Tunisian children earn money and help environment by collecting and sorting plastic

2006-10-27

Poor Tunisian children are taking advantage of a government programme to clean up the environment. They scour dumpsters and alleys for plastic refuse, which they bring to a collector for a small weekly sum.

By Jamel Arfaoui for Maghrebia in Tunis -- 27/10/06

[File] Tunisian children taking advantage of the government clean-up programme

Last year, the Tunisian National Environmental Protection Agency began a national plan to raise awareness of the importance of preserving the environment, recycling and dealing with plastic waste, consumption and pollution.

A specific plan for combating plastic waste was created under the Declaration of 2005 (National Year for Battling Plastic Waste Pollution in Tunisia).

Young, impoverished children are taking the most advantage of the opportunity to make small amounts of money.

Every morning, children from local slums fetch plastic material from dumpsters. They vie with animals for objects and are sometimes pursued by a waiter disturbed by their shouts and arguments when checking dumpsters behind shops and restaurants.

Bilal, Aymen, Jamel, Munji, and Mutaz often gather early in front of the Hajj Boubakr coffee shop in the slums of Tunis' Khemis district, which is on the fringes of the upscale Gazala district, home to high-level government officials. The spot where they gather is only metres from the residence of Childhood Minister Salwa Ayachi Labben, a fierce defender of children's and women's rights.

Bilal Othmani, a 12-year-old, told Magharebia about the process.

"We do that [gather] temporarily. The need to confront stray dogs that compete with us makes it necessary. After driving away the dogs, this alliance collapses, and we compete with each other."

With their bare hands and faces exposed to garbage, the children complete the sorting within a few minutes.

They race to finish by 10 a.m., when municipal trucks arrive to empty the dumpsters.

After sorting through the dumpsters, the children then scatter in different directions to search back streets, coffee shops and restaurants. The task becomes progressively harder as the blue bags became heavier and fuller, until some of the children are barely visible beneath their bags.

Aymen Daridi notes, "The heavier the bag gets, the happier I am, because this means the hunt was plentiful. Fatigue doesn't concern me because I have become used to that."

"Each of us here has his speciality. Mine is heavy plastic articles, such as appliances. Mutaz collects bottle caps. The others collect mineral water and soda bottles. Milk bottles are set aside, as we only use them if necessary, because they are extremely filthy," explains Aymen.

[File] Plastic bottles fill bags quickly, but provide little weight.

Gathering bottle caps is the most profitable, as one bag can hold more than ten kilograms. Bottles quickly fill the bag and weigh no more than three kilograms. One kilogram of used plastic sells for three dinars.

Kamal Ayari said the best daily weight he had gotten since beginning work was six kilograms.

When asked if he collected plastic to protect the environment or for the money, Bilal responded, "It's to protect our pockets from poverty. We don't get an allowance from our families like other children."

His 14-year-old friend Mutaz does note, "I realise plastic is one of the enemies of the sea and the green zones, for our teacher informed us of that last year."

"Uncle" Shazli Assaghir, a retiree, jokingly called the children "moving bags". He observes them every morning and encourages them to "get used to providing for themselves rather than wasting time quarrelling in the streets, which have become clean thanks to their work".

The children, between age nine and 14, sell what they find to a plastic material collection site in the heart of their poor district.

Collection shop owner Samir Shandoul gives the children a receipt each day indicating the quantity collected by each.

On Saturday evening, he awaits them with a calculator in hand to pay them for what they collected during the course of the week.

"In the beginning, I was paying them daily, but I noticed they would spend what little money they earned -- between 1.8 dinars and three dinars -- to buy ice pops and cool drinks or at internet cafes. But when I started paying them on a weekly basis, the respectable sum of money they earned encouraged them to save," he says.

Bilal boasts that he bought new clothes using the money he made from gathering plastic, and the other children say they spend their money on school supplies. Most of their parents are labourers and are pleased that their children can take care of themselves, as Munji's mother affirmed when she personally came to collect her son's earnings.

Shandoul told Magharebia the site collected 13 tonnes of plastic waste from an area with no more than 20,000 residents during the months of July and August.

The man, who launched his project in early June, has had difficulty since the kids returned to school. He has to find replacements among the young unemployed who have higher salary expectations.

"It is difficult to replace them. These kids are distinguished by their earnestness and innocence," he noted.

According to the National Environmental Protection Agency, Tunisians throw away 800,000 tonnes of household waste, 320,000 tonnes of industrial waste, 50,000 tonnes of canning and wrapping waste, and 15,000 tonnes of hospital waste annually.