With the support of GAIA and WIEGO, the International Alliance of Waste Pickers will be participating in the COP27 in Egypt. The delegation will be in Sharm El Sheikh from the 10th to the 18th of November and is formed by Luyanda Hlatshwayo, a waste picker representative from South Africa, Rizk Yosif Hanna, representative from the Egyptian Waste Pickers (Zabaleen) from Cairo, and Amira El Halabi — WIEGO’s Waste Pickers Program Africa Coordinator and International Alliance of Waste Pickers support team.
Our Delegation will be lobbying for the recognition of waste pickers as environmental workers who are contributing to climate change mitigation. Through their activities in collecting, sorting, recovering, and recycling waste, waste pickers help mitigate climate change and they call for this contribution to be recognized at global, national and local levels. For example, in 2020, waste pickers from Colombia’s Association of Waste Pickers of Bogotá (ARB) prevented the emissions of over 407 thousand tons of CO2 equivalent (eCO2), while India’s SWaCH Cooperative mitigated the emissions of more than 211 tons of CO2. Taken together, the avoided emissions are equivalent to removing a total of 133 thousand passenger cars from the road each year.
The Alliance will continue to document workers’ contributions to climate change mitigation and advocate these contributions be recognized through integration and inclusion in municipal waste management strategies, access to related climate funds, and relevant national policies.
For more information, please contact Amira El Halabi at amira.halabi@wiego.org
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