This , the Environmental Protection Agency is focusing on , the "fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people" when it comes to environmental regulations and policies.
Around the globe, waste can tell both an environmental and social story. Here are some reports of communities living in, among and off of others' trash:
India : 'Putrid Landscape'
In New Delhi, families make $1 to $2 a day picking through trash in a landfill, .
The paper describes Ghazipur landfill as "a post-apocalyptic world where hundreds of pickers climb a 100-foot-high trash pile daily, dodging and occasionally dying beneath belching bulldozers that reshape the putrid landscape."
The city produces about 9,200 tons of trash every day, according to the L.A. Times. That's 50 percent more than it created in 2007 and expected to double over the next 12 years.
Venezuela : 'Empty Bellies'
An indigenous community in southern Venezuela says it is being marginalized by the government. They have turned to scavenging trash dumps to survive, .
In an Al-Jazeera video about the Warao, men, women and children pick through piles of garbage.
"They chase, from dawn, refuse trucks to grab the most valuable garbage first: metals to sell, clothes to wear and food to eat."
The community has built homes and a school at the site.
"We have to go to the dump every day. We've got no food. We're not made of iron," Raimundo Maica tells Al-Jazeera. "The government says they'll come and meet us on a specific day, specific hour. And we've waited with empty bellies."
Mexico : A Closed Landfill
In February, The New York Timesreported on the in Mexico. While officials were looking forward to new ways of recycling, burning and composting waste, there was opposition.
"... [That] European-style vision of handling garbage stands in sharp relief to the needs of the 1,500 trash pickers, or pepenadores, who rely on the refuse at Bordo Poniente every day for their livelihood."
Overall, Hector Castillo Berthier tells the paper he estimates some 250,000 people in Mexico City rely on trash.
"He ticks them off: street sweepers, garbage collectors, pepenadores, junk dealers and the families they support."
Haiti : 'Ubiquitous Piles Of Garbage'
NPR's Richard Knox has recently plaguing Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Among the problems: lacking a sewer system.
"The cumulative sewage of 3 million people flows through open ditches. It mixes with ubiquitous piles of garbage," Knox reports. "Each night, an all-but-invisible army of workers called descend into man-sized holes with buckets to remove human waste from septic pits and latrines, then dump it into the canals that cut through the city."
This means the waste goes into the environment and eventually into the ocean. It's also dangerous for the people, especially in . Knox reports:
"Since cholera was introduced into Haiti 18 months ago — most likely , where the disease is — more than a half-million people have gotten sick and at least 7,050 have died."
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