Zoë Lenkiewicz is the Founder and Director of Global Waste Lab, a social enterprise dedicated to building community-owned, sustainable waste management systems in under-resourced contexts.
With more than two decades of hands-on experience in waste management – working across local government, consultancy, academia and the third sector in the UK, Africa and South-East Asia – Zoë brings deep practical knowledge of what it takes to make waste systems work in the real world.
Zoë is the Lead Author of the UN Global Waste Management Outlook 2024 (UNEP/ISWA), and has also authored Towards Zero Waste: A Catalyst for Delivering the Sustainable Development Goals (UNEP) and an award-winning community waste guide for WasteAid. She is a Fellow of the Chartered Institution of Wastes Management (CIWM).
In her free time, Zoë enjoys travelling to meet waste managers working in challenging contexts, and where they are close to the coast she likes to squeeze in some scuba diving. From her origins studying environmental biology, she has always had a deep appreciation of the natural world and it is this that has driven her career in environmental protection.
“I was lucky when I started out in waste management. I had colleagues to learn from, a professional institution to join, and a boss who pushed me to get involved. I have never forgotten that, because I know how rare it is.
“For most waste managers working in places where systems are still developing, none of that exists. It can be lonely. It can be full of uncertainty. The sense of risk can be debilitating when meagre budgets leave no room for trial and error. These are some of the most resilient people I have ever met – and they are the reason I built this.
“Co-creating these courses has reminded me how much experience and wisdom already exists in the places that are least well served by the current system. The Academy exists to help that knowledge travel further.”