Our environment and economies are increasingly being impacted by the converging crises of growing inequality, plastic pollution, and climate crisis. Plastic pollution has been recognized by the United Nations Environment Program as a serious environmental problem at a global scale, negatively impacting the environmental, social, and economic dimensions of sustainable development. A growing number of policies are being developed around the world to address the plastic pollution crisis, including the ongoing process to negotiate an international, legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment.
An important component of these negotiations is recognizing the disproportionate impact plastic pollution and climate crisis has on socio-economically marginalized communities and workers, especially those working in the waste sector. Globally, up to 85 percent of the recycling chain workers are informal. Many if not most of these workers depend on the recovery and processing of plastics. Waste pickers constitute one such category of workers in the waste sector who are an essential component in the plastic recycling chain contributing to climate mitigation efforts.
Waste pickers manage approximately 60 percent of the world’s plastic waste that is collected for recycling, contributing to a more circular economy. Furthermore, their work lowers costs to municipalities by filling gaps in waste management and extending the lifespan of dumpsites and other waste processing infrastructure. Despite their significant contributions, waste pickers are among the most vulnerable stakeholders within plastics value chains. Waste pickers are frequently excluded from formal labor markets and are marginalized due to the stigmatization of waste and poverty. In the Indian context, waste pickers are majorly from historically oppressed caste groups that are self-employed without recognition as workers and, as a result, without labor rights.
Investment and policy responses to plastics pollution, however, often fail to safeguard the livelihoods of workers who depend on the industries and materials impacted by these policy responses. As plastic waste and pollution grow, governments are promoting formal waste collection and management systems without properly acknowledging the role of waste pickers. Thus, they fail to achieve a just transition to a more circular and environmentally sound economy.
The International Alliance of Waste Pickers (IAWP) is a union of waste picker groups representing more than 460,000 workers across 34 countries. As a collective alliance, our work is the result of collaborative efforts of partner organizations and groups that have helped conceptualize the necessary definitions and recommendations towards a just transition framework for waste pickers.
Who Is a Waste Picker?
We define waste picker as a person who participates (individually or collectively) in the collection, separation, sorting, transport, and sale of recyclable and reusable materials and products (paper, plastic, metal, glass, and other materials) in an informal or semi-formal capacity, as own-account workers, or a cooperative or social and solidarity economy setting, and as workers who subsequently achieved formal work arrangements through their organizations.
Our definition encompasses not only waste pickers but also the ecosystems in which we operate, recognizing those who engage in solidarity economy, cooperatives, and the informal economy. Together, they represent a crucial group that are most at risk of displacement from circular economy policies and treaties and therefore deserve prioritization within just transition efforts.
What Is Just Transition for Us?
Aligning with trade unions, environmental justice movements, and the International Labor Organization (ILO), we define a just transition as ending plastic pollution in a way that is as fair and inclusive as possible to everyone concerned, creating decent work opportunities and leaving no one behind.
It is founded on acknowledging the contributions of those engaged at every stage of the plastic value chain, recognizing their fundamental rights and principles at work, their human dignity, and their historical contributions. The approach seeks to maximize the social and economic benefits of eliminating plastic pollution while carefully managing and minimizing the associated challenges. This includes fostering effective social dialogue among all impacted groups.
Both waste pickers and the concept of just transition have gained growing attention within the process of developing the United Nations Plastics Treaty, with the UNEA 5/14 resolution recognizing the “significant contributions” of, and considering lessons learned from, “workers in informal and cooperative settings to the collecting, sorting, and recycling of plastics in many countries.”
However, in order for the U.N. Plastics Treaty to adequately safeguard the livelihoods of impacted and potentially impacted workers, the concept of just transition, and the identification and prioritization of impacted stakeholders, must be well understood by all parties and adequately described in the treaty. While we focus specifically on waste pickers, all affected workers in materials management systems need to be afforded a just transition.
What Would a Just Transition for Waste Pickers Look Like?
Plans for a just transition must enhance and expand upon the systems that waste pickers have already established while ensuring improved and decent working conditions, social protection, increased training opportunities, appropriate technology transfer, infrastructure support, and better job security. However, the specific implementation of a just transition framework should depend on the local context and consultation of rightful stakeholders.
We can chart and implement a just transition for waste pickers are by ensuring the following methods, among others. These steps and recommendations have been outlined with the collaborative work of our member organizations as part of the International Alliance for Waste Pickers.
Waste Pickers Recognition and Inclusion in Legal and Regulatory Frameworks: Waste pickers should be recognized within informal and cooperative settings in national, provincial, and municipal legislations and norms, policies and laws. This should entail the conferment of legal entitlements for livelihood and social protection.
Additionally, there should be universal registration of waste pickers and other workers in plastics and other recycling and reuse value chains to ensure their inclusion. Registration of waste pickers could mean their inclusion as an occupational category within country-specific enumeration frameworks, inclusion in official labor databases, increasing accessibility of registration processes for waste pickers, research-based identification and mapping of relevant actors in the waste and materials management systems, and ensuring decriminalization of unregistered waste pickers, among other initiatives.
Waste Pickers Participation and Integration in Official Forums: We thoroughly believe that any establishment of public governance committees or forums should effectively include waste pickers and other waste workers in the informal economy and other marginalized waste actors to ensure direct participation and acknowledgment of their stakeholdership. This would ensure their involvement and advancement in policymaking and implementation processes. This is especially crucial to ensure adequate time and security for the transition of waste pickers and other waste workers in processes of improving and formalizing their work in ways that ensure decent safety and labor standards.
Waste Pickers Legal and Social Protections: In the context of changing working conditions, waste pickers have a right to fair wages and social and labor protections for their work. These entitlements and protections should ideally be expanded and applied to all workers in the materials management system as well as to waste pickers who have not been integrated into formal employment arrangements. These entitlements should be rights-based and universal in scope, governed and delivered by the state, and financed through production-oriented contributions such as Extended Producers Responsibility, product taxes, and other means.
Strengthening Waste Pickers Organizations: Waste pickers have a right to formalize and strengthen their organizing capacity. Governments should support and provide incentives to help waste pickers build strong democratic organizations, which can help integrate workers into formal employment and develop skills important for a just transition. This is crucial to ensure a collective forum for waste pickers to represent their interests.
Enhancing Capacity and Right to Upskilling of Waste Pickers: Waste pickers have a right to adapt and enhance their capacity and skills in the context of changing market trends. Governments should track and report on labor market trends to ensure and enable reskilling opportunities as well as access to upcoming technology for waste pickers and other waste workers as well as a right to pursue alternative jobs to enable occupational mobility.
Responsible and Improved Plastics and Other Material Management: One of the most crucial aspects of ensuring a just transition for waste pickers is to highlight the responsibility of producers and manufacturers in the plastic and other material production chain. Some of the ways through which producers could enhance responsible and improved material production include: minimizing and phasing out production of non-recyclable and hazardous materials; promoting reuse and repair designs that engage waste pickers; prevention, prohibition, and elimination of climate-intensive, destructive technologies like incineration and pyrolysis/chemical recycling; promoting opportunities for waste pickers and other marginalized waste sector stakeholders through shifts in materials management chain, etc.
Although not exhaustive, together these pathways enhance the understanding of how to enable a just transition for waste pickers. Locally developed and contextual methods along with legally recognized principles to enable practices that include the stakeholdership of waste pickers can be a crucial way through which a just transition can be rightfully implemented.