IAWP and our affiliates have been present in climate negotiations since COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009, and our message has not changed: we are already climate workers. Through recycling, reuse and organic waste recovery, our members prevent emissions every day. Research across twenty waste picker organizations in ten countries found that a single waste picker avoids a median of 44 tonnes of CO2eq per year, and worldwide waste pickers are estimated to mitigate between 170 and 390 million tonnes of CO2eq annually. Yet we remain largely invisible in climate policy and almost entirely excluded from climate finance. We advocate for waste pickers to be integrated into national and local mitigation and adaptation plans and into just transition mechanisms. We oppose incineration and other energy-intensive technologies that pollute and destroy livelihoods. And we call for climate funding that reaches workers directly — stable, accessible finance rather than market-based instruments such as carbon credits, which have consistently failed to benefit waste pickers: not one of the organizations that has measured its climate impact has been able to access climate-specific financing as a result.
