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At the start of every workday, Cristian Jay Briones receives a list of schools, restaurants and shopping malls scattered across the Philippine city of Batangas. His job: travel to each location, collect everything that can be recycled, which always includes plastic waste, then sort and weigh his cache. The work is challenging and fulfilling, says Briones, who is part of a waste pickers’ collective known as the San Jose Sico Landfill Multipurpose Cooperative.
“We know we’re contributing to the environment, not just for our own benefit but also helping others,” says the 26-year-old.
Briones is one of an estimated 20 million people around the world who earn a living by collecting, sorting and selling waste, including plastic. In developing countries without formal reuse and recycling systems, these waste pickers are on the frontlines of the effort to tackle plastic pollution, which experts say is a mounting threat to the environment.
This year’s World Environment Day, celebrated on June 5, focuses on solutions to end plastic pollution, including how to spur what experts call a just transition towards a circular economy for plastics and the role often-marginalized communities, including waste pickers, have in that future.
“Informal waste pickers play a crucial role in plastic waste management, especially in many developing countries,” says Elisa Tonda, Chief of the Resources and Markets Branch of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). “The success of the global fight against plastic pollution depends on our joint commitment to not leave anyone behind and to integrate waste pickers in designing the solution to address plastic pollution.”
In 2024 alone, humanity generated an estimated 400 million tons of plastic waste, contributing to an ongoing plastic pollution crisis experts say is damaging fragile ecosystems and exposing people to potential risk of exposure to harmful chemicals in plastics and also pollutants, like microplastics. (To be continue) UNEP News
