Switching Managua on! Connecting informal settlements to the formal city through household waste collection

Abstract

This paper explores the organizing of household solid waste management collection and disposal practices in informal settlements. It is based on a case study of an NGO project that supports Manos Unidas (Joined Hands), an informal waste picker cooperative in Managua, Nicaragua. Using horse carts, these waste pickers collect household solid waste from informal settlements where there was no previous regular, official waste collection. Unlike many development projects, which try to control people’s agency, the support examined here focused on the residents of illegal neighbourhoods and the waste pickers, who themselves became city constructors and co-producers of basic services such as household waste collection rather than service recipients of aid programmes or municipal governments. By slightly changing the actions of the actors already involved in informal waste handling in the informal settlements, the project succeeded in transforming an agent of pollution into the solution to several interconnected problems, namely illegal dumping by the cart-men and residents, the cart-men’s low and irregular incomes and the lack of household waste collection services.