Nowadays solid waste is seen as a resource, given its potential of generating profit through recycling. However, beyond the environmental and economic relevance of this activity, there is also a usually less recognized social aspect. Indeed, in several urban contexts located especially in the global South, an important social issue resides in the status of waste pickers involved in the collection of recyclable material, who are often marginalized and stigmatized informal workers (Gutberlet, 2014).
As several studies have demonstrated, an effective waste management can build on the organization of recyclers into cooperative-like organizations, that allow them to get better salaries, better working conditions, and to exit the condition of informality (Medina, 2000; Gutberlet, 2009; Do Carmo and De Oliveira, 2010). The same studies have confirmed that public waste management combined with the integration of waste pickers into the formal recycling sector increases the opportunities of generating better communities (Tremblay and Gutberlet, 2010).
This paper reports on an ethnographic study of five waste pickers’ organizations located in two municipalities of the metropolitan region of Santiago de Chile. The main aim of the paper is to understand the inter-organizational processes between these five organizations and a plurality of actors (NGOs, credit institutions, university, multinational corporations, public authorities) that are implementing specific projects devoted to waste pickers’ empowerment. Following similar experiences in Latin America and elsewhere, these projects are pursuing a general objective of sustaining “inclusive recycling.” This aim is pursued mainly through the creation of cooperative-like organizations of waste pickers, or through the support and empowerment of existing ones.
The analysis is devoted to understand the main obstacles and challenges to the creation of efficient inter-organizational arrangements between the plurality of actors that are involved in the attempt of empowering waste pickers’ organizations and the organizations themselves. More specifically, the study is focused on the analysis of the variety of discourses made by such actors and the actual results of their practices. The underlining assumption is that power asymmetries determine a dissonance between discourse and practice, impeding a further degree of development and an increased autonomy of waste pickers’ organizations.
This research has important policy implications that highlight the obstacles to be removed in order to tend toward co-production (Ostrom, 1996; Joshi and Moore, 2004; Verschuere et al, 2012; Pestoff, 2012) in the delivery of the recycling services. The positive contribution that waste pickers’ organizations can offer in this sense is demonstrated by the plurality of advantages they bring at the social, environmental, economic, and community level.
References:
Do Carmo, M.S. & de Oliveira, J.A.P. (2010). The Semantics of Garbage and the organization of the recyclers: Implementation challenges for establishing recycling cooperatives in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil”. Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 54, 1261-1268.
Gutberlet, J. (2009). Solidarity economy and recycling co-ops in Sao Paulo: micro-credit to alleviate poverty”, Development in Practice 19(6), 737-751.
Gutberlet, J. (2014). More inclusive and cleaner cities with waste management co-production: Insights from participatory epistemologies and methods, Habitat International, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2014.10.004 (accessed 12/2/2015).
Joshi, A., and Moore, M. (2004). Institutionalised co-production: unorthodox public service delivery in challenging environments. Journal of Development Studies, 40(4) 31-49.
Medina, M. (2000). Scavenger cooperatives in Asia and Latin America. Resource Conservation and Recycling, 31, 51– 69.
Ostrom, E. (1996). Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy and Development. World Development 24(6), 1073-1087.
Pestoff, 2012
Tremblay, C. and Gutberlet, J. (2010). Empowerment through participation: assessing the voices of leaders from recycling cooperatives in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Community Development Journal, 47(2), 282–302.
Verschuere, B., Brandsen, T., and Pestoff, V. (2012). Co-production: The state of the art in research and the future agenda. Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 23(4), 1083-1101.
Keywords: waste pickers, inter-organizational relationship, power asymmetry, Chile, recycling.
