In Lahore last spring, 25 stakeholders from across Pakistan's government, labour sector, and business community gathered for a workshop that could reshape how the country thinks about its waste pickers—the invisible workers who manage a significant share of the nation's 50 million tonnes of annual solid waste. From 27 April to 2 May 2026, the International Labour Organization partnered with the Labour Research and Development Institute and the Akhter Hameed Khan Foundation to run Pakistan's first national training-of-trainers workshop on cooperative models for informal waste pickers, marking a crucial shift toward recognizing and formalizing work that is both essential and precarious.
Pakistan's waste pickers are vital to the country's recycling infrastructure, collecting and sorting materials from landfills and streets across the recycling value chain while reducing strain on municipal systems. Yet many remain trapped in informal work, earning low incomes, facing unsafe conditions, and lacking legal status or access to social protection. With solid waste volumes growing by more than 2.4 per cent annually, the pressure on both the system and these workers continues to mount. The training workshop offered a pathway forward: by organizing through cooperatives, waste pickers can pool resources, strengthen their collective voice, improve bargaining power, and access markets and services they cannot reach alone.
The six-day intensive, built around adapted versions of the ILO's Think.COOP and Start.COOP tools, brought together government representatives, employers' organizations, workers' advocates, and technical experts to explore how cooperative models could support formalization in Pakistan's informal economy. Heejin Ahn, the ILO's Project Technical Officer, framed the stakes clearly: "The cooperative model provides a pathway for transitioning informal waste pickers into recognized, formal waste service providers. It can also support recycling and material recovery efforts while improving livelihoods and contributing to environmental sustainability." Syed Abaan, speaking for the Employers Federation of Pakistan, emphasized the economic logic: by pooling resources and organizing under a cooperative framework, workers could scale their operations and reduce costs in ways individual waste pickers simply cannot achieve alone.
The workshop was not an academic exercise but a deliberate step toward building local capacity. Selected participants will now deliver adapted training to informal waste pickers in two key regions: the Islamabad Capital Territory and Sahiwal in Punjab Province. These trainers will work to establish viable cooperative models on the ground, translating workshop lessons into lived change. Beyond training, the initiative is exploring opportunities to work with national and local authorities to legally recognize waste picker cooperatives as legitimate partners within Pakistan's waste management system—a formal standing that has long been denied to these workers.
What emerged from the Lahore workshop was both practical and visionary: a recognition that formalization need not mean erasing informality, but rather bringing informal workers into the economy with dignity, protection, and voice. For Pakistan's waste pickers, cooperatives represent more than an economic model; they represent a pathway to visibility, security, and a seat at the table where decisions about their livelihoods are made. The workshop opened a door that, if sustained through implementation and partnership with municipal and private sector actors, could transform how an entire sector is valued and protected.