LocationsThe Invisible Backbone of Pakistan’s Waste Sector
July 1, 2026
On the outskirts of Peshawar, the smell of rotting food and decaying plastic clings to your throat miles before you reach the source: a dumpsite where the entire city’s trash collects on open ground. For most, this is a place to avoid. But for Sajid, it has been his workplace for nearly 25 years.
Every day before noon, he changes into a set of clothes reserved only for this place. Piece by piece, he begins sifting through piles of decomposed garbage to collect plastic bottles, broken glass and discarded packaging. By late afternoon, if he is lucky, he will have collected recyclable material to earn around PKR 1,200 to 1,500 (around US$4), barely enough to keep his household afloat for a day.
“If I don’t come,” Sajid says, squinting through the harsh sun, “I wouldn’t be able to earn for my home that day.”
The sole breadwinner for a family of seven, including his elderly mother, wife and four children – for whom he dreams of a completely different fate – Sajid did not choose this profession. Necessity chose it for him. Sajid's experience is far from unique. Across Pakistan, an estimated thousands of informal waste workers perform similar labour every day, quietly sustaining the country's recycling economy while remaining largely absent from official waste management systems.
The Shadows of the Recycling System
The unsung drivers of Pakistan’s recycling ecosystem, informal workers recover a significant share of waste, including over 60% of PET bottles that would otherwise choke landfills, burn into toxic smoke or leak into our waterways. Yet, their contribution remains largely invisible in urban planning and policy dialogues.
They operate without formal contracts, income security, occupational protection or social safety nets. At the dumpsite, the disparity is hard to ignore. Municipal workers move with heavy machinery, uniforms, and protective gear. Next to them, informal workers dig through the same filth with bare hands.
“I buy my own gloves and mask when I can afford them,” explains Sajid. “Otherwise, I cannot work here safely.”
The cost of invisibility is often paid in health. Constant exposure to harmful gases from decomposed organic waste, smoke from open burning of waste, and dust causes serious respiratory illnesses, eye and skin infections, and elevated long-term cancer risk. With no healthcare coverage, even a single day off means losing food on the table for the entire family.
For women in this workforce, the cost runs higher still. They often earn half of what men do for the same labor and the same exposure, while navigating a lack of safe spaces, absent sanitation facilities and limited access to the resale networks that determine a fair price.
The Human Cost of Invisibility
Beyond physical hardship and systemic exclusion lies a quieter, heavier burden of societal stigma, shaping how these workers are perceived in their own communities. The stigma cuts deeper for women, with harassment and deep-rooted cultural discrimination layered onto an already precarious reality.
Back at the dumpsite, Sajid declines to be photographed. He fears his family might discover the truth about his daily work. They know he works with waste, but not the full extent of what that work looks like.
“They think I’m a simple scrap collector,” he shares softly.
His hesitation highlights a deep irony of our society: an essential service to the planet is rarely acknowledged with dignity.
Redesigning the Circular Chain
Stories like Sajid's reveal why technical solutions alone are insufficient. Conversations on plastic pollution cannot remain limited to recycling targets or infrastructure expansion. A true circular economy depends not only on systems, but also on the people already working in them.
Globally, there is growing recognition that integrating informal waste workers into formal systems improves recycling efficiency while strengthening livelihoods and social protection. This requires inclusion in municipal contracts, provision of personal protective equipment (PPE) and occupational safety, access to healthcare and sanitation services, and structured linkages with recycling enterprises.
In Pakistan, a shift is emerging through the National Plastic Action Partnership (NPAP), a multistakeholder platform under the Global Plastic Action Partnership (GPAP) led by the World Economic Forum and implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) as the national Secretariat.
NPAP Pakistan brings together government, private sector, civil society and innovators to address plastic pollution through evidence-based planning and circular economy approaches. It has supported the development of Pakistan’s National Plastic Action Roadmap and a complementary Financing Roadmap, outlining priority interventions and financing mechanisms for a circular plastics future. Importantly, it recognizes the role of informal waste workers as the backbone of our recycling systems.
Just Transition to a Circular Future
To ground these national frameworks in local realities, NPAP Pakistan conducted stakeholder workshops in Peshawar and Hyderabad, engaging government departments and civil society organizations dedicated to the inclusion of informal waste workers. Beyond dialogues, NPAP Pakistan also provided capacity building for 25 informal waste workers focused on occupational safety, improved segregation and gender-responsive practices in Hyderabad. Crucially, over 20 female informal waste workers were integrated into ALTAS Pakistan – a waste collection, sorting and recycling enterprise that processes plastic waste into durable materials such as manhole covers. This transition provided them with stable incomes, safer working conditions and formal recognition, demonstrating that integrating informal workers can strengthen both livelihoods and recycling performance.
“Before, our livelihood felt unstable,” shares Nadia, one of the integrated workers. “Now we are earning better and for the first time, our work feels respected.”
These efforts are beginning to reshape how informal waste workers are recognized, laying the foundation for more inclusive systems. However, for Pakistan’s circular economy transition to be truly just, the government, municipalities and private sector need to move beyond viewing informal waste workers as peripheral actors and instead design systems that formally recognize their role.
Every recycled bottle tells two stories: one about protecting the environment, and another about the people whose labor makes that protection possible. Pakistan’s transition to a circular economy will ultimately be judged not only by the amount of plastic it recycles, but by whether it creates a system that recognises, protects and values the workers who have quietly sustained recycling all along.
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Names have been changed to protect identities.
Written by:
Rabiya Kamran, Project Communications Support Officer, Climate Resilience Programme, UNDP Pakistan