The Global Union Where 500,000 Waste Pickers Speak With One Voice

The International Alliance of Waste Pickers (IAWP) is a member-based global union federation whose constitution was approved by waste picker movements in 38 countries in October 2022 and which held its first elective congress in Buenos Aires in May 2024. It brings together 59 member organisations representing more than 500,000 waste pickers across Africa, Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean and North America. Its delegates campaigned at the plastics treaty negotiations (INC-5.2) in Geneva in August 2025 for a binding just transition. In October 2026 it announced, with GRID-Arendal, Tearfund and WIEGO, a Norad-funded programme running to June 2029 in Kenya, Ghana and Indonesia to put waste pickers at the centre of a just transition.