RECYCLING ECONOMY: Unemployed rural women turning cans into cash as hunger bites

In Embo, west of Durban, hunger is forcing mostly unemployed women to collect and crush aluminium cans to sell to scrap dealers – Nokulunga Nkabinde earns about R300 per full bag and between R550-R800 a month from recycling to buy basic food.

Exploring the impossible trade-offs families make to put food on the table, and the resilience keeping them afloat from backyard gardens to food stokvels. In this series, community journalists enter vulnerable homes to reveal how families fight hunger.

Five-year-old hands grip a small yellow hammer, crushing aluminium cans outside a small house in Embo, west of Durban.

By the end of the day, Nokulunga Nkabinde hopes the bulging clear bag filled with cans will earn enough money to buy some vegetables, bread and a few eggs for her family.

Many unemployed women in the rural community are also the breadwinners in their families.

For some, collecting discarded cans has become the only way they’re able to feed their children.

Nkabinde (31), a mother of two boys aged seven and five, spends her days collecting discarded beverage, beer and energy drink cans before selling them to a nearby scrap metal buy-back centre.

“I turn cans into cash,” she says with a smile. “As I am unemployed this is how I make a living. The money I earn from collecting and selling cans, I use to buy food like vegetables, bread and 10kg rice bags,” she says.

“It helps, also for my own essential items, plus I give my children money to carry to school,” says Nkabinde. “Even though it is not enough, it is better than nothing.

She says a full bag of crushed cans can earn her about R300 at the local scrap metal dealer, where aluminium currently sells for about R21.50/kg.

She says the money stretches across a household of seven people, including her grandmother, mother and two siblings.

The two pensioners receive old-age grants, with a combined income of about R4,800 between the two. The rest of the family’s income comes from money Nkabinde and her sisters make from recycling.

“All of us are unemployed. That is why I collect and sell cans to help put food on the table and support my family.”

After selling her cans, Nkabinde heads straight to the local spaza shop to buy groceries.