Tragedy at Mozambique dumpsite illustrates hazards that informal recyclers face everyday
The Hulene landfill is the largest and oldest open-air rubbish dump in Mozambique having been in existence for more than 40 years. It is located 7 km away from the city centre of Maputo and covers an area of 17ha in a heavily populated area. On the 19th of February...
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Why the NGT Okhla Order Sets a Bad Precedent for Indian Environmental Jurisprudence
Delhi needs to embrace the virtues of a people-centric and inclusive approach that engages communities instead of alienating them.
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Safe & Sustainable Recycling: Protecting Workers who Protect the Planet
Share this report with your city's leaders. Tell them that cities can create good and safe recycling jobs by ensuring health and safety compliance across the industry. (embargoed until Tuesday June 23, 2015 at 9 am EST) Recycling is the right thing to do, but we...
read moreChronicle of a Fight for Inclusion
This short video tells the story of waste pickers in Bogota who worked to address their city’s garbage crisis in 2012.
read moreSpace for Waste Pickers in Solid Waste Management
A meeting of waste pickers from around the world was held in April of 2012 in India. Participants with common experiences were able to share their successes, strategies, challenges, ideas, and mutual support. This video highlights what was learned.
read moreA Beijing Recycler’s Life
This film about a couple who have collected recyclables in one community in Beijing for 20 years shows their life as collectors in the daytime and their work to sell the materials to the recycling market in the evening.
read moreWe, SWaCH
This film show members of the informal waste workers’ organization, SWaCH, at work in Pune India.
read moreRecycling Jobs: Unlocking the Potential for Green Employment Growth
Recycling, reuse, and organics management offer enormous potential for job creation throughout the U.S. There is a menu of proven strategies that can be aligned to local circumstances, resources, and values.
read moreMore Jobs, Less Pollution!
New report: More Jobs, Less Pollution shows how a 75% national recycling rate in the U.S. can create 1.5 million new, green jobs!
read moreCDM: Financing the Demise of Waste Worker Livelihood, Community Health, and Climate
Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) funding for incineration and landfills currently represents a lost opportunity to reduce pollution and help improve the welfare and standards of living of some of the poorest people in the world. Additionally, this funding incentivizes the destruction of valuable resources that would otherwise have been recovered with significant climate benefits. The following are a few examples of waste projects that have been approved or are being considered for CDM approval, and where there is growing community and waste worker opposition to the project.
read moreRespect for Recyclers: Protecting the Climate through Zero Waste
Reducing, reusing, and recycling municipal waste is one of the easiest and most effective means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It also provides gainful employment to millions of people in the developing world, mostly in the informal sector (“wastepickers”). Yet rather than supporting these efforts, climate funds such as the Clean Development Mechanism are subsidizing incinerators and landfill gas systems, which compete directly with recycling and increase emissions, unemployment, and public costs. A new, non-market, climate finance mechanism is needed to support the formalization and expansion of the informal recycling sector.
read moreRespect for Recyclers: Protecting the Climate through Zero Waste (Chinese)
Reducing, reusing, and recycling municipal waste is one of the easiest and most effective means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It also provides gainful employment to millions of people in the developing world, mostly in the informal sector (“wastepickers”). Yet rather than supporting these efforts, climate funds such as the Clean Development Mechanism are subsidizing incinerators and landfill gas systems, which compete directly with recycling and increase emissions, unemployment, and public costs. A new, non-market, climate finance mechanism is needed to support the formalization and expansion of the informal recycling sector.
read moreGarbage Dreams
GARBAGE DREAMS, winner of 18 awards follows three teenage boys growing up in the world’s largest garbage village, on the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt. This film provides a penetrating look into their lives and their community, where tradition is clashing with globalization – a window into one of the world’s hidden populations, the wastepickers.
read moreFactsheet on wastepickers and climate change
Wastepickers reduce greenhouse gas emissions through increased recycling; yet they are increasingly in conflict with “waste-to-energy” projects.
read moreGAIA Press Release: CDM Waste Projects Undermine Poor And Increase Emissions
09 June 2009. Bonn, Germany: The Clean Development Mechanism’s waste projects undermine the livelihoods of poor people and increase greenhouse gas emissions, say a group of grassroots recyclers attending the United Nations climate change negotiations.
read moregroundWork: Reclaiming Livelihoods – A Report on Wastepickers
This report focuses on the contributions of reclaimers to social and environmental sustainability. It explores the work that reclaimers do, how they use salvaging of commodities from the waste stream as a way to support themselves, and how they are being affected by municipal waste management policies.
read moreA Community Guide to Environmental Health
This highly illustrated guide from the Hesperian Foundation helps health promoters, development workers, environmental activists, and community leaders take charge of their environmental health.
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