We thought of celebrating after recycling 120,000 containers but then we surpassed that last week! The success of the temporary recycling shed belonging to the Valoristes’ cooperative in Quebec confirms the need for permanent recycling sheds like the ones that exist across most of Canada.
WIEGO, UCA and Red Nica are collaborating to create an alliance for a baseline study of the thousands of waste pickers/recyclers in Nicaragua, the majority of whom are not heard or considered and remain invisible.
In 2003, the national transit code sought to eradicate animal traction vehicles or animal pulled carts that would have affected hundreds of thousands in Colombia. They had to demand their rights.
As part of the Regional Initiative for Inclusive Recycling, the Inter-American Development Bank organized a workshop in horizontal training on organizing for waste pickers working at a sanitary landfill in Amatitlán, Guatemala.
This report from the union of waste pickers, KKPKP, in Pune, India details the interventions of the union to improve the health of their members, including the setting up of a municipally funded health insurance scheme, health advocacy and the use of trust hospitals.
For the past 22 years, the waste pickers of Colombia have been fighting for recognition of their work. “There are no borders for those who fight,” is the slogan that symbolizes the struggle of the more than 15 million waste pickers, who are facing global threats – against their lives, organization and towards the environment.
Don’t Waste People captures the voices of a few of the hundreds of thousands of people who work as waste pickers in Delhi, India, sorting through trash from roadsides, municipal bins and landfills and selling the reusable material to make a living.
In a video produced by ARB and supported by WIEGO, Silvio Ruiz Grisales, a Colombian recycler, spoke about the continued fight for the right to waste management in Bogotá.
SWaCH Cooperative in Pune, India, appeared on a national television show Satyamev Jayate in March. In the episode “Invisible Environmentalists”, the show’s host Aamir Khan interviews Laxmi Narayan, co-founder of SWaCH and SWaCH waste picker Saru Bai, who now runs a compost plant with her husband.
NDTV 24X7, a national news channel, made a short documentary titled ‘’Real women, incredible lives: From ragpicker to entrepreneur” and Rekha, a waste picker associated with Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group and Safai Sena, was a part of it.
The documentary “La Basura de Hoy, el Tesoro de Mañana” includes moving testimonies from Bolivian waste pickers. The film aims to bring consciousness to the struggles, necessities and support that waste pickers, often not valued for their contributions, need as they struggle to bring dignity to the important social work they do.
Rag Pickers are the backbone of a neat and beautiful metropolis. The green workers manage entire trash of urban locates around the globe. However, their contribution to the city’s waste management remains unrecognized. Vulnerability is exacerbated by the municipal solid waste management rules 2013.
In this video taken at the Waste and Citizenship Festival in France, Roberto Prates Reis, a representative of the National Movement of Waste Pickers in Brazil (MNCR) talks about the struggle of the “biffins” of Paris to defend their livelihood.
Check out Safai Sena’s first newsletter in English: “Safainama: Voice of Waste Pickers.”