How do you respond to “Pickers”?
In an earlier post, Plastic Pickers, I allowed emotional reactions to color my view of the work being done by “pickers”. Another article surfaced on e-Waste Pickers from NPR, describing the work, working conditions and need for e-Wast Pickers in West Africa. There is an entirely different moral / ethical discussion embedded here on waste production, disposal and the consumption life we all live … but not here, today.
While reading the article initially, I again wanted to howl against the inhumanity and injustice of other humans doing this activity. When I prepped my voice to howl, I found myself mired in conflict – there really wasn’t a simple answer – no howl would be heard. The Picker life highlighted my biased thinking and created an emotional conflict that cannot be easily resolved.
The NPR author tried to explain that this work (and the money) is critical to a sector of the local population,
Many of the pickers are climate migrants from an area of Ghana known as the “Upper East,” says project co-author Chasant, where warming temperatures are upending traditional farming practices. “This area has the highest unemployment rate among young people,” he says. They come to e-waste sites to earn money during the dry season, Chasant says, which they bring back to the Upper East. “There’s a whole generation of young people that are building their society from e-waste work.
While this fact is important and I understood the position, initially I couldn’t justify asking other humans to do such dangerous and what I thought de-humanizing work. There was my mental bias – this work was inhumane, unnecessary and certainly overly dangerous to ask another human to perform. True, but the waste is there now, and these people are starving to death.
How to reconcile that moral wrong with the need to generate a salary and pay to live? That’s the conflict. While it would be easy and immature to simply state – stop the waste and this work doesn’t exist. That’s not an immediately actionable response within my control – surely results would NOT be anywhere near immediate.
It’s too late to design out waste and not have this problem today (maybe tomorrow’s future) – we have the waste, we have the problem. How to respond – emotionally and behaviorally?
This conflict – an observable inhumane situation that is immoral and a livelihood necessity that this immoral work answers – hits me wrong both as a citizen of earth and a human being. I want a moral resolution out of this conflict. My immediate behavioral changes will continue limiting my negative footprints on the earth (across all waste producing activities) and sharing observations and science about waste and what we can each (and all) do to make a positive impact. I can only do what I can to improve the situation – and carefully monitor my bias.
