Waste is capital.
Let’s talk trash.
It’s called the Trash Museum, and it’s the latest venture from Kyrgyz green tech founder and peace scholar Aimeerim Tursalieva.
If the phrase "waste management" evokes sterile policy papers or dull municipal meetings, you haven’t met Aimeerim. With a background in sociology and conflict transformation from universities in Kyrgyzstan, Switzerland, and Austria, she doesn’t just see trash as a technical issue. She sees it as a mirror – a reflection of social norms, economic systems, and even colonial legacies.
"We never used to talk about garbage," she says. "In Kyrgyz culture, trash was something shameful, hidden. You put it in a bin and forgot it."
But for Aimeerim, forgetting is not an option.
Before launching Kyrgyzstan’s first waste-sorting app, Tazar, Aimeerim worked in the gold mining regions along the Tajik border – where environmental degradation and water disputes collide. In a region where glaciers hold 40% of Central Asia’s freshwater, water is not only a life source but a geopolitical fault line. Her experience in these contested zones sparked a deeper realization: sustainability isn’t only about protecting nature. It’s about protecting people.
"When I studied peace and conflict transformation, I saw how environmental justice is part of preventing conflict," she explains. "Waste is not just about pollution – it’s about inequality."
Tazar – which means „clean yourself" in Kyrgyz – was her way of bringing tech into the equation. Developed with a small team, the app allows users to sort their waste, connect with recyclers, and learn what can (and can’t) be reused. It includes a downloadable sorting guide and has already been adopted in schools as part of a 45-minute eco-education program.
But that was just the beginning.
To shift public perception, Aimeerim knew she needed more than code. She needed culture. So she and her partner organization Bishkek School of Contemporary Art began organizing Trash Festivals – joyful, public events that blend education with art, music, and storytelling. Participants don't just learn to sort their trash. They perform with it, sculpt it, wear it. The goal? Make waste visible. Make it human. Make it political.
This philosophy culminated in the creation of the Trash Museum, a semi-permanent exhibition space built in collaboration with New York-based artist sTo Len. Located near Bishkek city landfill, the museum showcases objects pulled from landfills and streets, transformed into artifacts of collective memory.
One installation, for example, turns discarded Soviet-era electronics into a timeline of consumerism. Another invites visitors to write letters to future generations – on paper made from recycled schoolwork.
"Waste tells stories," Aimeerim says. "It tells us what we value, what we throw away, and who is allowed to live in a clean environment.“
Now based in Zurich, where she leads the Kyrgyz diaspora in Switzerland and runs her organization Tazar Switzerland, Aimeerim is using her transnational position to spotlight Central Asia's environmental challenges, and possibilities. She speaks at universities, curates panels on decolonial sustainability, and recently partnered with the University of Oxford on a research project about nomadic environmental models and consumer patterns in post-Soviet societies. She wants to make cultural and scientific knowledge transfer not only from Switzerland to Kyrgyzstan but also from Kyrgyzstan to Switzerland – as traditional nomadic communities of Central Asia preserved many sustainability strategies and solutions in their culture and everyday life. Still, she stays deeply rooted in Bishkek, where the next phase of the Trash Museum includes a mobile version that can travel to rural schools and villages.
"My goal isn’t to build a perfect system. It’s to change mindsets," she says. "Once people see trash differently, they start to see power differently."
The EcoLeader ethos is grounded in systems thinking, emotional intelligence, and the belief that regeneration starts from within. Aimeerim Tursalieva’s work is a blueprint for this mindset. She teaches that leadership isn’t always loud or visible – it can be made of compost, built from cardboard, or whispered through games in a classroom.
Her story is more than a case study in green innovation. It’s a challenge to all of us:
Because sometimes, what we discard says more about us than what we keep.
Aimeerim’s work shows what happens when tech meets care – and when waste becomes the beginning of something new. Her vision goes beyond borders. It’s about memory, material, and meaning. And about redefining how we value what’s been discarded.
If you believe sustainability needs decolonial and deeply local voices: support her.
To connect, collaborate with Tazar, or back the Trash Museum project, reach out to Aimeerim via LinkedIn and follow her journey.
sTo Len is a New York-based artist whose work spans photography, installation, and sculpture. His practice examines the intersection of material culture, decay, and human impact – often reframing overlooked objects as carriers of meaning. In collaboration with Tazar and Aimeerim, he brought a stark, conceptual lens to waste – transforming trash into testimony, and challenging us to reconsider what we discard, and why.