Just Transition Alliance attended several mid-Summer gatherings in the Philippines, to learn about and support Filippino waste worker unions and their allies with just transition principles and practices that center those workers and communities most impacted by the global waste and plastics pollution crisis.

For the first part of our visit we participated in and witnessed the historic launch of the Philippine National Waste Worker Alliance (PNWWA), including the adoption of their constitution, strong just transition guiding principles and a national legislative campaign for a Magna Carta on waste. The leaders of dozens of waste worker unions came together to form the “first ever” national alliance, demanding their national government advance this Magna Carta legislation so that the lives, labor and leadership of workers who reduce, reuse, recycle and compost the nations waste, are recognized as central to tackling climate change, reducing plastics pollution and providing livelihoods in the poorest communities. With support from NGO allies like the Mother Earth Foundation (MEF) and the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA), the PNWWA held a press conference to demand “Freedom from Pollution, Poverty and Wasteful Systems”. Representatives of the Philippines national government in attendance, such as the National Secretary of Labor and Chair of the national climate task force praised the leadership of waste workers in tackling these intertwined ecological and economic crises.

Amongst the many witnesses of this historic political moment were waste worker leaders from India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and the Philippines who’d gathered to build political alignment PNWWA around shared challenges and fights such as plastic product bans, extended producer responsibility laws and the resurgence of waste incinerator proposals across the Asia Pacific region. These meetings had also been planned to coincide with the 25th Anniversary of the Mother Earth Foundation, a beautiful celebration to honor many veteran organizers and leaders of the Philippines zero waste and environmental justice movements. Attending these meetings and celebrations allowed us to reconnect with many old friends and comrades.

We spent our final couple of days participating in an inspiring Zero Waste Academy, co-organized by GAIA and MEF, with 30 young organizers and civic leaders from across the Asia Pacific region. This academy took us on site visits to various Barangays where door-to-door waste collection, recycling and composting programs have been developed over the years. We learned how these programs conduct waste audits to identify the spectrum of disposable products flooding the world’s oceans and freshwater systems, and the brands of various consumer goods companies responsible for all the disposable plastics packaging polluting our oceans. What was most impressive about the academy was the peer-based education format that allowed us to witness and engage in the practices of local waste workers, and discuss how these varied or were similar to those of their counterparts from other Asian countries. JTA was left with a sense that young EJ community organizers from North America could learn much from the organizing, training and popular education practices of our Filipino comrades.

We ended our visit in a number of side meetings with waste worker leaders and allied union organizers – to learn more about the complexities of organizing grassroots movements under right-wing regimes of the elite, and examining how just transition strategies can serve to gain policy shifts through the alignment of frontline worker and community delegations engaging at policy arenas such as the UNFCCC and the Global Plastics Treaty.  These exchanges and co-learning opportunities helped validate the strategic course of our work over the previous year – where we helped facilitate workshops, trainings and strategy sessions for our allied labor and environmental movement formations to collaborate in building power, cultivating new narratives, shifting policy and moving money away from corporate techno-fixes, and towards community and worker led solutions.

We returned to the US with a deeper understanding and commitment of our collaboration with the members of the International Alliance of Waste Pickers and their affiliates around the world, especially where their members are clearly leading the most innovative pathways towards a future free of plastics pollution. As always, we were reminded of the strategic importance of EJ movement commitments to serve the collective leadership of workers and communities who are most harmed and exploited, and that bottom-up organizing is the best way to tackle root, systemic problems with the most effective of place-based remedies.