Participatory innovation videos for an inclusive and sustainable waste management

Millions of waste pickers collect household waste daily in cities around the globe to earn a living. In doing so, they make a significant contribution to reducing the carbon footprint of cities, recovering resources, improving environmental conditions and health of low-income residents, and creating jobs, and income among the poor. Often organized in waste picker organizations (WPO), they develop important, but often unknown, innovations for sustainability and social justice. While local governments are key actors in the provision of services in partnership with WPO, their competences, knowledge, or understanding of the contribution of WPO is however limited.

This project aims at diffusing the grassroots innovations developed by these WPO (in terms of technology, gender, governance, finance, and market) through 1. participatory video production and 2. a policy brief targeting WPO and local governments. 1) First, the innovation videos will be produced by local teams, instructed by a communicator, with the participation of WPO in Argentina, Brazil, Kenya and Tanzania. Used as self-educational materials, the videos will be spread out: world-wide, through the communication channels developed by partner organizations supporting WPO as UN-Habitat (Waste Academy platform) or the Latin American Network of Waste Pickers (and its youtube channel) hosting the Global Waste Picker C onference in Buenos Aires 2021; and in Kenya and Tanzania, through WPO meetings. 2) Second, the policy brief will be diffused through the Swedish Research Institute for Local Democracy’s digital communication channels and meetings with local governments in east African countries.

As a result of this project it is expected to improve the knowledge among municipal officers and WPO on grassroots innovations for inclusive waste management in Kenya and Tanzania as well as the development of what could be the foundation for a future network of East African WPO. Besides a number of WPO attending meetings and participating in the Global WPO C onference, communication materials will be available open-source spilling out the results of this project beyond the geographic boundaries of Kenya and Tanzania.