01 Dec 2022 --- The International Alliance of Waste Pickers (IAWP), which promotes the importance and role of up 56 million people working informally to collect plastic packaging trash across the globe, has been officially recognized at the ongoing UN International Negotiating Committee (INC) for a global plastics treaty. Rights advocates are celebrating the decision by 19 UN member states to recognize waste pickers as formal stakeholders in the negotiations as “historic.” This week, civil society groups feared that multi-billion dollar FMCGs, who are also at the negotiations, could derail anti-pollution aims and “tokenize” waste pickers and Indigenous Groups while continuing to profit and stall environmental and human health progress.
