Join us for a discussion with Silvio Ruiz Grisales, a Colombian waste picker and a pioneering leader in the global movement for waste picker rights. Around the world, fifteen million people eke out a living by salvaging recyclable and reusable materials from dumps, streets, and buildings. Since the 1980s, waste pickers in Colombia and other countries have collectively organized on the local, national, and transnational levels to demand policies that improve both the quality of their work and of recycling services. Such policies represent paradigm shifts for countries that historically treated waste pickers as criminals, and treated trash merely as a sanitary problem, rather than as a social, environmental, and cultural one. Come learn about these efforts and how we can support a more equitable and just future for these vital workers. Free and open to all: no-pre-registration required. Co-presented by the Center for Global Workers’ Rights, Penn State Sustainability, and the College of Liberal Arts.