Enacting a Waste Hierarchy: Practices of Reuse, Repair and Recycling Amongst Jua Kali, Kenya

A growth in solid post-consumer waste in cities in the Global South as a result of expanding Middle Class consumption has been seen as a developing problem for sustainability. To reduce waste the hierarchy of interventions is usually reduce, reuse, recycle. There is little appetite to tell the newly emerging global middle classes to reduce their consumption. Most literature on waste in the Global South has focused upon recyclers - 'waste pickers' - and their organisation and conditions.This project instead looks at 'reuse' and repurposing. It takes as its case study the jua kali informal sector workers in Kenya. It chooses Kenya since the make and mend jua kali sector is both large and has at times received official and public recognition for its ingenuity in the face of challenges. It has even been celebrated as showing especially Kenyan qualities. This has been argued by politicians to be under threat by cheap Chinese goods, whose 'low quality' prevents reuse but whose low price competes with second hand goods refitted in the informal sector. The thesis will explore two categories of goods repurposing with the sector -household cooking appliance production and repairs. The study will beconduct ethnographically in Ngong Road Nairobi and will trace the
disposal of goods, their recovery and reworking and their purchase and reuse.