How climate crisis is creating hellish conditions for waste pickers at Nairobi dump declared ‘full’ 24 years ago

An estimated 46,000 waste pickers come to sites like Dandora in Nairobi every day, where they typically spend 12 hours per day looking for things to sell - (AFP/Getty)

You can smell the Dandora Dumpsite before you see it. The bitter scent of burning plastic, the rot of decaying food, and the unmistakable smell of raw sewage all waft their way through the streets that surround the tip, which is spread over 30 acres in Nairobi’s western suburbs.

The dumpsite itself full of grey, craggy mountains of rubbish, dotted with yellow excavators that sift through the waste. Despite being officially declared “full” in 2001, Dandora remains Nairobi’s main landfill site, with an estimated 2,000 metric tonnes of waste flowing in each day from the rapidly-growing city of six million. Acrid smoke billows from the site’s crevices, while goats and cows graze around its edges, searching for something nutritious.