CARE: Collective Action for Recycling and Empowerment

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Project Overview
Key learnings
Impact
Download project outputs

Introduction

Project Details

Project Lead: Aluminium Stewardship Initiative

Project Partners: International Aluminium Institute (IAI), Compromiso Empresarial para la Economia Circular (CEMPRE), Canpack Colombia, Crown Holdings Inc, The Roundtable on the Responsible Recycling of Metals (RRRM), Recycled Materials Association (ReMA)

Duration: January 2025 – January 2026

Sector focus: Industrial products

Geographical focus: South America

Contact: Gabriel Carmona Aparicio (gabriel@aluminium-stewardship.org), Circularity Research Manager, Aluminium Stewardship Initiative

A photo of waste collected in piles and bags across a large outdoor site.

Image Caption

Waste picking site in Colombia. Photo by Aluminium Stewardship Initiative

Project Overview

Waste pickers in developing countries remain the most vulnerable and overlooked group in the global recycling value chain. Despite their key role in supporting a circular economy, the highly fragmented nature of informal recycling workforces poses a challenge related to market access, organisational capacity, data availability, and alignment with emerging regulatory frameworks, including due diligence and compliance standards.

Recognising this, ALSI’s project sought to better understand and strengthen the conditions under which waste picker organisations can participate in more formalised recycling markets, based on a collective action model. Focusing on Colombia’s recycled aluminium value chain, the project team identified challenges, opportunities and pathways for market formalisation. By bringing together waste pickers, SMEs, local NGOs, environmental authorities, and businesses, the project facilitated dialogue across the value chain, supported organisational strengthening, and explored pathways for integration into formal systems, including those emerging under Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), and promoted broader circularity goals that benefit the entire sector.

Training participants sit facing a screen.

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CARE Training. Photo by Aluminium Stewardship Initiative

Key learnings

The link between traceability requirements and higher income for waste pickers is not direct. While meeting higher traceability standards may secure higher return, waste pickers are often forced to prioritise stable income and immediate returns due to their own financial situations.
Capacity building and sustained technical accompaniment are critical enablers. Short-term training alone is insufficient to support organisational strengthening or integration into formal market systems.
The opportunity cost of participation in non-income-generating activities, including wellbeing initiatives, needs to be considered in programme design. Uptake is limited when participation results in loss of income. loss of income.
Opening and maintaining a trusted dialogue with waste pickers and market actors was vital for raising the visibility of the project learning and for embedding solutions, and this will require sustained investment of time over a long period to enact significant change.

A panel of speakers sit in front of a blue information panel, facing conference attendees.

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Presentation of CARE project at COP. Photo by Aluminium Stewardship Initiative.

Impact

ALSI has shared the project learnings widely to encourage change across the sector, including sharing with major downstream companies like Tetra Pak, Coca-Cola and AB InBev, and civil society organisations such as the International Alliance of Waste Pickers (IAWP), Fair Circularity Initiative and The Circulate Initiative.

This collaborative and transparent approach has resulted in continued commitment from several project partners and other stakeholders. CEMPRE is exploring ways to scale the pilot into a second phase, with a focus on market-based approaches and alignment with existing regulatory frameworks. While The Circulate Initiative is looking to expand their scope beyond plastic waste and into aluminium.

Meanwhile, ALSI continues to utilise the project learning, embedding findings into their own traceability approach and standard, informing its broader work on responsible recycling, capacity building and engagement with first-mile actors, and exploring new opportunities for collaboration with their many partners.

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CARE Project Archive

Access Aluminium Stewardship Initiative's CARE project archive and wider resources on circularity below. These were produced as part of the Collective Action for Recycling and Empowerment project.

CARE Project Archive

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Supported by

The ISEAL Innovations Fund is supported by Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) and UK International Development from the UK Government.