Designing Waste Out of Climate Risk: A Zero-Waste Adaptation Framework for Cities, Informal Workers, and Circular Transitions

Climate adaptation planning still treats waste largely as a background service problem, while zero-waste advocacy often frames transformation mainly through mitigation, recycling, or circular economy efficiency. This paper asks: how can zero-waste thinking be translated into a concise, policy-usable framework that helps governments, institutions, businesses, and civic actors integrate waste and resource management into climate adaptation plans? Drawing on regional adaptation guidance, urban resilience literature, research on informal waste workers, and emerging circular economy methods, the paper develops a five-part framework for adaptation planning: risk mapping, waste-stream prioritisation, option design, actor integration, and institutional embedding. The argument is that zero waste should be treated not as a downstream environmental add-on but as an upstream resilience logic that reduces exposure, eases public health burdens, protects infrastructure, and strengthens local livelihoods, especially in climate-vulnerable cities. The paper’s anticipated contribution is threefold: it reframes zero waste as an adaptation strategy; it centres informal waste workers as resilience actors rather than residual labour; and it positions GXS and the Global Zero Waste Forum as ecosystem accelerators capable of convening pilots, peer learning, and policy translation across Asia and beyond.