Mongolia’s first zero-waste district

Recycling efforts: A worker stacking bottles that have been pressed at the Ecosum NGO village recycling facilities in Khishig-Undur in Mongolia’s Bulgan province.

Khishig Undur: Mongolian herder Purev Batmunkh sighs as he picks through waste strewn across a field – the refuse of an unsightly and deadly waste pollution problem affecting swathes of the steppe.

His country is among the world’s top per capita producers of plastic waste, and without a centralised recycling programme, campaigners say some 90% of it ends up in landfills.