Science & Nature
From Waste to Worth: Buenos Aires Waste Pickers Help Keep Cities Clean and Families Fed
by Alexia Kadota-Browner
This article is part of a reporting project from students at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism on stories from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Stella Maris is a cartonera, one of about 150,000 waste pickers in Argentina.
“There is nothing nicer than the street, I love it, I love to go, to look around,” she said.
Many see the cartoneros as the unsung heroes behind urban recycling.
Waste management engineer Matías Tarando sees the cartoneros as essential.
“If there were no cartoneros, there would be … no recycling in the city,” Tarando said.
Cartoneros get paid to pick up and sort trash, giving formal jobs to people with low socio-economic status.
“Most of the women who started this were out of necessity, that the husband’s money was not enough,” Maris said. “It was not enough and the woman saw ‘oh yes, yes, collecting cardboard makes a difference (in being able to afford food for the family), why not do it?’”
In Buenos Aires, landfills are overflowing and recycling is insufficient. The poverty rate is around 50%.
“Argentina has 5,000 open-air landfills. Where do these plastics end up? We in Argentina recycle 6% of all the waste that is generated,” said Tarando.
Argentina’s 145 recycling cooperatives provide employees training in recycling processes, health and safety practices, and business management.
“They are formally paid by the local government, which pays them a salary, pays them for their clothes, diesel for the trucks,” explains Tarando.
This support helps workers earn a regular income and access social services.
Jessica Espíndola, a former cartonera who works at the Saavedra Green Center believes that for many, it’s a great source of pride.
“It is not a bad word to be a cartonero, but it is something that you carry inside you and you carry it with pride,” Espindola said. “At least me and my colleagues who are here know that we achieved a lot because of all the system we went through.”
María Castillo, provincial director of productive integration in Buenos Aries and a former cartonera agrees.
“For me, it’s pride, the nicest thing that has ever happened to me in my life,” Castillo said. “As far as it defines me, anyone who talks to me, asking me ‘who are you?’ I always say, I am María. I am a cartonera, mother, grandmother, militant, and always, the cartonera goes first.”
Stella Maris has been waste picking since 1987, transitioning from informal collector to cooperative employee.
“My life changed, that I already had a salary, that I did not have to kill myself to collect six, seven bags and arrive on Friday, to have to go to sell and see if that money was enough to cover the basic food basket, which is to pay for electricity, food and the things of the school children at that time,” she said.
Maris is a mother of 10 and grandmother of 60. Formalizing her waste picking gives her flexibility and time to spend with family.
“It means a lot to me, because I can work my week and rest on Saturdays and Sundays. Something that I didn’t do before,” Maris said about being a cooperative employee.
She recalled the many sacrifices she has to make while collecting trash informally. “I missed birthdays, I sometimes missed Christmas, I missed a lot of things when the kids finished school. Why? Because I could not miss a day.”
The cartonero movement emphasizes human involvement in sustainability.
Tarando, the waste management engineer, sees that as a key point.
“The most important thing that Argentina has is that humanistic view. It has a framework, a socio-environmental aspect behind it that has a value, which is how we integrate all the people who are outside the system or outside the formal jobs,” he said.
Tarando hopes Argentina’s model can be replicated in other countries.
“Argentina is a pioneer in this, it has proven it by developing not only the methodology but also the reality,” Tarando said. “We are always coordinating with other countries, which in general have very similar problems to ours.”
As for Maris, she currently has no plans to retire, and says she hopes the movement will keep growing.
“Let the cartonero go on, go on, go on, go on, go on and go on,” Maris said. “I wish they would do it at a global level. At a global level we have to become aware.”
Britton Struthers-Lugo contributed reporting and Mariana Percovich contributed translation assistance.
