One person's trash is another person's treasure: In search of an efficient property regime for waste in the Global South

Abstract

Previous literature has studied waste picking as an economic, social, and environmental phenomenon of great importance in the Global South. The legal foundations of waste picking have, however, received little scholarly attention. Surveys conducted by the global network Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing show that laws about access to waste are a central concern for many waste pickers. We study the efficiency of different property regimes for waste in the Global South. The candidate regimes are exclusionary ownership of waste by one category (private companies or the waste pickers), public ownership by the state, common or communal ownership, and res nullius ("first in time, first in right"). Any property regime that tries to exclude the waste pickers from accessing waste is associated with high transaction costs. We argue that the res nullius regime, complemented by waste pickers' organizations, regulates the waste sector efficiently in the Global South.

Keywords: Informal economy; Property rights; Res nullius; Solid waste; Waste pickers.