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DAKAR, Senegal – At Senegal’s largest landfill, a crowd holding curved metal nails over rubbish dumped from a dump truck hacked the garbage in search of valuable plastic.

Nearby, rolled up sleeves, foamed up to the elbows, the women washed the plastic drums in rainbow colors and smashed them into pieces. Around them are piles of broken toys, plastic mayonnaise jars, and hundreds of discarded synthetic wigs as far as the eye can see, all ready for sale and recycling.

In Senegal, as in many countries, plastic waste is exploding as population and income increase, and with them the demand for packaged, mass-produced products.

This has led to a growing industry built around recycling plastic waste by businesses and citizens alike. From Chinese traders to furniture manufacturers and avant-garde fashion designers, many people in Senegal benefit from the constant stream of plastic waste.

Serving the seaside capital of Senegal, Dakar, the dump Mbeubeuss is where it all began. More than 2,000 garbage collectors as well as washers, choppers, transporters horse carriages, brokers and wholesalers make a living by finding, preparing and transporting waste for recycling. It contributes to a massive informal economy that supports thousands of families.

For more than 50 years in the dump, Pape Ndiaye, the doyen of garbage collectors, has watched the garbage-dealing community grow and has seen them turn to plastic, a material that collectors deemed worthless 20 years ago.

“We are people who protect the environment,” said 76-year-old Mr. Ndiaye, looking at the plastic strewn on Gouye Gui in the corner of the dumpster. “We take everything that pollutes it to industries and they transform it.”

Despite all the recycling efforts, most of Senegal’s waste never ends up in landfills, instead trashing the land. Knockout Adidas sandals and containers that once housed a local version of Nutella block sewers. Thin plastic bags that once contained drinking water curl back and forth in the Senegalese surf like jellyfish. Plastic shopping bags burn in residential areas, sending chemical-smelling clouds of smoke into the misty air.

Senegal is just one of many countries trying to clean up, formalize the waste disposal system and embrace recycling on a larger scale. The African Union says the target by 2023 is to recycle 50 percent of the waste used in African cities.

But that means that Senegal also has to grapple with the informal system that has grown over the decades, as it is an important part of the massive dump in Mbeubeuss (pronounced Mm-beh-BEHSE).

Recycled plastic is the most abundant in Senegal. Strong economies in West Africa.

At a factory in Thies, an inland city east of Dakar known for its tapestry industry, recycled plastic pellets are spun into long hanks and then woven into colored plastic mats used in nearly every Senegalese home.

Custom-made mats from this factory lined the podium. Dakar Fashion Week This time in December, the focus was on sustainability and was held in a baobab forest. Signs are made from old water bottles. Tables and chairs are made of melted plastic.

The trend has shifted the focus of waste collectors who have been working in landfills for decades and collecting anything of value.

“Everybody is looking for plastic now,” said 50-year-old Mouhamadou Wade, smiling broadly as he prepared a pot of sweet, minty tea in front of his sorting shed in Mbeubeuss, where he has been a waste collector for over 20 years.

Sitting on a wooden bench next to the shed in a long, elegant dress, a favorite of Senegalese women, Adja Seyni Diop agreed.

He said that when he first started collecting waste in 1998, at the age of 11, no one was interested in buying plastic, so he just threw it in the garbage and just collected scrap metal. But these days, plastic is the easiest thing to sell to brokers and traders. With the income he earns there, he supports his family between $25 and $35 a week.

Mr. Wade and Ms. Diop work together at Bokk Jom, a kind of informal union that represents more than half of Mbeubeuss’ waste collectors. And most of them spend their days looking for plastic.

A few days later, I stumbled upon Ms. Diop at work – a high platform made entirely of stinking waste, a very hostile environment known as “Yemen”. His face was covered by bandanas, two hats, and sunglasses, and I could hardly recognize him to protect him from the scattering of garbage scattering in all directions.

All around us, herds of white long-horned cattle gnawed at the garbage as dozens of collectors landed on each unloading dump truck. Some young men even hung on the tops of the trucks to catch the precious plastic that had spilled from the trucks before the bulldozers came to sweep away what was left of the garbage mountain.

Most collectors targeting plastic, such as Ms. Diop, sell it for around 13 cents a kilogram to two Chinese plastic traders who have warehouses in the landfill. Abdou Dieng, director of Mbeubeuss, who works for Senegal’s growing waste management agency and brought some order to the landfill chaos, said traders are sending it to China to be pelleted and turned into new products.

In the last two years, the number of trucks arriving daily at Mbeubeuss has increased from 300 to 500.

However, the government says that in a few years the massive landfill will close, and will be replaced by much smaller sorting and composting centers as part of a joint project with the World Bank.

Then most of the money from plastic waste will go to the government coffers. Waste collectors are worried about their livelihoods.

Mr. Ndiaye, the last of the original waste collectors to come to Mbeubeuss in 1970, has researched what the workplace has been for the past half century. He remembered the big baobab he was taking tea breaks under, already dead, replaced by heaps of plastic.

“They know there’s money in it,” he said of the government. “And they want to control it.”

But the government dump manager, Mr. Dieng, insisted that we would either give the collectors a job at the new sorting centers or help them find a job that would allow them to live better lives than before.

This does not put everyone at ease.

“There are a lot of changes,” said project manager Maguette Diop. WIEGO, a nonprofit focused on the working poor around the world, “and the role of waste collectors in these changes is unclear.”

But for now, hundreds of waste collectors have to keep collecting.

They return to battle, fleeing from bulldozers, animal guts, and cattle piles with curved metal nails and garbage bags in their hands.

Mady Camaracontributing reporting.