Our cities are large consumers of energy and various natural resources. They generate tons of waste, which is increasing every year. The level of development and lifestyle of each community determines the amount and type of waste generated and its final disposal.
This amount of waste that we all produce must be treated appropriately so that it does not contaminate the air, water and the environment that surrounds us and, among other things, cause damage to health.
One of the factors damaging the health of city residents is the large amount of garbage that accumulates on unsuitable terrain. Open garbage dumps are usually one of the sources of infection for many diseases that infect the thousands of people who live near them every day. Statistics show that 19% of illnesses have environmental causes. In most cases, those affected become infected through contact with infected pets or rodents or by ingesting spoiled food. Among the diseases that still occur among us are dengue fever and cholera.
Many of the materials that make up the waste could have been reused, i.e. recycled. The most common include glass, paper, metals and organic waste, which can be used as fertile soil substances.
However, to do this efficiently requires a clear awareness among the population of the environmental benefits of reusing these elements. To this end, it is necessary to carry out dissemination campaigns in all areas.
Did you know that half of the items we throw away are unnecessary trash?
Did you know what’s underground? There is a lot of water. It flows through underground rivers and from them many people drink the water that they use for consumption.
But. How can you deal with the water underground? The answer is simple. Do not throw waste, especially toxic substances, anywhere. These substances gradually penetrate the earth, especially with the help of rain.
Unfortunately, some people throw garbage onto undeveloped land, others do the same and in a short time a landfill is created.
You have to understand that recycling garbage creates work. The phasing out of the current waste collection system should be used to transfer part of the service to micro-enterprises and cooperatives.
Exclusion, child labor, exposure to serious health risks, low life expectancy are some of the avoidable characteristics in the work of those who collect garbage on the streets. The achievement of these conditions is the direct consequence not only of growing unemployment, but also of the lack of inclusive measures and the promotion of forms of production aimed at recycling waste and protecting and preserving the environment.
For this reason, a debate is urgently needed on: projects to transform the waste collection system, the integration of cartoneros into formal work and organizational forms, characteristics of the surgeon’s work and improvements in quality of life.
From trash to trash
Waste recycling in Argentina involves a lot of money, which is why, like many other things, it is done in secret. How is it prepared? By the cartoneros who separate the garbage by hand, avoiding cars, and leaving the garbage outside the bags as they often have to tear them to open them.
I believe that the media can make a big contribution through articles about how the issue is being treated in other parts of the world, helping to educate the population and putting healthy pressure on the issue’s political leaders, who often make big announcements and more make . is forgotten.
Recycling consists of subjecting a material or product already in use to a full or partial cycle of treatment to obtain a raw material or a new product useful to the community.
It could also be defined as the extraction of raw materials from waste, their reintroduction into the reuse cycle and occurs in the face of the depletion of natural resources and for the effective disposal of waste.
Using processes that mix sand or clay with plastic containers, ecological bricks, tiles and slabs can be produced for house building. Many metallurgical companies use scrap as raw material for their products. There is a growing industry for recycling PET, plastic from soda and water bottles, which are used to make textile threads. The brushes, brooms and brooms are made from this recycled material.
Vermiculture – recycling organic waste using worms – can be an ecological alternative to traditional landfills. Worms eat their own weight, so one kilogram of these worms processes one kilogram of garbage every day.
To name just a few examples, the corrugated cardboard, i.e. the cardboard boxes, consists entirely of recycled paper. This industry, which could grow, is supported by the work of street collectors who collect these materials daily and efficiently from the margins, taking advantage of what would otherwise end up in an open landfill.
The thousands upon thousands of cardboard collectors who operate the streets across the country collect around 430,000 tons of paper, newsprint and cardboard every year alone, which means an income of around 80 million pesos for them. It can be estimated that if all this recycled material goes back into commerce through various means, it will have a sales value six times that received by the Cartoneros. That is, the Cartoneros’ global business amounts to about 500 million pesos per year, taking only cellulose derivatives into account, which is equivalent to the annual turnover of a company like Quickfood or half of Edenor or Edesur. Most of the money generated in the production chain that starts with the cardboard collector goes to a few large companies, which shows that our current waste management system is irrational, uneconomical and anti-ecological.
To change uses and customs, it is therefore first a matter of understanding the dimension of the problem in which those who produce waste, those who recycle it and those who create it interact.
60% of cartoneros are laborers, construction workers, textile workers, catering workers, etc., who have lost their jobs in recent years. They work with their families, are exposed to pollution and have a life expectancy of 35 years, compared to 70 years for the rest of Argentina’s population. Their children join the ranks of child labor, which causes them to fall behind or drop out of school, to have lower incomes in adulthood, to have access to unskilled jobs and to a repetition of the conditions of poverty that led to her dropping out of school early.
In summary, integrating street collectors into the formal labor market would not only reverse the current situation, bringing not only benefits to this sector but also strengthening an emerging industry which in turn would create jobs and the community as well A joint project would create a prominent position.
This would encourage the formation of cooperatives, micro-enterprises or social enterprises so that their place in the waste collection system is recognized. In this way, the state could replace the system of work schedules with real jobs and develop productive enterprises that require recovered materials as a basic requirement. www.
Cristian Frers –Senior Environmental Management Technician and Senior Social Communication Technician
