The Collectors of Istanbul

Walking the steep hills of Istanbul, it is hard to avoid noticing the ebb and flow of men pulling heavy carts; they stop briefly to rummage through bins, before they are gone again. These are the “toplayıcılar”: the collectors. In a city of 15 million people, the role of these men is essential: sorting and collecting recyclable materials from ordinary waste. Their lives are reliant on cardboard, paper, metal and plastic materials. This unskilled, precarious work is the base of big business, yet the ‘collectors’ themselves are impoverished and marginalised. Some are migrants to the city drawn by rural poverty, some have lost everything, some are immigrants from Afghanistan or Syria. Their position in society is the lowest of the low: “If you can’t do this job, then there is nothing else left for you to do”. Their livelihoods are affected by competition with the formal municipal waste collection services but also by the international recycling market and global policy decisions made at the international level. And then, when there is nothing left to collect, what will these people do?

 

This project was shot in Istanbul in September 2019. It seeks to spotlight the lives of the collectors in a changing system and their role in the local recycling process, from the street to the wholesale depot.

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© Emilie Grand-Clement 2019