Around the world, growing concerns over environmental pollution, climate change and expanding gaps between the wealthy and poor are creating what is often described as a triple planetary crisis: economic, social and environmental. These compounding challenges have provoked calls for a just transition for workers impacted by the shift towards more environmentally sustainable forms of energy production and towards circular economy models. This article looks at the opportunities and challenges faced by workers in Brazil and elsewhere in the context of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) systems. Brazil, for example, has recognized the circular economy in its Nationally Determined Contribution as an important component for a just transition, linking it with social inclusion and work opportunities. In this article, we provide some reflections on the necessary conditions to ensure that circularity is delivered by waste pickers, ensuring a just transition towards circularity through EPR and other systems. Waste pickers are among the most vulnerable to livelihood loss in the transition towards a more circular economy. This is because circular economy policies and investments like EPR usher in greater investment and competition for materials and opportunity, while also often imposing onerous and costly requirements for registration, infrastructure and administration. This often results in a paradoxical expulsion of waste pickers from materials management systems, where they have historically played the central role in pollution prevention and material recovery for recycling and reuse. Even in places like Germany, where waste management is heavily developed, waste pickers are essential actors in the recovery of cans and bottles under the national Deposit Return System (DRS), despite their lack of organization and recognition within the system.
Organizing is Key to a Just Transition
A just transition for waste pickers and other workers in materials management value chains means to recognize them as legitimate stakeholders and to protect and improve their role in these systems as they transition. But securing a role for workers is not as simple as allowing them to participate informally and without real representation. The International Alliance of Waste Pickers, a global network of organizations of workers in informal employment representing half a million waste pickers across three dozen countries, notes that a just transition for waste pickers typically only occurs where waste pickers are organized and have opportunities to advance in the value chain into the operation of facilities like depots. In Oregon, USA, this year, the waste picker organization Ground Score Association, through well-organized campaigns, was able to influence a change in the state DRS law to open up the market for operating depots, which are operated by distributors. This is enabling their previously donation-funded People’s Depot to become an official part of the system and expand to operate full time, formally employing waste pickers to operate the depot while also providing dignified bottle redemption services and advocacy in defence of both the state’s DRS system and waste pickers (locally called canners). Global North organizations like Ground Score have been influenced by other countries, like Brazil, where waste pickers have built national movements in defence of a just transition and rightful integration into formal materials management systems. In 2010, a Brazilian law instituting the National Solid Waste Management Policy (PNRS is its acronym in Portuguese) was a key landmark for the integration of waste pickers in Brazil. It included them as preferential actors in municipal segregation at source programs and in Brazil’s shared responsibility system – the Reverse Logistics System (RLS). In Brazil's RLS, industries that produce and generate packaging are required by law to invest in the return flows of these post-consumption materials and to prioritize the participation of waste pickers cooperatives in this process. Hence, cooperatives perform the sorting, compressing, baling, and the sale of recovered recyclable materials to the recycling industry. In return, waste-producing industries invest in cooperatives by providing cargo vehicles, equipment, improvements to the cooperatives’ sorting warehouses, training and environmental education of cooperative members. In addition to supporting the operational capacity of cooperatives and investing in building their capacity, some of the RLS programs have been instrumental in supporting waste pickers cooperatives during crises and also in supporting research on the pandemic impacts led by WIEGO. Recently, WIEGO involved one Brazil’s reverse logistics programs as a partner in its Near Real Time Monitoring of Extreme Weather Events project carried out in six cities of Brazil. This is a great step towards gathering evidence on how workers’ sorting centres are impacted by climate change, which can shape adaptation policies to increase waste pickers’ resilience. A recent development in Brazil’s RLS is that now the National Movement of Waste Pickers technical wing organization – ANCAT – is a certified Producer Responsibility Organization through its platform Reciclar pelo Brasil. This is a sign of the relevance and recognition of workers in the country’s RLS.
Call for Recognition, Investment and Inclusion
Despite these advances by the RLS to recognize the everyday circularities of the South by supporting waste pickers cooperatives, many challenges affect the inclusivity of this system. For example, there is still no clarity about criteria regarding payment for services to waste picker co-ops by the industry, leading to imbalanced negotiation power between parties, something also observed in the Oregon case. Another challenge is that the system benefits organized waste pickers but leaves behind those who are autonomous (not organized), which still constitutes the majority of waste pickers. South Africa’s EPR system attempts to overcome this challenge by registering waste pickers on a platform that is supposed to provide them with a service payment when materials are sold, though these payments often do not get to waste pickers due to technological hurdles and lack of producer will. The need to support organizing, access to land and infrastructure, collaboration between public and private, and legal recognition in policies and laws are some of the key demands of waste pickers worldwide. Circular economy strategies, such as Extended Producer Responsibility, can create avenues for recognition and integration of waste pickers. Waste pickers have proven to fill gaps in materials management systems, even highly developed ones, such that their role is essential to maximizing material recovery for the circular economy. But the circular economy approach, when poorly designed, can also lead to further exploitation and dispossession of waste pickers. In a world of widening wealth disparity and growing environmental crises, we cannot afford to leave green workers behind; we need solutions that address both problems. What constitutes a just transition for waste pickers may look different depending on the context, but the basic principles of recognition, sufficient investment and meaningful inclusion in planning and implementation are the same around the world. These strategies cannot be an afterthought – they must inform the path to a more circular economy, and they must start today. This article appears in German in südlink magazine.