🇿🇦South Africa

The street pickers who haul most of Johannesburg's recyclable packaging to market now have their own democratic union of more than 5,500 reclaimers, and they insist on being called reclaimers, not waste pickers.

Since 2017, floating booms across KwaZulu-Natal and Western Cape rivers have intercepted more than 2.5 million kilograms of plastic before it reaches the sea.

A pirate story that ends with children treating the litter on their own beach as treasure rather than rubbish.