Supporting decent livelihoods through sustainable service provision: Lessons on solid waste management from Kampala, Uganda

Better waste management could cut up to a fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions, making it an essential part of delivering the Paris climate agreement. A waste management strategy which supports the 15 to 20 million people who informally work in the waste sector globally can also contribute to achieving the first Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of ending poverty, and the eighth SDG of decent work for all. Partnerships with community-based organisations and small enterprises involved in waste management can generate multiple economic and social benefits in a sector otherwise notorious for appalling conditions and the vulnerability of workers. This paper offers lessons from Kampala, Uganda, where community-based organisations and small enterprises play an important role in municipal solid waste management, especially in informal settlements. One example from Kampala is the Luchacos cooperative, which uses organic waste to produce biomass briquettes – an energy source for cooking that simultaneously reduces both urban air pollution and deforestation. If the Luchacos model could be scaled up to replace half of all charcoal use in Kampala, almost 12,000 additional people would find employment in the biomass briquette industry. Similarly, the private firm Plastic Recycling Industries (PRI) contracts 120 community-based organisations and small enterprises to collect almost one-fifth of Kampala’s plastic waste. 80 percent of the 1,200 employees contracted by these organisations are women, who earn nearly three times as much as they would working as individual waste pickers. Both Luchacos and PRI work closely with the Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA). These examples from Kampala highlight how national governments can improve and expand solid waste management services by supporting municipalities to take a more strategic, multi-stakeholder approach to waste management. They can stimulate positive social and economic impacts by designing a framework which requires the systematic inclusion and support of community-based and small-scale enterprises in waste management processes, rather than only seeking partnerships with large private firms. This could involve establishing procurement policies that are more accessible for community-based organisations and small enterprises, providing public land for waste sorting, facilitating links between formal and informal operations, and reforming regulation to favour locally-led initiatives over large-scale technologic