City Recyclers

Do you ever throw something out that could still be useful to someone else and think about where it ends up? In any Colombian city you can find people called recicladores, or recyclers, whose profession is to sift through trash piles collecting anything that could possibly be recycled or reused. They are seen pulling heavy wooden carts piled high with their findings through the busy streets, often skinny older men who do not look to be in adequate physical condition for the strenuous nature of the job.

Contrary to what I first thought when arriving--that these people were unorganized individuals trying to make a few pesos off of everyone's old junk, the recicladores first created their own union/association in 1962 in Antioquia, now called the National Association of Recyclers, that monitors price controls for recyclable materials such as metal or glass, and also represents the rights of the workers. They even have their own website! It says that after WWII when the Colombia encountered a lack of containers, metal, and paper, people started looking through the trash, reusing what they found to make up for the deficiency. Some would specialize in glass bottle collection, others in pieces of scrap metal, selling their 'wares' to recycling companies that then turn trash into something new and useful. (Since there are also recycling companies in Medellin that pick up the recyclables that people separate in their houses, I wonder what sort of competition there is between these services and the recicladores). At first there was a stigmatization of these workers as being crazy or street beggars, and so the creation of the association gave them the national recognition necessary to dumpster dive without being hassled. Recycling is thus a legitimate profession falling somewhere in-between the formal and informal economies, and the income earned offers an attractive alternative to selling candies on buses. I have even met women in the displaced communities who come from a family that has been working in recycling for generations, and she goes out every morning with her sons to collect what they can.

In the past week these reclicladores have made national news: Uribe is trying to pass a national law to consolidate the companies that buy recycled material, thus creating a monopoly that sets a price cap on what the recicladores can earn. The Colombian president has realized how profitable this business is, and, like with many other industries, wants to (ab)use his power to buy his (large) share and make a few hundred million pesos off of the poor people. There have been fierce debates in the Senate where members question Uribe's interests in the new bill, but he has enough supporters (who probably also have a financial stake in the issue) that it looks like he will get the outcome he wants. As my Colombian friends say, this is just another example of how the government works hard to make the poor people poorer so that politicians and their friends can get richer. Do I smell corruption?

So sorry recicladores, it looks like your Colombian trash will not be worth as much as it used to.