How Waste Pickers Benefit Cities
Just Recycling is a short video that examines how informal waste pickers make their cities healthier and more beautiful, lower greenhouse gas emissions, preserve resources and save municipalities a lot of money.
Millions of people worldwide make a living from materials that others have thrown away. In some communities, these informal workers provide the only form of solid waste collection, reducing landfill costs and achieving high recycling rates. Despite their contributions, waste pickers are often overlooked, maltreated — even criminalized.
But this is slowly changing. Just Recycling depicts how waste pickers in different countries have been successfully integrated into municipal waste systems, creating better communities and more secure livelihoods.
(Video also in Zulu | en español | en français)
Learn more
WIEGO WEB RESOURCES
- Waste Pickers
- Waste Pickers: The Right to Be Recognized as Workers
- Threat of a New Waste Incinerator in Mexico City Puts Informal Waste Pickers’Livelihoods at Risk by Tania Espinosa Sánchez
- Who really cares about our Earth? Neglecting waste pickers’ contributions, promoting huge business profits by Lucia Fernandez
OTHER SOURCES
- ARTICLE: Three ways waste pickers can be included in the new circular economy by Sonia Dias, published in Equal Times (2018)
- VIDEO: The Green Force (produced by the charitable group Hasiru Dala) looks at the work of waste pickers in Bangalore, India.
- AUDIO: “What is the place for the informal economy in green and inclusive growth?” Marty Chen delivers the keynote address at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) 2016 conference on “The Biggest ‘Private Sector’”