LocationsThe Plasticity of Hope: Turning Waste into Dignity, Data and Collective Action
November 7, 2025
By Mirko Ebelshaeuser
The news from Geneva on August 15, 2025, was a heavy blow: the latest round of negotiations for a global legally binding plastics treaty concluded without an agreement. After ten days of debate, including an intense final 48 hours, delegates could not reach consensus, underscoring the urgency of the crisis. The core division centered on whether the treaty should include legally binding limits on plastic production and the hazardous chemicals it involves, alongside the issue of who should bear financial responsibility for its implementation.
The impasse is a sobering reminder that while consensus building takes time, the relentless currents of climate change and surging waves of plastic waste do not wait. Global plastic waste is projected to reach 1.7 billion metric tons by 2060, costing a cumulative $281 trillion by some estimates. The circular economy, a vision of sustainability, seems to be receding in the rearview mirror. Today, only 9% of plastics are recycled.
So, what now?
From global gridlock to grassroots innovation
Amidst the challenges to reach consensus, a powerful shift is already underway. Across continents and communities, people are not waiting. Instead, they are rolling up their sleeves, innovating, and tackling the problem where it lives: on the ground.
This surge of collective ingenuity, is precisely what the UNDP Accelerator Labs are built to amplify, Functioning as a globally distributed R&D engine, we are a vast UNDP network of social innovation labs working directly with the communities we serve. Our mission is to bridge the gap between policy and practice by rigorously testing new ideas, scaling what works and learning what doesn’t, all by tapping into the knowledge of those closest to the problem.
Bottom-up R&D for systems transformation: three examples of impact
Our deep dive into waste and circularity grew organically from the experiences of over 50 Accelerator Labs across all five regions over 5 years. Their experiments are diverse, including filling data and knowledge gaps to support green transitions; redesigning waste value chains to support sustainable business practices; accelerating local waste innovations; and influencing waste-related cultural behaviors.
We do not see plastic pollution as a problem to be solved in isolation. We view it as a critical entry point, a starting block from which to probe systems. We create spaces where communities and local stakeholders can turn challenges into opportunities, building value from the bottom up.
How does this translate into real life action? Community-driven initiatives can complement broader policy efforts in addressing challenges such as plastics, organics, or financing.
Food sorting at the San Felipe Neri municipal market in Panama.
Linking grassroots to policy in Panama: the market as a living lab
In Panama, the UNDP Accelerator Lab initiated the “Zero Waste Initiative” at the San Felipe Neri municipal market, to address the city’s growing landfill crisis. With more than half of all waste being organic and Panama among the countries with the highest per-capita waste generation, the market was reimagined as a living lab for circular economy solutions. In collaboration with market staff and vendors, the experiment began with detailed waste audits and social mapping. These efforts revealed a striking finding: 99% of the waste could be redistributed for human consumption, composted or recycled.
This shifted our learning towards food rescue and resource optimization. Key activities included: installing accessible, low-tech composting stations, providing training for market workers, and co-developing a food rescue protocol with a local foundation, Rescate de Alimentos. This approach generated memorable experiences, like vendors tasting dishes prepared by community chefs from their own surplus produce—a powerful demonstration of how waste can be transformed into value. The experiment tested digital tools, including a local delivery app to track rescued food and compost, though it also faced challenges such as limited digital literacy and skepticism toward digital payments.
To ensure long-term sustainability, the Lab designed a governance model that reflected participants’ values and needs, ensuring every voice was heard. The successful pilot has generated momentum, expanding circular practices to other markets, with the ambition use the learnings to move towards zero waste across Panama.
Raeli Athuman Zuberi, a 30-year old mother of two, is a waste picker in Tanga, Tanzania.
Focusing on incentives in Tanzania: from waste to dignity and data
Tanga City faces a daunting challenge: only about 40% of its daily 300–400 tons of solid waste is managed. Informal waste pickers play a crucial role in plastic recovery and recycling. Despite their essential work, many remain without formal identification, financial inclusion, or social protection, and face persistent stigma. The UNDP Accelerator Lab’s central question was how to elevate the wellbeing of these waste pickers, transforming their efforts into drivers of circular innovation and inclusive growth.
The “Waste to Livelihood” initiative emerged from a close partnership with a local nonprofit and the Tanga City Council. A key innovation was the Zaidi app, a digital platform that registers waste pickers and establishes a network of “waste banks.” These community drop-off centers serve multiple purposes: they allow waste to be weighed, converted into digital tokens, and recorded as a “track record of digital identity.” These tokens then become gateways to important social and financial benefits, such as micro-insurance. In collaboration with Jubilee Insurance, the Lab co-designed the TakaBima micro-insurance product, which enables waste pickers to accumulate credits through their work instead of making cash payments. The policy provides crucial coverage for health emergencies, accidents, and potential loss of income.
Since its introduction, the initiative has achieved several milestones. More than 3,000 waste pickers have been registered, and over 300 TakaBima micro-insurance policies have been issued. The intervention also delivered personal protective equipment (PPE) and financial literacy training, further supporting the community. The model’s proven success has inspired local government leaders to consider integrating it into official urban strategy, highlighting how grassroots initiatives can become catalysts for broader policy change and urban development.
La Madriguera park, before and after community reforestation.
Weaving collectives in Guatemala: tokenizing assets for collective impact
In Guatemala, the UNDP Accelerator Lab is tackling a pressing challenge: the lack of upfront capital for small businesses and rural communities to invest in sustainable assets and infrastructure. The Lab is leveraging blockchain technology to democratize access to vital resources by partnering with the Blockchain Association of Guatemala. The core innovation is to "tokenize" assets; that is, to divide ownership into smaller digital tokens so that members of a community can share both the costs and the benefits. This fractional ownership model enables individuals to invest in "little bits of the machine," lowering financial risk and promoting inclusivity. Smart contracts deployed on the blockchain automatically distribute revenues transparently and fairly.
Currently, two pilots are underway. The first is centered on an "Echo Education place" known as La Madriguera in rural Salama, a site that a local community has reforested on its own. Here, the pilot aims to tokenize park access, generating funds for the creation of an irrigation system. The second pilot focuses on agroecology, where non fungible tokens (NFTs) are used to finance decentralized plastic collection, which is then recycled to create greenhouses around the Atitlan Lake.
These pilots confront three main challenges: refining business models to ensure sustainability, navigating the evolving legal framework around digital assets, and making the user experience as simple as possible.
To address regulatory concerns, UNDP Guatemala is collaborating with Congress to inform the development of new regulations on tokenization and digital transformation. Recognizing the importance of stakeholder engagement, the team has also prioritized bringing the traditional banking system into the process early on, both to prevent it from viewing innovation as a threat and to foster the creation of regulatory sandboxes for experimentation. The user interface for the solution is designed with simplicity in mind: five core segments for registration, bank connection, browsing tokenized businesses, viewing an investment portfolio, and withdrawing tokens.
From global gridlock to local momentum
The end of the plastics treaty talks in Geneva is a stark reminder: while international collaboration is key to addressing plastic pollution, it cannot be our sole dependency. The challenges of climate change and rampant plastic waste are here, and they require a collective response. Our experience demonstrates that transformative solutions do not always trickle down from the top; often, they bubble up from the very communities grappling with these problems daily. Investing in bottom-up R&D, embracing collective intelligence, and focusing on incentives and robust grassroots-to-policy linkages, it is possible to create change even when global progress advances slowly. The inspiring stories from Panama, Tanzania, and Guatemala are not just case studies; they are living proof of how people are taking the lead, turning waste into dignity, data, and collective assets.
Interested in more? Explore our R&D Agenda for a Circular Economy or check out this session recording from the 2025 World Circular Economy Forum in Brazil, but most importantly, partner with us to turn local ideas into global impact!
With special thanks to UNDP colleagues Hilda van der Veen and Mirja Neumann for their thoughtful feedback and comments, as well as Jennifer Marie Hotsko Kelleher, Peter Nyanda, and Javier Antonio Brolo for their great work in pushing the limits of grassroots R&D.
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