INTERNATIONAL ALLIANCE OF WASTE PICKERS

The International Alliance of Waste Pickers is a union of waste picker organizations representing more than 460,000 workers across 34 countries
Supported by Logo WIEGO

Category: Landfills

Screen shot from the documentary about Gericinó dump in Rio called "Catador".

“As of today, the waste pickers of Rio de Janeiro will go hungry”

In the first week of September, 246 waste pickers of the Gericinó dumpsite in Bangú, a peripheral neighborhood in the Rio de Janeiro municipality, were facing the possibility of being suddenly out of work. The workers found out that the city, which has been in the process of closing the dumpsite for many months, was going to hand management over to a private company within two weeks time and that the dumpsite would be off limits.

Red Lacre representatives show solidarity with Chilean landfill workers

On August 31, as part of the Red Lacre meeting held in Chile, 15 delegates visited waste pickers in the Los Molles landfill in the city of Valparaíso, only a few days before its closure and the opening of a new one. The purpose of the visit was to show support and give motivation for local organizing and reintegration at the new landfill. Los Molles has been open for more than 30 years.


REDNICA: In Defense of Our Livelihood! Waste pickers fighting eviction from Managua landfill

Compañeros/as of the Latin American and Caribbean Network of Waste Pickers (Red Lacre), in this very moment we are living through one of the biggest violations of our right to work as waste pickers, as the municipal landfill company Chureca de Managua has displaced us from our workplace which for decades provided us with solid waste, our source of livelihood.

Tshwane: power through networking

In the 1990s the Tshwane municipality in South Africa engaged in a number of failed projects with waste pickers. These included a project that hired waste pickers to make crafts out of recyclable material. It also included at a private company with interests in waste management helping waste pickers to set up cooperatives and run buy-back centres for the cooperatives. However the positive that came out of these failures was that waste pickers formed committees on dumps and this provided the base for independent organizing. But what lessons and openings for organisation emerged in this period?


Pagination