Students: Sarah Birchler, Samuel Zumsteg
Location: Group work in Nairobi
Date: December, 2007
Type: Research project, student work, The Waste Network of Nairobi

The Dandora dumpsite is Nairobi’s largest waste and garbage collection site. It is also one of Nairobi’s most distressful areas. Everyday 3.000 to 4.000 people, mostly kids and teenagers, in ragged clothes wander through the mountains of garbage, sometimes reaching as high as a three-storey building, sorting and shifting the garbage, trying to make a living. They compete for edibles with droves of vultures, having body sizes as large as a grown-up person, continuously circling above the giant heaps of waste. The everpresent stench is suffocating. The young men and women work there, piling glass bottles, plastic sheetings and other recyclables on top of each other. But they also live there, sleep there, are born there, and sometimes die there.
Waste is an urban network system in Nairobi, creating a distinct urban economy. In a city, where the public garbage collection is almost nonexistent, a whole range of replacement services kick in, trying to profit from the vacuum left by the city administration. An abundance of private garbage collection companies, cleaning services, recycling firms and illegal dump sites have sprung up. This network of alternative services weaves through most parts of the city (except the informal settlements, such as Kibera or Mathare). Even though less then half of the total garbage produced everyday is entering this waste-network (the remaining decaying or being burned ‘on-site’) most of the collected garbage eventually culminates in Dandora. In every step of ‘garbage transaction’ money is to be made. From the collection of the garbage in the private residential areas, to the dumping in the dumpsite, the subsequent sorting, to the transportation to the recycling grounds, individuals and companies as well as politicians and people working in the administration profit. The fact that profit is all-present, keeps the system, as distressful as it is, very stable.