Who takes care of the waste in your household?

Gender equality and improvements to waste sector are high on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (particularly Goals 5 and 12).

GRID-Arendal is working with the International Environmental Technology Centre (IETC) and partner organizations from Bhutan, Mongolia and Nepal on a climate mitigation project called “Waste and Climate Change.” The goal of the project is to reduce greenhouse gases from the waste sector and GRID-Arendal’s role is to bring a “gender lens” to the project. Even the way waste is managed can be shaped by existing gender inequalities, responsibilities and roles.

We recently returned from a very engaging fieldwork experience in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, where we conducted field investigations for an assessment to look at the relationship between waste and gender in urban areas in Mongolia. We interviewed street sweepers, waste managers, city government officials, waste pickers, NGOs, recyclers and private waste companies in an effort to map out the gendered landscape of the waste sector in Mongolia.

In Mongolia, we found that Mongolian traditional culture, its history, the geography of the city, the fact that boys and girls have unequal access to education (girls tend to have more), increasing consumerism and many other factors help explain the current set up of the waste sector and the different roles played by men and women in this sector.

These photos and captions will give you a taste of what we heard and observed. The information we gathered will contribute to recommendations on how to best tackle challenges in the waste sector in general and on gender inequality in particular.

The manager of a private waste collection company in the Sukhbaatar district shows communication posters about waste management for households.

On Day 1, we interviewed the manager of a private waste collection and street cleaning and greening company in one of Ulaanbaatar’s 12 districts. In all our interviews, “behavior” – such as illegal dumping – came up as the number one waste challenge for the city. Using the ‘thumbs up’ and ‘thumbs down’ stickers, households can rate how well waste is managed in their neighborhood.

Interviewing truck drivers and loaders working in the ger area of the Bayanzurkh district.

Everywhere we went we heard that women are responsible for waste management in the household and at community levels. It is women who mostly come to meetings about waste problems, and women who organize and participate in volunteer efforts to clean up streets and communities. But few women have paid work in the waste sector.

Being a waste truck driver, for example, is quite a lucrative job, but very few women are hired for this job. We heard many explanations for this: “It is too heavy” or “it’s a dirty job, so how could they cook for their family in the evening?” However, collection is a relatively higher paying job than the administrative jobs women hold in the waste sector. Women do apply for these more physical jobs, according to waste managing companies, but they are deemed “not qualified” because of these gender stereotypes.

Until recently were the majority of street sweepers in Ulaanbaatar but once the job was formalized and the pay was increased, more men started taking over. For example, one manager recently had to fire 41 street cleaners due to a decrease in the number of streets allocated to them for cleaning. All 41 of the street cleaners who lost their jobs were women – only 10 men and 3 women kept their jobs. His reasoning: “Men are the best of the best when it comes to street cleaning.”

The staff organization of Bayanzurkh district, khoroo 18, located in Ulaanbaatar’s center.

Ulaanbaatar is divided in 9 districts which are further split up into smaller administrative units called khoroos. In each khoroo there are between 10 and 20 community representatives responsible for a specific area known as a heseg. The photo above was taken in a khoroo office and reveals the gender divide in the structure of the administration. At the top, in the parliament and district management, are men. At the bottom, leading the khoroo and the hesegs, we find women. Heseg leaders in this district are only paid 300,000 Tughrik (120 $USD) a month, compared to approximately 600,000 for street sweepers and 1.2 million Tughrik for waste truck drivers. Note that in this khoroo, there are three male hesegs leaders, all part-time. Only for women is it a full-time job.

Heseg leader explains how waste is discarded in Ulaanbaatar’s ger area.

On the sides of the four mountains that surround Ulaanbaatar, 60% of the population lives in what is known as the ger area. Gers are traditional Mongolian portable tents used by herders. Each year, thousands of immigrants from rural Mongolia, satellite towns and smaller cities set up their ger permanently as they seek better lives in the city. In the winter outside temperatures often drop below 30 degrees Celsius and coal is burned to heat the gers. This causes deadly air pollution problems in the city. Moreover, waste generated during the winter in the ger area is mostly ash. It is heavy, not recycled, sometimes still hot, and a real challenge for the waste management sector. The unpaved and steep dirt roads are also hard to navigate for the waste truck drivers, especially in icy conditions.

Waste chute in a blockhouse apartment building (left). Waste discarded outside of new middle-class apartment building (right).

Apartments in Ulaanbaatar’s center, where the other 40% of the populations lives, have their own challenges. Some of the older buildings have convenient inside chutes for waste on each floor. Newer low- and middle-class apartment buildings are built cheaply with no plan for waste management so it is just dumped outside. Residents complain that it smells and at night scavengers and dogs search through the trash. Waste is a low priority for real estate developers.

The rise of consumerism as Mongolia “develops” and globalizes also creates waste issues. During the interviews, we heard from NGOs that a common feeling in society is “the more we consume the better” and “littering is almost seen as a right, a way to express one’s freedom.”

The Tsagaandavaa landfill, northeast of Ulaanbaatar.

There are three main dumpsites in Ulaanbaatar. There is almost no materials segregation of waste and so 99% of it ends up in these landfills. A cohort of informal waste pickers collects plastic, metals and glass to sell to recyclables collectors close to the dumpsite. Women mostly work as waste pickers, a dangerous and hard job. While this informal work has the advantage of flexible working hours, we heard that in the private sector it is not uncommon to be paid late or not at all.

A 20-year-old woman explained that she started to work as a picker in the evenings when she was completing her higher education. She hasn’t found a job and now picks waste every day. On a normal day, she fills one to two one-meter cube bags of Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles. Each bag is worth about 10,000 MTN or approximately 4 $USD.

Recyclables at one of Ulaanbaatar’s largest waste collection centres. From left to right, top to bottom: paper, glass bottles, steel, aluminium, copper, different types of plastic.

We visited one the largest recyclables collection sites in the city which is run as a business by a woman who used to be a school accountant. She accepts different types of goods, including metal, used cans, plastic, glass bottles, paper and car batteries. She sells the recyclables to Chinese and some locally owned recycling companies. However, since China has banned importing waste, the price of some goods has plummeted. Plastic PET bottles for example, which she used to buy at 400 MNT a kilo, she now buys at only 200 MNT because there is not yet a good market for them.

The owner also explained that social media has been very important for business development and to educate the 7000 followers of her Facebook page about recycling.

Inside a storage facility for discarded cardboard which will be used to create new cardboard. There is only one cardboard recycling facility in Ulaanbaatar. It was founded and is managed by women.

As the waste sector formalizes and modernizes in Mongolia, the relationship between men and women will change. Women’s jobs as waste pickers and street sweepers are increasingly being taken over by men. Without a shift in attitudes, women will be even less likely to be hired as drivers or managers in the professionalized future. However, women are already in the lead in recycling efforts and this is the sector that shows most promise for gender equality.