Gender and Waste Nexus: Experiences from Bhutan, Mongolia and Nepal

Public education and awareness-raising is also an important tool to inform people about hazardous wastes at the domestic level. In the absence of alternative safer disposal methods, households and individuals are regularly exposed to toxins and dangerous chemicals. Where formal waste collection is inadequate, households often burn their own waste, including plastics and other toxic materials. Exposure to fumes and residues carries considerable health risks (UNEP 2016; Verma et al. 2016; Women in Europe for a Common Future [WECF] 2004–2005). Since women are more often responsible for managing household waste, they are likely to have higher rates of adverse health impacts associated with exposure to waste. The health impacts grow more severe depending on the extent to which these individuals are exposed to toxic and highly hazardous substances in the waste stream. Individuals that directly handle large amounts of waste, including hazardous waste, such as recyclers, waste pickers or waste collectors, are also at great risk. These informal workers lack even rudimentary safety equipment such as gloves or dust masks. Landfills are

notoriously dangerous sites: accidents involving waste pickers, the trucks and heavy equipment are common and landfill collapses are not infrequent. Furthermore, waste pickers often carry large and heavy loads to recycling collection points posing a great risk of musculoskeletal injuries. In all three countries, informal waste management activities – including at the household level, through landfill picking or small-scale recycling – have environmental sustainability benefits. Although the environmental risks of unsound waste management have been well documented in general, they have not been fully specified for Bhutan, Mongolia or Nepal. 20 At the local and regional levels, impacts can include extensive ecological degradation, loss of biodiversity and high levels of air and water pollution. Although it has not been measured in any formal manner, the ecological benefit from informal, volunteer and household activities that divert a large proportion of waste into reuse and recycling operations is considerable. The sustainability multiplier of women’s unpaid labour in enacting these ecosystem services warrants closer attention.

79 Gender and waste nexus