Solid waste management is one of the biggest environmental challenges for cities in the Global South. In Sub-Saharan Africa, waste generation is expected to triple as incomes rise and the urban population grows. Primary waste collection is of very low quality in slums because of high costs, inaccessibility, or limited access of larger transportation means, such as tracks and organizational challenges. In this webinar, I will present the findings of my research on solid waste collection in the slum of Ferroviario, in Maputo, Mozambique, where I conducted more than 50 interviews and participant observation sessions with households and the microenterprise collecting waste in the neighborhood. I will explain how solid waste collection works, and then discuss the reasons why it only partially does. Competing conceptions of solid waste among actors, floods, lack of municipal capacity, and cost of urban land all play an important role in preventing successful solid waste collection in Ferroviario, highlighting the complexity of solid waste collection in slums, even when a viable institutional model is in place.