Waste Doesn’t Disappear—It Moves Through People

Last week, I was walking through a Material Recovery Facility (MRF) on the edge of a city. It was early. The conveyor belts were already running.

An operator stood beside me, watching workers pull food waste out of what was labelled “dry”.

After a pause, he said quietly:

“Technology can’t fix what bad segregation breaks every morning.”

That line stayed with me because it wasn’t a comment.

It was an everyday reality.

By the time waste reaches an MRF, most outcomes are already decided.

Recovery rates.

Recycling quality.

What finally ends up in a landfill.

On paper, segregation exists.

On the belt, it often falls apart.

We invest in better facilities, better machinery, better contracts —

and then quietly absorb the cost of poor inputs.

But there’s another layer that doesn’t get enough attention.

Even where segregation is improving, the system still depends heavily on workers who were expected to be trained for the decisions they’re expected to make.

Sorting happens in seconds.

Material value is judged by experience, not manuals.

As one supervisor told me:

“We expect precision, but we’ve never invested in skills.”

This is where waste workers — including the informal workforce — quietly hold the system together.

They correct upstream failures.

They stabilise what shouldn’t have been mixed in the first place.

The bigger challenge isn’t the absence of rules.

It’s that responsibility, capability, and accountability don’t always move together — even though some cities are beginning to show what alignment looks like.

Waste doesn’t disappear when it leaves our homes.

It moves through people.

As Jane Jacobs once reminded us:

“Cities don’t fail from lack of plans. They fail from ignoring how systems actually behave.”

This gap between intent and operation is where most urban systems are won or lost.