PHNOM PENH - It’s 1pm and a hot day on Norodom, one of the main streets in Phnom Penh. Sok San rummages through garbage and pulls out plastic bottles and cardboard which he piles up in a hand-drawn cart.

“It’s hard work but it’s the only job I know,” he said.  “I didn’t finish school and I can’t do anything else.”

Sok San, 53, is one of 5,000 scavengers, or “et chai” as they are known locally, who eke out a living on the ground level of Cambodia’s recycling industry.

They face health hazards and risks from traffic as one of the most vulnerable groups in the informal economy.

Sok San began searching for materials to sell to recycling plants when he was 22. “It was the one way I could make sure that I got food,” he said. 

Phnom Penh has a Waste Management Strategy and Action Plan covering 2018 to 2035.

It is the result of collaboration between the Waste Management Division of Phnom Penh Capital Administration and experts from the IGES Centre Collaborating with the UN Environment Programme and other organizations.

One of their goals in 2018 was to “end poverty in all its forms everywhere” and to integrate waste pickers into formal management systems.

Relief is desperately needed for collectors such as Chow Deret, 49. He has been out of action as an et chai for  seven months. He can’t walk and has liver problems caused by constant dehydration from hauling his cart all over town.

He is reduced to sleeping in the cart he should be using to collect cardboard. His daughters Silai, 6 , and Silon, 11,  bring him food and water so he can wash.

Srey Mom, 32, started working as an et chai 20 years ago. “I wanted to be a garment factory worker, but they only paid $200 a month and occasionally they only paid half this amount,” she said.

Her mother is sick, and she must send $5 a month for her care.

She manages to get $1 per kilo for cans. “Being an et chai is tough work but it brings in $8-10 a day. The money just lets me eat, sleep rough and send the money to my mother.”

Her husband is 32, also an et chai but in a different area and she has three children who live in Takao with her mother. She lives in Phnom Penh as she couldn’t make any money in Takao. She sells to a distributor near Orussay Market.

Phorn, 62, started as an et chai five years ago. “I was too old to find work anywhere else, so this was my only option,” she says.

Phorn lives with a friend and sells the things she scavenges near Wat Phnom and delivers it to a supplier but has no idea where it goes next.

“I make an average of $7 a day from plastic bottles, cardboard and cans and that just to say helps me to survive. I’m grateful for that,” she said.

A kilo of plastic bottles and cans gets her 800 riel. A kilo of cardboard fetches 200 riel and metal scrap gets 800 riel.    None of the et chai Cambodianess spoke to had any idea where their waste was going.

“It’s a hard life and I don’t want my children to have to do it,”  Srey Mom said.