"Tunisia plastic collectors spread as economic, migration woes deepen" 29 September 2025

A towel draped over his head, Hamza Jabbari sets bags of plastic bottles onto a scale. He is among Tunisia's "barbechas", informal plastic recyclers whose increasing numbers reflect the country's economic – and migratory – woes...The work is often gruelling, with a kilogramme of plastic bottles worth only 0.5 to 0.7 Tunisian dinar – less than US$0.25 (RM1).It's common to see women weighed down by bags of plastic bottles along the roadside, or men weaving through traffic with towering loads strapped to their motorcycles...

Hamza Chaouch, head of the National Chamber of Recyclable Waste Collectors, estimated that there were roughly 25,000 plastic collectors across Tunisia, with 40% of them in the capital...Yet, with the job an informal one, there is no official count of how many plastic collectors operate in Tunisia...

The ranks of these recyclers have also grown with the arrival of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa...Abdelkoudouss, a 24-year-old from Guinea, said he began collecting plastic to make ends meet but also to save up enough money to return home after failing two crossing attempts to Europe...

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