 We're on our way to Kailicha this morning, where we're going to meet a group of reclamers. They collect recyclable materials and then sell them back in order to earn a livelihood. These are one of the more common types of informal workers in cities around the world. We hope to understand how they've actually coped with the pandemic and what sort of supports they need. How many reclamers work in Kailicha? I see thousands. The most people who minimize their waste in our community, it's our reclamers. What does a typical day look like? We wake up every day in the morning. We collect and go and store some other reclamers, use the open space, some they use in their small yards. So this is the household waste from informal housing, where they have to take it here. Before the pickup truck comes, we have to make sure we wake up early. So you want to sort out the recyclables before the municipal truck comes and takes it all away? Yeah, we take everything that we need. So this is the first stage of the process. This is raw household waste. They're looking for things like plastics, cardboard, tins, glass, any other type of recyclables that they can put together in bags to take to the buy-back center. This is a container that informal cyclists should have to repair their trash in there, but sometimes they close it. So people are just dumping informally, and the reclamers are coming to find whatever they can. What is the thing that government could do to make the work easier for reclamers? The government can help us about separating the recyclable stuff. So really just some basic infrastructure, if it was laid out more efficiently in a more organized way, they could actually collect quite a bit more materials. Yeah, and save their time. And time is money. My name is Petros. This has come from the house to take the plastic, but we don't take the dirty things. We work very hard for those people who've got transport. Last time I get 400 rand. That 400 rand I'm supposed to give that person 250. But it's me who are waking up early in the morning. So this is a receipt from the buy-back center. 40 kilograms of recyclable material, plastics here, and they got 120 rand, and that doesn't include the transportation costs that they had to pay just to get it to the center. The most important way to help you would be to organize transport. Is that right? If you help us with the transport, and you take that stuff with our own transport, it's better because they abuse us about the money. This is a public space where we're standing now. Yeah, it's just a public space. So this is a figure here. Since I mixed them, this is HD. But they have to be separated for the buy-back center. And can you do the sorting here? Or do you need to take it somewhere else? No, I do the sorting there. How much could you get for this at the buy-back center? Never, you can just get 200 here. How long would it take you to fill up this bag? 23 days. So every two weeks then you would organize for transport to come and take to the buy-back center? Yes. And how much do you each pay for transport? If it was 6,000, we pay 50 rand each. So 25% of just this bag here goes to transport? Yeah. I have to just collect and estimate last time I make this when I go to the buy-back center. No, the places are down just like that. So you might arrive expecting to take home 2,000 rand and you find out only when you get there that it's 1,000 rand instead. During COVID, did you get any support from government? Nothing. During COVID, nothing from us because it's just collecting and store. No selling, not so long ago. I lost a bag because people are stealing stuff. We just met our last year. So that's when we start to be recognized as workers. So the card that you get from registration will help identify you as a reclaimer that's working? Yes. They say it's going to give us access to private setters to get the material. I'm not the kind of person who's going to steal something. I'm just working this, I'm doing this as I live. And is that the government that's involved with the registration or is that... No, we're moving forward. With their support, maybe we're moving far. This work at the best of times is really tough. They were working during COVID. They were collecting all these recyclables but they had nowhere to sell them and therefore no income for their homes, for their families. But Cia's telling me there is a glimmer of hope. These reclamers working in this area are part of a registration drive which will connect them to an extended producer responsibility scheme which will top up their income. The big companies that make the recyclable materials put their money in a pot and that money goes to support the reclamers that end up recycling the materials. What I'm taking from my time with Cia is how little support these workers have as they provide what is an essential service to the community and the city. The key takeaway for me is that there are some easy policy wins here in South Africa that other countries could consider.