Waste is one of the few things society looks down on... while refusing to look upstream.
I've always found it fascinating how quickly we blame the communities living amongst the waste, as though they somehow created it.
The truth?
Most of that waste arrived there because the rest of us bought it, used it, and discarded it.
We admire shiny recycling bins in affluent suburbs, yet look down on the informal waste collector pulling value from a landfill or riverbank.
We see overflowing settlements and assume the people living there created the problem. We rarely stop to ask where the waste came from in the first place.
The informal sector did not manufacture the plastic.
They didn't market it.
They didn't sell it.
And in most cases - they did not buy it.
In many cases, they're the only ones trying to recover it.
Maybe the problem isn't just how we value waste.
Maybe it's how we value people?
If something is discarded, we assume it's worthless...
But the circular economy teaches us something different.
Nothing has value until someone sees it.
Perhaps it's time we stopped looking down at the people working at the end of the value chain... and started looking upstream at the systems that created the problem in the first place.
Because circularity isn't just about materials.
It's about changing the way we think.
