Ambikapur's women-led waste management system also generates revenue for the city

Throughout India, wastepickers – people who scour landfills for garbage they can sell to recyclers – live at the bottom of society. But the city of Pune did something radical: with the help of a collective, they did away with expensive garbage trucks, and now all household garbage is collected by wastepickers with pushcarts. Pune saves millions of dollars each year and recycles more – and the wastepickers have decent wages and social standing. The concept is now spreading globally.

Local governments in France are educating residents about waste reduction and finding ways to incentivize the behavior change necessary to meet the country’s ambitious zero-waste goals. Roubaix, for example, teaches residents simple lifestyle changes that will also save them money. Whereas, Smicval transitioned from door-to-door waste collection to a central collection point where residents drop off trash themselves.

In Zanzibar, hundreds of households too poor and remote to have access to the electrical grid are getting low cost solar power for the first time, from a group of local female engineers trained by and Indian NGO. It's the first of several "solar mamas" projects planned for parts of rural Africa, and it's turning some traditional gender roles on their head.

Nationally, only about a third of municipal solid waste is recycled. An initiative to use simpler, standardized signs and labels is helping communities reap greater benefits from recycling.

Local communities in Bhutan are developing ecotourism sites to create jobs, generate income, and protect endangered species and ecosystems. They’ve created ecolodges and campsites, host traditional dining experiences with food from local farmers, and host nature-based activities, all while leading conservation efforts on the land they use.

A coalition of local businesses in Kathmandu, Nepal, is sorting non-recyclable waste collected from mountaineering activities in the Himalayan mountains. Once it is sorted, skilled Indigenous craftswomen make it into new products, like placemats and jewelry boxes, to earn a living.

A fishing cooperative at the San Ignacio Lagoon protects gray whales that use the lagoon as a nursery by not fishing at that time of the year. Instead, their income comes from ecotourism which brings people close to the whales during that season.

New York City’s new curbside composting program collects food waste from residents in Queens to divert it from landfills. Microorganisms break down the food scraps in a process called anaerobic digestion that creates biogas used to heat 2,500 homes.

Members of the B’laan ethnic group in a community in the Philippines are improving their livelihoods by foraging for coffee beans excreted by wild palm civets. They can sell the beans at a premium price because they are used to make a luxury coffee brew. And the practice encourages the locals to protect the wild animals, which benefits the ecosystem, too.

Alongside clean energy, wind farms built on property leased from locals in Nebraska are generating jobs, income, and local taxes that keep small towns like Petersburg afloat.