Waste Pickers in Colombia Earn Formal Recognition

Nora Padilla, one of the six winners of this year’s Goldman environmental prize, dedicates her days to organising informal recyclers in the Colombian capital, where the city’s eight million inhabitants are just now reluctantly starting to classify their garbage at source.

From Rags to Penury

India’s planners worry about ‘jobless growth’, but perhaps nothing illustrates this phenomenon better than a policy of handing over the collection and disposal of the capital’s refuse to large private corporations, leaving close to 50,000 ragpickers unemployed.

Buenos Aires Mayor Slammed for Slow Pace on “Zero Waste” Targets

The garbage strewn across many streets and sidewalks in the Argentine capital reflects the inefficiency of a waste collection and treatment system that, paradoxically, has become increasingly costly for the city’s residents, say civil society groups and opposition parties.

Sustainable Fashion Born in Brazil’s Favelas

A Brazilian designer has taken fashion from the exclusivity of the catwalk to the reality of the favela, to demonstrate that styles, trends and fads are also born in these poor neighborhoods of cities like Rio de Janeiro.