat.

So, in an effort to improve Turkey’s domestic waste management, the Turkish government launched an initiative in 2022 to regulate and formalise waste collection. The legislation requires that local authorities work exclusively with licensed recyclers and registered pickers to sort through and sell waste.

Resistance movements have subsequently emerged within the çekçekçi community that advocate for the rights and recognition of informal waste pickers in Turkey. These movements have either reinforced the importance of existing waste picker collectives, or led to the creation of new non-profit organisations and cooperatives.

In Istanbul, for example, the Şişli municipality launched an environmental waste collectors cooperative in 2023 in an attempt to formally integrate informal waste pickers into the municipal waste management system.

This has involved registering waste pickers, issuing official identification cards, and providing them with access to designated waste collection zones. Similar models have also emerged in different parts of the country. But many of Turkey’s waste pickers remain locked out of the new formal system.

The framing of informality as the problem is not new, nor is it limited to representatives of Turkey’s plastic recycling industry. In August 2021, the governor of Istanbul’s office ordered a crackdown on informal waste collection activities.

Police carried out raids on nearly 100 waste collection depots and seized 650 collection carts. More than 200 people were detained in the raids, including 145 Afghan migrants who were sent to a deportation centre.

The governor’s office justified the action by citing environmental and public health concerns, as well as the unregulated nature of employment in informal waste picking. In a statement, the office argued that unauthorised waste collection leads to unfair profits and announced that inspections would continue.

Waste workers responded by criticising the governor’s claims and expressed frustration over being labelled as benefiting from unfair profits while living in precarious conditions without social security or a stable income.

Importing more waste

In fieldwork carried out between March and April 2024, I spoke with representatives of waste collectors, junk shop owners and waste traders in Istanbul.

Some reported that there had been a decline in waste-picking rates since the crackdown of 2021. Waste collectors and their representatives expressed concerns that this decline could lead to a further reduction in domestic recycling rates and increase the reliance of recycling facilities on imported waste.

Turkey is already one of the largest importers of waste from Europe. In 2022, for example, Turkey accounted for 39% of Europe’s waste exports, which included around 400,000 tonnes of plastic.

This waste has serious consequences for the environment and human health. A Greenpeace report published in 2022 found that toxins released from Turkey’s plastic waste end up in the fruit and vegetables produced in the Çukurova valley, one of the most fertile valleys in the world.

A continued decline in domestic waste collection in Turkey would create a vicious cycle. The value of Turkey’s own waste will decrease, further impoverishing informal waste pickers, all while the country’s reliance on imported waste grows to sustain its recycling infrastructure.

The future of informal waste picking in Turkey remains uncertain. But as the country continues to formalise its waste management system, the challenges facing the sector’s informal workers must not be ignored.

Tulin Dzhengiz receives funding from Manchester Metropolitan University's Research Accelarator Grant to carry out this research.