Have you ever wondered where a plastic bottle goes after you finish drinking it, or where a single-use plastic bag ends up once it leaves your hands? More importantly, through whose hands does it pass along the way?

Before a piece of waste ever reaches a truck, someone has already gone through it by hand to see what is worth keeping. Before it reaches a bin, someone has picked out what they need. And long after it has been collected, someone is still living where it ends up. Lao PDR's waste moves through the hands of people whose contributions often go unseen, despite the essential role they play in keeping communities clean. 

Some begin their mornings behind the wheel of a waste truck, collecting what the city leaves behind. Others navigate crowded streets on motorcycles pulling oversized bags of plastic bottles and cardboard, gathering recyclables one stop at a time. And some spend their days on landfill hillsides, waiting for the next truck to arrive before sorting through what society has thrown away. They may not perform the same kind of task. They may not want the same things. However, they provide essential services, moving waste and helping prevent pollution from reaching our communities, forests and rivers. 

And this is what happens before the truck and after the bin. 

Aiy Laem: Moving with the truck

Aiy Laem knows Pakse's waste management system like the back of his hand. He is the second generation of a family working in the city's waste management sector and has spent all 39 years of his life around the business. “If asked whether I want to be anything else,” he says, “this is all I know.”

“The landfill came after us,” he says. “We were there way before the landfill came to be.”

Aiy Laem has driven a collection truck for eight years as he works alongside relatives and colleagues who share the same cab. He covers four village areas along the city’s main street twice a day, with each trip carrying close to ten tonnes of waste to a landfill twenty minutes away. 

Aiy Laem’s regular shift runs from 6 AM to 2 PM, though during festival periods it may start at 3 AM and continue well into the evening. For his team and himself, time off is limited, and taking a sick day often means earning less. The aging truck he depends on frequently breaks down, while problems such as flooded access roads and leaking leachate can bring operations to a halt. In those moments, Aiy Laem and his team are expected to find a way forward, often through manual labor and perseverance. 

Aiy Laem’s experiences reflect a much wider issue that exists within the country’s waste collection and management system. Only around half of the households on his routes pay the waste fee intended to support collection services. With limited revenue flowing back into the system, waste collection providers often struggle to maintain equipment, improve services, and provide better support for frontline workers. Nationally, waste collection reaches an estimated 55 percent of urban households and 17 percent of rural households, leaving significant amounts of waste outside the formal system. Waste left uncollected is often burned or dumped, while workers like Aiy Laem continue to operate long hours with aging equipment and limited protection to keep services running.

Having spent his life in the sector, Aiy Laem sees the need for a stronger and more modern waste management system. He hopes to see improved equipment, safer working conditions, and the support necessary for waste collection workers to perform their role effectively and with dignity.

Yet Aiy Laem is only one part of the journey. Long before waste reaches his truck, materials have often passed through the hands of informal collectors. And even after his truck unloads at the landfill, others continue searching for value among what remains.

Euay Vilay: Making a life where the waste settles 

The road to Kuang Si Falls is known for leading visitors to one of Luang Prabang's most iconic destinations. For eighteen years, Euay Vilay has traveled the same road, but her destination is very different. Instead of the blue waters of the falls, she arrives at the nearby landfill, where the city's waste becomes a source of livelihood for her, her family, and many others who work there. 

Euay Vilay spends most of her days waiting for trucks to arrive. When a new load of waste is dumped, she goes in to open the bags and sort through what can still be sold. Aluminum, scrap metal, and other higher-value materials are worth picking out. Other items, including some plastics, are increasingly rejected by buyers or bring in too little to justify the effort. 

Her work hours vary depending on the weather. She starts at daybreak and works until around 8 AM, when the heat becomes difficult to bear. She returns again at around 3 PM and continues until dark. In cooler months, she can work longer hours, yet during the rainy season, the smell of leachate becomes stronger, making the work even harder. The working conditions are difficult and often unsafe for waste pickers like Euay Vilay. She works with broken glass, sharp metal, smoke, fires, and mixed waste that may contain hazardous materials. To protect herself, she wears what she can: a bright orange vest, long sleeves, long pants, boots, and a hat against the sun. But protective clothing can only do so much, as the community has limited sanitation, unreliable access to electricity and clean water, and only occasional medical support to rely on. Even so, for most people, the cottage at the landfill is more than a workplace; it is where they cook, rest, and spend much of their daily life. 

Euay Vilay's experience reflects a wider reality for many informal waste workers. They recover materials that still have value and help keep them in circulation, but their position in the system remains fragile. They do not control the price of what they collect. Buyers decide what will be accepted and how much it is worth. When prices fall, or when certain materials are rejected, waste pickers absorb the loss directly, even when the work remains just as hard.

Her earnings support her three children, and much of how she organizes her life revolves around them. Although formal employment has been suggested to her before, she is reluctant to give up the flexibility that allows her to balance work and family responsibilities. For her, being able to decide when to work, when to rest, and when to return home is part of how she manages her life.

For Euay Vilay, that flexibility is important and worth holding onto, even when the work itself remains uncertain.

"It's all up to you to work hard," she says. "When you put in honest work, any job is a good job."

Mae Bang-On: Recovering value before the bin

Across Vientiane, Mae Bang-On travels from village to village on her motorcycle, hauling a sack of plastic bottles and recyclable materials that are often bigger than she is. The oversized load slows her down, makes navigating traffic difficult, and exposes her to the same road hazards faced by any vehicle, only with far less protection. Yet, it does not stop her from being ahead of the collection truck, as she gathers cardboard, tin, plastic, and glass before these materials reach a bin. 

Mae Bang-On has lived with a disability since a fire injured her leg when she was three years old. However, it does not stop her from roaming the street. 

Unlike Aiy Laem and Euay Vilay, Mae Bang-On does not work within a fixed route or schedule. Instead, she has built her livelihood on trust and relationships within the communities she serves. Over the years, she has encouraged households to separate recyclable materials instead of mixing them with general waste. As she mentioned, doing so makes her work safer, easier, and more efficient. Many households and street vendors who know what she collects set materials aside specifically for her and call when they have enough to be picked up, whether during the day or late into the evening. 

Mae Bang-On's experience highlights a less visible part of the waste management system. Recycling depends not only on infrastructure and collection services, but also on cooperation, awareness, and everyday actions taken by communities.  Through the relationships she has built, Mae Bang-On demonstrates how these connections can help keep valuable materials in circulation  and prevent them from becoming waste in the first place.

Every bottle she recovers is one less bottle heading to a landfill. Every sack of recyclables she collects helps reduce the volume of waste that must be transported, dumped, or burned. In doing so, workers like Mae Bang-On help extend the lifespan of disposal sites, conserve valuable resources, and reduce pressure on the environment.

Yet the value created by workers like Mae Bang-On is not always reflected in their livelihoods. She is part of a much larger informal recovery network, most of whom are women. Informal waste pickers recover an estimated 19 percent of Lao PDR's plastic waste, helping to fill gaps left by formal collection systems. In Vientiane alone, around 6,000 people work informally in waste recovery, often with limited protection and recognition. At the same time, their incomes remain highly dependent on market conditions. Falling recycling prices and changing buyer preferences mean materials that were once valuable can suddenly become difficult to sell. For workers like Mae, the work remains the same, but the income is far less certain.

Still, like Euay Vilay, she values the independence her work provides and the role it allows her to play in her community. Her request was simple: 

“I’d like to advise the youth to put their waste in the bin properly,” she says. “If only they knew how hard it is to pick it out.”

Different Work, Different Needs, Equal Dignity

The stories of Aiy Laem, Euay Vilay, and Mae Bang-On reveal different faces of Lao PDR's waste management system, a system that relies on people as much as infrastructure. Aiy Laem keeps the collection system moving and hopes for safer working conditions and more reliable equipment. Euay Vilay has built a livelihood where the city's waste settles and values the flexibility that helps her balance work and family life. Mae Bang-On recovers recyclables before they enter the waste stream and wants greater appreciation for the effort behind that work. This means collection trucks, recycling markets, landfills and households are all connected, yet gaps in financing, infrastructure, and public awareness often leave frontline workers carrying a disproportionate share of burden.

None of these needs require the same solution. But they do require the same principle: treating the people who are already moving, sorting, and recovering this country's waste as workers worth investing in, not a problem to be managed around.

The next time a bottle leaves your hand, someone is already on their way to pick it up.