From community organizers to frontline waste pickers to policymakers, GAIA unites and supports local environmental justice efforts around the world to end waste pollution and implement regenerative zero waste solutions.
Going Zero Waste
Going Zero Waste — fundamentally restructuring a system that sends billions of tons of waste a year into our land, oceans, and air — is about regeneration, respect for nature, and environmental and social justice. Implementing zero waste strategies such as waste reduction, composting, recycling, and industrial redesign leads to more resilient cities and communities, social equity, and healthier environments.
A Global community
Our Impact
From our founding meeting in 2000 that brought together 83 participants from 23 countries, GAIA has grown into an organization that unites hundreds of members in 90 different countries. Together, we have played a leadership role in influencing climate policy, building a world free from plastic, and supporting cities in their transition to zero waste.
million people live in cities with zero waste commitments
incinerators prevented
advisory board members from 27 countries
distributed to member organizations annually, and growing
OUR LATEST RESOURCES
Info Sheet: Electric Vehicle Batteries and Waste Colonialism
The Electric Vehicle Batteries and Waste Colonialism Info Sheet emphasizes that transnational movements of spent electric vehicle (EV) batteries from high-income countries to countries in the Global South raise concerns on waste colonialism, when the destination countries are ill-equipped to safely handle this toxic waste. Major loops exist in international and regional frameworks such as Basel Convention and the EU Battery Regulation, which calls for the need to regulate exports of used EVs and EV batteries on safety, repairability, reusability, recyclability, and access to information on battery condition and movements.
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Info Sheet: Collection and Transportation Logistics of Electric Vehicle Battery Recycling
The Collection and Transportation Logistics of Electric Vehicle Battery Recycling Info Sheet outlines main barriers to efficient battery collection systems, including high costs for long-distance transportation, complexity of handling battery scrap, and lack of policy and regulation. Such lack of a coordinated collection and transportation network has environmental justice implications, especially in countries in the Global South, where unregulated recycling practices pose risks to workers and the environment without adequate infrastructure or safety measures. Governments can play a pivotal role in coordinating for strategic facility citing, ensuring open access to battery state of health information, and providing incentives for battery collection.
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Life Before Plastic Case Study [English & French]
Plastic has taken over the world in the past few decades and has burdened Africa’s environments and waste management systems. Africa is no stranger to the plastic problem even if it accounts for only 5% of the global plastic production rates and consumes only 4% of global plastics volumes. In this publication on, The Life before Plastic: Demonstrating Traditional Practices of Reuse in Africa, we explore the problem of plastics on the continent and examine the laws, policies and multilateral agreements put in place to govern plastic waste management and trade. The publication more importantly showcases examples of traditional practices made of natural materials widely used across the African continent as alternatives to plastic. Further, GAIA and BFFP Africa members provide an insight on existing reuse and refill systems on the continent and examine how reuse and refill can be made a stronger part of Africa’s journey towards ending plastic pollution. In conclusion, the Life Before Plastic publication delves into how current and traditional zero waste systems can be sustained in the future by providing and addressing recommendations on corporate accountability, policy makers responsibility and consumer responsibility through making zero waste a lifestyle.
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Letter to Environment Ministers Attending the United Nations Oceans Pre-Conference
Letter from organisations of the Latin American and Caribbean Network for the Reduction of Plastic Production with Global Binding Targets to Environment Ministers Present at the UN Oceans Pre-Conference.
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Carta a ministras y ministros del medio ambiente presentes en la pre-conferencia de los océanos de Naciones Unidas
Carta de organizaciones de la Red Latinoamericana y del Caribe por la Reducción de la Producción de Plásticos con Metas
Globales Vinculantes a Ministras y Ministros del Medio Ambiente Presentes en la Pre-conferencia de los Océanos de Naciones Unidas.
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Declaración pública por el Día mundial del medio ambiente y el Día de los océanos
“Para proteger el medio ambiente y los océanos, necesitamos metas globales vinculantes para la reducción de la producción de plásticos.”
No podremos abordar ni la crisis climática ni la de biodiversidad ni la de contaminación marina por plásticos, sin reducir los niveles de producción de plásticos. Es una condición ineludible para que cualquier iniciativa de manejo de residuos, limpieza de océanos y playas, e incluso de reciclaje, tenga un impacto real. Por eso, las organizaciones que firmamos esta declaración, pedimos el establecimiento de metas globales vinculantes para la reducción de la producción de plásticos.
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Info Sheet: Battery Passports
The Battery Passports Info Sheet defines a battery passport as a digital twin of a physical battery, storing information including the battery’s label, manufacturing history and origin of its materials, battery chemistry, state of health, use history, safe handling and end-of-life (EoL) management. The battery passport is a means to support end-to-end traceability, and provides crucial information for decision-making on repair, reuse, repurposing and recyclability of the battery. A robust and widely accessible battery passport helps provide information critical to removing important barriers to repair, reuse, repurposing, recycling and end-of-life of EV batteries. A wide range of initiatives currently underway at sub-national, national and international levels are summarized in this Info Sheet, along with five key considerations for a fair and equitable battery passport and its relationship to environmental justice.
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Info Sheet: Electric Vehicle Battery Repurposing and Second Life
The Repurposing and Second Life Info Sheet highlights the opportunities for EV batteries retired from a vehicle when they are at about 80% capacity to have a second life for another 10+ years and addressing environmental justice concerns, providing energy storage for residences, microgrids, and charging stations. Repurposing a used EV battery involves four steps: (1) assessing the state of health of the battery, (2) evaluating battery viability for a second life, (3) deciding on a configuration, and (4) reassembling the battery pack in a new configuration, each described in detail in this infosheet. Key challenges to repurposing include a lack of standardization, failure to design for disassembly, difficult access to battery state of health information, lack of safety information, recycled content mandates, and proprietary technology.
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Info Sheet: The Right to Repair of Electric Vehicle Batteries
The right to repair infosheet highlights that EV batteries risk having an artificially limited life in the vehicle given significant barriers to repair. Repair of EV batteries is very challenging requiring additional training or specialized service centers, prohibitively costly meaning consumers or insurers opt to scrap rather than repair the battery, and sometimes impossible due to proprietary technology or battery construction. While there are some developing policies on consumer right to repair, much more robust and effective laws are needed to ensure consumer right to repair of EV batteries to counter premature obsolescence and automakers monopolizing repair services. Such a right to repair includes: (i) providing universal and fair access to diagnostic information, tools and repair manuals; (ii) removing firmware, software and hardware barriers preventing consumer repair; (iii) following standard design criteria for core components, and (iv) ensuring fair access to and availability of spare parts.
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Info Sheet: Electric Vehicle battery Disassembly
The EV battery Disassembly infosheet exposes the complex and often destructive process with proprietary tools required to disassemble a typical EV battery with cell-pack-module construction for repair, reuse, repurposing or material recovery. A host of recommendations are outlined ranging from streamlining access to the battery pack and modules with linear design and standardized components, reducing toxic substances for worker safety, universal access to technical manuals and proprietary tools, industry standards for battery refurbishment, and simplifying battery construction for disassembly.
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Info Sheet: Understanding Basics of Electric Vehicle Batteries
While most attention on EV batteries concerns minerals such as their cobalt, nickel and lithium content, the battery basics infosheet highlights that these materials make up less than half of a typical 1,000 lb battery, meaning that any discussion of material recovery must look at the fate of all 1,000 lbs, and not only those materials that form the economic incentive for recycling. Moreover, the binders or glues critical to EV battery functionality and used throughout the battery structure are manufactured with Per- and Polyfluorinated Substances (PFAS), commonly referred to as “forever chemicals.” These binders pose dangerous risks to human and environmental health that must be considered in battery end-of-life, and fire-safe design alternatives must be prioritized.
Los riesgos del uso del término Economía Circular del Plástico en América Latina y el Caribe
La “economía circular del plástico” ha sido difundida como un modelo que busca imitar los ciclos de la naturaleza; disminuir o eliminar la extracción de recursos naturales y evitar los desechos y la contaminación en su ciclo de producción y uso. Sin embargo, en nuestra región ha sido utilizada para avalar prácticas y tecnologías de gestión de residuos que impactan seriamente la salud de las poblaciones y del ambiente.
Por lo anterior, desde nuestras organizaciones que pertenecen a la región de Latinoamericana y el Caribe y a la red de GAIA, BFFP, y IPEN vemos con preocupación que el término de economía circular pueda ser usado en el texto del Tratado Global de Plásticos para promover el uso de tecnologías de fin de tubería o falsas soluciones, y así deshacerse de los desechos plásticos con el argumento de ser procesos circulares, amigables con el medio ambiente e inocuos.
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