Financial Inclusion and Improved Livelihoods Out of Plastics

Active

FINILOOP is a city-level plastic waste management programme which connects and strengthens actors along the entire waste value and service chain to ensure cleaner environments for all and a more inclusive and transparent circular plastic economy. This is made possible by working together with local partners to help strengthen and scale local enterprises and start-ups, create safer and more dignified job opportunities for informal waste workers, empower communities and attract additional funds into the waste value chain.

In this first phase (2022-25) the FINILOOP programme is currently active in three cities in India: Udaipur, Amritsar and Jaipur. Through FINILOOP our mission is to:

Enhance solid waste & plastic waste management.
Improve livelihoods of (in)formal waste workers.
Professionalise and scale the plastic recycling sector.
Create cleaner communities through awareness raising and behaviour change.

Learn more about our expertise in solid waste management, including plastics.

FINILOOP rests on four core pillars

Strengthening business

To boost local circular economies, drive innovation and address gaps in the plastic waste management system we strengthen existing plastic waste enterprises, and through the creation of the FINILOOP Plastic Lab provide mentorship to start-ups, who are catalysing solutions to plastic waste.

Creating connection

At the heart of FINILOOP is our multi-stakeholder approach. We do not create new infrastructure but instead identify, assemble and harmonise all the existing stakeholders within a city’s waste management system to increase effectiveness and ensure sustainability.

Building livelihoods

Informal waste workers (IWWs) play a key role in plastic waste management, yet they are undervalued, struggle to earn a decent living and face dangerous working conditions. We are changing this by building trust with the IWW community, improving working conditions, and providing skills training and access to vital services, such as healthcare.

Empowering communities

We believe long lasting, locally relevant change begins with the community, which is why we conduct awareness raising about the impact of plastic waste and promote household level segregation. To complement this, we empower local community groups to help drive behaviour change and reduce plastic pollution.

Our activities in the plastic waste value chain

To improve and scale plastic waste management systems globally, FINILOOP uses WASTE’s multi-stakeholder approach. Resulting in (local) governments, households, entrepreneurs, financiers, and other key stakeholders, having organised themselves in such a way that they are able to sustain a local plastic waste value chain. Thereby, ensuring communities can live in a clean and healthy environment. There are many types of plastics and complex value chains that need addressing through knowledge management and expertise.

We do so by:

Raising awareness about plastic waste, its health effects and source separation at the household level
Empowering waste workers (predominately women and youth) to create jobs
Professionalising the plastic recycling sector and introducing innovations
Integrating local financial resources and developing new finance products
Setting up collaboration with governments and development partners to make scale happen

As a result, we improve the quality of solid waste services and quality of recycled plastic, whilst boosting plastic recycling rates. FINILOOP focuses on building local capacities in facilitating plastic recycling loans to improve recycling infrastructure, plastic recycling business development, and waste separation at the source.

"I wake up early in the morning so that I can collect different types of waste in ample quantity which helps us to survive. The FINILOOP team has given us a vision of being collective and succeeding through a Self-Help Group. We have now started saving money and becoming financially literate.” Sugna Devi, informal waste worker in India

Sustainability

Plastic waste pollution in cities is mostly caused by malfunctioning solid waste management systems whereby the different actors are not linked, by bringing them together, and working on the improvement of the sector in all for ‘Diamond domains’ the sector can strengthen, resulting in less waste ending up in the environment, more opportunities for private (in)formal sector and a stronger municipality.

The first phase of the FINILOOP programme is active from 2022-25.