A mountain town that sorts its rubbish into 45 categories
Kamikatsu, a small town in Tokushima, declared Japan's first zero-waste goal in 2003; residents wash, sort and bring their waste to a central station.
One problem. Many solutions.
Urban waste
How do towns and cities reuse, repair and recycle more?
Different communities face the same problem and find different answers, shaped by their own resources, knowledge and context. No approach here is presented as the right one for everywhere.
Side by side
| Who | Where | How it started | Scale | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Residents of Kamikatsu | Kamikatsu, Tokushima, Japan | Residents began washing their food packaging and carrying their own rubbish, sorted by type, to the town's collection centre instead of having it burned. | Community | Documented |
| Nohra Padilla | Bogotá, Colombia | She began recycling alongside her family at the age of seven, and later joined fellow recyclers in forming cooperatives to protect their right to keep working. | City | Documented |
| Bilikiss Adebiyi-Abiola (Wecyclers) | Lagos, Nigeria | As an MBA student, Adebiyi-Abiola first tested the idea of residents dropping recyclables at kiosks. When a survey showed that was inconvenient, the team switched to collecting from doorsteps by bicycle. | City | Documented |
| Martine Postma | Amsterdam, Netherlands | On 18 October 2009 she organised a single afternoon in Amsterdam where volunteers with repair skills helped people fix broken items for free. | International | Documented |
Bogotá's waste pickers organise to be paid for recycling
A third-generation waste picker, Nohra Padilla helped organise Bogotá's recyclers and won legal recognition and payment for their work in the city's waste system.
Cargo bikes and reward points for recycling in Lagos
Wecyclers sends riders on cargo tricycles into low-income Lagos neighbourhoods to collect recyclables, rewarding households with points they can swap for food, goods or cash.
The Amsterdam meet-up that made repair social again
In 2009 Martine Postma held a free repair meet-up in Amsterdam. The idea of volunteers helping neighbours fix broken things has since spread to thousands of Repair Cafés worldwide.
What can they learn from one another? Read the "Copy this" section of each story to compare materials, costs and risks.