Conversations about Waste Reclaimer Integration and Extended Producer Responsibility

DSI/NRF/CSIR Chair in Waste and Society Webinar Series

Conversations about Waste Reclaimer Integration
and Extended Producer Responsibility

Thursday, 17 September 2020 @ 12:00 PM

Join us for another webinar in our Waste and Society Webinar Series. The webinar "Conversations about Waste Reclaimer Integration and Extended Producer Responsibility" will be presented by Prof Jutta Gutberlet (University of Victoria, Canada) and Dr Melanie Samson (University of Witwatersrand). The session will be facilitated by Prof Linda Godfrey (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research). 

Description of the webinar: In this webinar Prof Jutta Gutberlet and Dr Melanie Samson will share research on waste reclaimer integration in Brazil, Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa. 

Jutta Gutberlet's presentation will focus on the context of organised waste pickers in Brazil, Kenya and Tanzania. 

Melanie Samson will present on waste reclaimer integration and extended producer responsibility (EPR).

About the speakers:

Jutta Gutberlet is a Professor in Geography at the University of Victoria, Canada. She is the director of the Community-based Research Laboratory and is currently a research fellow at the Centre for Global Studies at the University of Victoria. Her research is interdisciplinary drawing on the social and the natural sciences, bridging Human Geography and Environmental Science. For over 15 years, she has researched different waste issues related to informal and organized waste pickers, particularly in the global South. Currently, she has is working on social grassroots innovations, the circular economy and epistemologies of waste. Her present international project Mapping Waste Governance, provides a platform for collaboration in several countries in Latin America and Africa. She has widely published on the social aspects related to waste, with the latest book on Urban Recycling Cooperatives: Building Resilient Communities, by Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. For more information visit: http://www.juttagutberlet.com/ Melanie Samson is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography in the School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies (GAES) at the University of the Witwatersrand. Prior to joining GAES, Melanie worked in the South African trade union movement and for the international NGO Women in Informal Employment, Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO). Melanie has worked with waste workers and reclaimers/waste pickers for the past 20 years. Her current research investigates the contested politics related to “waste picker integration”, with a specific focus on how reclaimers organize to achieve their visions of the economy and polity and their roles within them. With funding from the Department of Science and Innovation’s Waste Research, Development and Innovation Roadmap, as well as the Department of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries (DEFF), Melanie recently led a three-year research programme on “Lessons from Waste Picker Integration Initiatives”; facilitated DEFF’s national stakeholder process to develop the Guideline on Waste Picker Integration for South Africa; and wrote the Guideline. She is completing a book provisionally entitled “Revitalizing Recyclables” that re-theorizes the constitution and form of post-colonial economies and polities through analysis of reclaimers’ ‘revitalizing labour’.

 To join this webinar, please register below: