This chapter provides the background of this book’s topic. It does so by explaining how informal waste picking and urban formal waste infrastructure systems are both relevant to realizing an effective inclusive and circular economy at the urban scale, but that bringing them together does not occur automatically in the policymaking process. It provides a conceptual model that clarifies how the different components of the urban waste management system are connected, clarifies the logic underlying the structuring of the book into the various chapters that follow and then proceeds to present a brief outline of what each of those following chapters will be dealing with.