Negotiating Place and Value: Geographies of Waste and Scavenging in Buenos Aires

Negotiating Place and Value:Geographies of Waste and Scavenging

in Buenos Aires

Risa WhitsonDepartment of Geography and Program of Women’s

and Gender Studies, Ohio University, USA;[email protected]

Abstract: This article focuses on debates over the place and value of waste and wastescavengers in Buenos Aires during and following the economic crisis of 2002 in order toconsider how waste functions as a fundamental category for organizing social space. I arguethat conceptualizations of waste as both zero value and “matter out of place” need to be combinedwith a recognition of the commodity potential of waste in order to better understand how wasteworks to constitute social structures and space. I demonstrate that while the displacement ofwaste and waste scavengers associated with the crisis opened a space for the transformation ofestablished social relations, in ongoing negotiations, waste continues to be defined as that whichbelongs elsewhere and is of no value, reinforcing the marginalization of garbage scavengers.

Keywords: waste, garbage, scavengers, Argentina, crisis

IntroductionOne of the most visible manifestations of Argentina’s political andeconomic crisis, which peaked in 2002, was the increased presence ofinformal garbage scavengers—or cartoneros—working on the streets ofthe country’s capital city, Buenos Aires. Estimates suggest that whereasbefore the crisis there were approximately 10,000 cartoneros workingin Buenos Aires, by the end of 2002 over 40,000 men, women, andchildren were working as informal garbage scavengers (Anguita 2003).Like garbage scavengers elsewhere, cartoneros in Argentina earn aliving by sorting through household and commercial waste in order tofind recyclable material. Deriving their name from the most commonlycollected material—carton, or cardboard—the cartoneros also collectpaper, metal, glass, and plastic, all items that are sold to recyclingcenters for processing and resale for use in the formal manufacturingsector. However, while cartoneros in Argentina represent a critical firstlink in a very lucrative economy of recycled trash, as in other parts ofthe world, they continue to be socially stigmatized and marginalized.Their work is both precarious and dangerous: not only is the work ofAntipode Vol. 43 No. 4 2011 ISSN 0066-4812, pp 1404–1433doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8330.2010.00791.xC© 2011 The AuthorAntipode C© 2011 Editorial Board of Antipode.

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cartoneros entirely informal, but it was also illegal in Buenos Airesuntil very recently. Cartoneros additionally suffer from exposure tohealth hazards, harassment by police, and other types of abuse.

In large part because of the drastic increase in the scale of thisactivity in 2002, however, the cartoneros and their work moved frombeing clandestine and strongly stigmatized to being a ubiquitous,hyper-public expression of individual need, community survival, andnational crisis. The activity of cartoneo (or scavenging) seeped intothe popular consciousness and imaginary as newspapers dedicatedseries to investigating the lives of cartoneros, artists exhibited workthat made waste and waste scavenging their subject, and plays werewritten based on the lives of cartoneros. Moreover, in the midst ofthis explosion of cartoneros onto the city’s streets and in the city’simaginary, at the end of 2002 the City of Buenos Aires passed Law992, the “Cartoneros Law”, which formally reversed over 25 years ofcriminalization of informal trash collection, recognizing and legalizingthe work of cartoneros. Soon afterwards, in November 2005, the city’slegislature passed another landmark law, commonly referred to as the“Zero Waste Law” (Law 1.854/05), which gave cartoneros a critical rolein the future of urban waste management in the city. These laws not onlyrepresent momentous changes in the policy that directs the managementof urban waste, but also signal a new state approach to those associatedwith informal garbage collection; rather than being criminalized, theyare re-envisioned as vital to the operation of one of the city’s most centralfunctions. While the Zero Waste Law has yet to be fully implemented,its significance as symbolic legislation that recognizes a need for socialchange is remarkable.

Economic and social geographers have long focused on theimportance of geographies of production, and more recently geographiesof consumption, in understanding socio-spatial relations. As the recentevents surrounding informal garbage scavenging in Argentina indicate,however, geographies of waste and disposal are also increasingly centralto understanding social relations and social change. Rather than thecommodity’s lifecycle ending at the point of consumption and use, theycontinue to circulate through society in the process of disposal, derivingmeaning from and giving meaning to social interactions, identities, andspaces. The continued significance of the commodity post-consumptionis not only evident at the scale of the city, but internationally aswell, as uneven global geographies of waste production and disposaldemonstrate (Lepawsky and McNabb Forthcoming). The increasingimportance of understanding geographies of waste and disposal hasresulted in a nascent literature on the topic, exploring themes of howand why people choose to discard and dispose of material (Gregsonet al 2007a, 2007b); the geopolitics of waste management (Lepawskyand McNabb Forthcoming; Moore 2008, 2009); the ethics and meaningC© 2011 The AuthorAntipode C© 2011 Editorial Board of Antipode.

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of waste (Hawkins 2003, 2006; Lucas 2002); and disposal as akey component of practices of consumption (Gregson et al 2005;Hetherington 2004; Munro 2001).

In this article, I contribute to these discussions by drawing on recentevents in Argentina to address the ways that geographies of waste anddisposal are mutually constituted with social meaning, identity, andrelations. In particular, I focus on debates over the management ofhousehold waste in the City of Buenos Aires to consider how wastefunctions as a fundamental category for organizing social space, andas such plays a key role in the maintenance of social subordination.I analyze the ways in which waste and those associated with ittransgressed their prescribed places during the crisis, as well as ongoingnegotiations in the years following over the appropriate place of trash andcartoneros in Buenos Aires society. I argue that, much like geographiesof production and consumption, geographies of waste and disposal havethe potential to transform or reinforce longstanding inequitable socialstructures. As such, rather than representing a re-evaluation of society’srelationship to waste and cartoneros, the social changes apparent inArgentina with respect to the cartoneros signaled a recognition of thedisplacements occurring in the social and material order of the city andan attempt to re-place trash and cartoneros on the periphery of this urbanspace.

To develop this argument, I begin by reviewing the social andhistorical context in which the current regime of waste managementoperates in Buenos Aires, discussing the history of waste legislation andthe concurrent development of the cartonero as a social and politicalfigure. Following this, I provide a theoretical basis for understandingwaste as a material discursive formation that is intimately tied tothe production of sociospatial order. In this section, I argue thatconceptualizations of waste as both zero value and “matter out ofplace” (Douglas 1966:35) need to be combined with a recognition ofthe commodity potential of waste in order to better understand the waythat waste works to constitute social structures and social space. Inthe subsequent sections, I demonstrate that the displacement of wasteand waste workers associated with the crisis opened a space for thetransformation of established social relations through the defetishizationof the commodity of waste. However, ongoing negotiations surroundingthe place of waste and cartoneros in the landscape of Buenos Airessuggest that, fundamentally, waste continues to be defined as thatwhich belongs elsewhere and is of no value, further reinforcing themarginalization of garbage scavengers. I conclude by arguing that afocus on place and redefinition of waste must be central to strugglesagainst the continued marginalization of waste workers in this contextand others. Outside of this particular context, I also highlight the needto move away from considering waste as simply a management orC© 2011 The AuthorAntipode C© 2011 Editorial Board of Antipode.


environmental sustainability issue, in favor of a more serious recognitionof disposal as a social process.

The information presented in this analysis is derived from formal andinformal interviews, document analysis, and ethnographic observationconducted in 2002 and 2006. In particular, 38 formal, in-depth,semi-structured interviews were conducted with cartoneros, leadersof cartonero cooperatives, environmental activists and organizations,waste management companies, and representatives of Buenos Aires’Office of Urban Recycling Policy (Direccion General de Polıticas deReciclado Urbano—DGPRU). Sources for document analysis includenewspaper articles from Buenos Aires’ three major papers, Cların, LaNacion, and Pagina 12, as well as legislative records concerning theissues of recycling and scavenging in Buenos Aires. Finally, semi-ethnographic observation was conducted during January–December2002, June–July 2006, and December 2006. This observation allowedme to speak with numerous people in an informal context regardingthe changing place of waste and scavengers in the context of BuenosAires.

Scavenging, Waste Management, and Crisis in ArgentinaScavenging has always been part of the urban landscape in Argentinaand its literal and figurative place in society is intimately tied to the city’swaste management system. The figure of the “ciruja”—a pejorative termused to refer to those who live from scavenging garbage—appeared inArgentina during the late 1800s when Buenos Aires implemented itsfirst “modern” waste management system.1 This system assigned anofficial site on the outskirts of the city for the disposal and burningof waste, around which a marginalized neighborhood grew up, calledthe “City of Tin Cans” or the “City of Frogs” (Prignano 1998), theresidents of which scavenged materials both for subsistence and resale.While scavenging during this period was legal, and in certain casesencouraged (Schamber and Suarez 2002), it was primarily concentratedaround incinerators and therefore far removed from city centers andother middle-class population concentrations.

This system of incineration of waste stayed in place until the periodof the military dictatorship (1976–1983), which was an initial period ofprivatization and neoliberalization in Argentina. During this time, thegovernment of the City of Buenos Aires collaborated with the authoritiesof the Province of Buenos Aires to drastically reform the city’s wastemanagement system with the aims of modernization, privatization, andcentralization (Prignano 1998; Schamber and Suarez 2002). This wasachieved through the passage of a series of laws in 1977 and 1978,including Provincial Law 9.111 and City Ordinance 33.581, whichprohibited the incineration of waste and mandated that waste insteadC© 2011 The AuthorAntipode C© 2011 Editorial Board of Antipode.

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be buried in sanitary landfills.2 These laws also created the centralized,semi-private state company CEAMSE (Coordinacion Ecologica AreaMetropolitana Sociedad del Estato—State Society of the Coordinationof the Metropolitan Ecological Area), which was made responsiblefor transporting the waste collected by private companies (contractedindividually by the cities), interring this waste, and managing thesanitary landfills for the City of Buenos Aires and the surroundingmetropolitan area. CEAMSE was to be paid by the ton for the amountof waste it interred and the cities were required by law to use itsservices (Prignano 1998). As a result of this, informal garbage collectionwas made explicitly illegal: the law prohibited any type of wastecollection outside of that done by those companies contracted by thecity. Although government administrations—both at the municipal andnational levels—changed hands numerous times since the passage ofthese laws, this system of waste management remained in place withvery little modification until the early 2000s. As a result, the activityof scavenging, while continuing to exist both within and outside of thelandfills, became criminalized and clandestine. This was especially thecase in the City of Buenos Aires (as opposed to its provincial neighbors),as all of CEAMSE’s landfills were located in the municipalitiessurrounding the Capital District and prohibitions to scavenging weremuch more diligently enforced within the capital city’s boundaries.

With the end of the military dictatorship in 1983 there was a gradualreappearance of cartoneros on the landscape of Buenos Aires (Koehs2005). However, the numbers of cartoneros remained low until recentyears, which have witnessed a strong resurgence of this livelihoodstrategy in large part as a result of the economic crisis that Argentinaexperienced in 2002 (Anguita 2003; Koehs 2005; Reynals 2002).Although the 1990s in Argentina were marked by economic growth,increased productivity, and low levels of inflation, conditions for manylower- and middle-class Argentines had been deteriorating since themid-1990s, when under- and unemployment rates began to rise and realwages to decline, effectively creating a “new poor” among lower- tomiddle-class Argentines (Cerrutti 2000; Feijoo 2001; Rapoport 2002).In 2002 this deteriorating economy entered into full crisis, resulting inrecession, inflation, and unemployment rates of over 25% in the capitaland even higher in the provinces. As a result, the cash economy cameto an abrupt halt and poverty rates reached over 50% in the country asa whole (Insituto Nacional de Estadıstica y Censos 2002). For manyportenos (Buenos Aireans), the effects of the crisis were felt mostdirectly through the loss of employment and the paucity of job prospects.This was especially true for poor, informal workers, who were heavilyreliant on the cash economy and worked in jobs such as domestic laborand home improvements that were increasingly viewed as unnecessaryluxuries by their middle-class employers (Whitson 2007). One effectC© 2011 The AuthorAntipode C© 2011 Editorial Board of Antipode.


of this was an explosion in the number of cartoneros, expanding fromabout 10,000 in Buenos Aires in 2001 to about 25,000 in early 2002,to over 40,000 later that year (Anguita 2003). Since 2002, although thenumber of cartoneros in the city is estimated to have dropped to below10,000 (Ministerio de Ambiente y Espacio Publico 2008), the activityof scavenging continues to be an issue of concern for the governmentand citizenry as a whole.

It was in the context of this crisis and the years that followedthat two important changes in legislation governing informal garbagerecycling occurred, representing the first significant revisions to thelegislation of waste management in the city since 1977. The first ofthese is the “Cartoneros Law”, passed by the City of Buenos Airesin December 2002. This law declared a state of emergency regardingurban hygiene in the city and incorporated informal recyclers into theurban sanitation system by allowing for the collection of reusableand recyclable material. The law additionally created a registry forcartoneros and cooperatives of cartoneros; called for the creation andimplementation of an educational campaign to encourage residents toseparate their waste at the source; and required the implementationof basic social and health programs to assist cartoneros. Finally, theCartoneros Law created the Office of Urban Recycling Policy (DGPRU)within the City’s Ministry of the Environment and Public Space tomanage these activities.

The second law passed in the City of Buenos Aires, Law 1.854/05:Integral Management of Solid Urban Waste (commonly referred toas the “Zero Waste Law”), was much broader in scope than theCartoneros Law. Rather than dealing with only informal garbagescavenging, the Zero Waste Law, passed in November 2005, establishedguidelines for major transformation of the entire previous system ofwaste management, considering all stages of the waste cycle. Followingmodels of “zero waste” legislation in other parts of the world, includingChristchurch, NZ, Western Australia, and San Francisco, CA, this lawrequires that the quantity of waste sent to landfills be reduced by 30%in 2010, 50% in 2012, and 75% in 2017 in comparison with 2004levels. The final goal is set for 2020, at which time the law prohibitsthe burial of any recyclable or reusable material. Thus, whereas prior to2005, recycling was effectively prohibited through the criminalizationof scavenging, with the passage of the Zero Waste Law recyclingbecame mandated at very ambitious levels. The law also requiresseparation at the source; calls for the establishment of centros verdes(or “resource recovery centers”) where recyclables will be separatedand processed; guarantees the implementation of publicity campaignsto promote separation at the source; and mandates that the city givepreference to the use of recycled and reusable products in its contracts.While the majority of the document makes no specific reference toC© 2011 The AuthorAntipode C© 2011 Editorial Board of Antipode.

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cartoneros, they nonetheless play an important role in the vision ofzero waste as it is written into this law. Chapter XII of the law statesthat “Urban recuperators [a.k.a. cartoneros] will be guaranteed priorityand inclusion in the process of collection and transport of dry solidurban waste [recyclables] and in the activities of the resource recoverycenters” (Ley de Gestion de Residuos Solidos Urbanos 2005). Thischapter also requires the city to work to develop lines of credit andgrants for cooperatives of cartoneros to enable them to do this work.

Social Change in Context: Theorizing Geographiesof WasteThe passage of the Cartoneros Law and the Zero Waste Law togetherrepresent a significant change in the position of the cartoneros andtheir work with respect to the state and society. These changes were,moreover, supported by and reflected in a number of other changes thatoccurred at the same time, including the development of cooperatives ofcartoneros (Dimarco 2005; Fajn 2004; Foster 2002), the increased focuson the work of cartoneros in the media and arts (Adissi 2003), and slowbut discernible changes in the public perception of scavenging. What dothese changes mean, however, about and for the place of cartoneros inArgentine society? And how can answering this question provide insightinto the ways that geographies of waste and disposal are connected tothe maintenance of social inequality? In this section, I review currentgeographic research on disposal, waste, and scavenging and propose athreefold conceptualization of waste in order to address these questions.This conceptualization highlights the role of waste as matter that: (1)belongs elsewhere, (2) is perceived as valueless, and (3) has commoditypotential. I assert that combining these three perspectives on wasteprovides a framework for understanding the way that waste functions asa material discursive formation to structure social space.

One way of beginning to theorize how geographies of waste inArgentina are connected to the maintenance of social inequality isthrough an analysis of disposal as a social process, as is currentlybeing undertaken by a number of geographers responding to perceiveddeficiencies in the literature on geographies of consumption. Theseresearchers argue that geographies of consumption focus primarilyon “front-end” consumption practices (such as commodity chains,commercial cultures, retailing, shopping, and use of commodities) andneglect disposal as part of the consumption process (Gregson et al 2007a,2007b; Hetherington 2004). For these researchers, the act of disposalmerits study because it represents the end-point of consumption, and isthus seen as “a necessary issue integral to the whole process of viewingconsuming as a social activity” (Hetherington 2004:158). Framinggeographies of disposal within the consumption literature facilitatesC© 2011 The AuthorAntipode C© 2011 Editorial Board of Antipode.


an understanding of disposal as part of larger economic, social, andidentity-producing practices that are intrinsically tied to the materialworld. It also enables us to view the material-disposed-of as a matter witha history, into which social relations are already inscribed, both throughthe processes of production and previous practices of consumption. Thisperspective has thus enabled Gregson and Crewe (2003) and Gregsonet al (2007a, 2007b) to argue that disposal is not only important to thereproduction of the social order through the production of narratives, butthat it also plays a key role in the articulations of ethics and moralitiesthat maintain social identities.

While highlighting the importance of disposal, these researchers havefound that this process—broadly understood as ridding, divestment, ordiscarding—is frequently not about the creation of waste, as it ofteninvolves saving things or divesting in other ways (Gregson and Crewe2003; Gregson et al 2007a). As such, the works of these authors focusalmost exclusively on non-wasting forms of disposal (such as givingto thrift stores or passing unwanted items to friends or family). Whilethis focus serves to complicate the idea that discarded material hasnecessarily ended its “social life” (Appadurai 1986), because of the lackof attention given to disposed material as waste, there continues to be animpression that “moving things through the conduit of the waste stream”(Gregson et al 2007b:197) is a final moment in a way that other typesof disposal are not. But just as consumption is not simply the last stepin production, disposal—and with it the creation of waste—is not onlythe last stage in consumption. Rather, this stage holds the possibilityfor continued “life”, albeit under a different logic than that which thestages of production, circulation, or consumption imply. Nonetheless,the arguments that Gregson and Crewe (2003) and Gregson et al (2007a,2007b) make with regard to the importance of understanding second-hand markets and disposal practices provide a useful starting place fortheorizing the ways that geographies of waste are connected to themaintenance of social inequalities.

A second way of addressing the question of how changes in thegeography of waste in Buenos Aires interact with social relations is bydrawing on the insights provided by research conducted from a wastemanagement perspective. This research, conducted by geographers andother social scientists, has tended to focus on resource conservation,waste minimization and recovery, environmental justice, sustainabledevelopment, and waste management alternatives (Davies et al 2005;Myers 2005; Parizeau et al 2008). Among those researching informalrecycling, there have been numerous investigations into the lives ofinformal recyclers (or scavengers), studies of how informal recyclersinteract with formal waste management actors (including governmentsand private firms), and recommendations for policy regarding informalrecycling (Gutberlet 2008; Koberlein 2003; Medina 2005; Nchito andC© 2011 The AuthorAntipode C© 2011 Editorial Board of Antipode.

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Myers 2004). This literature clearly recognizes the marginalization ofinformal recyclers, their lack of political power, and the importance ofthe relationships among different actors involved in informal recycling,including the private waste industry, residents who support or resistseparation of recyclables at the source, government regulators, andNGOs. However, the goals of this research remain policy-oriented, andas such it employs an approach that does not problematize the socialconstruction, meaning, or definition of waste. Consequently, while itprovides a valuable resource for understanding some aspects of thegeographies of waste, it overlooks the role of waste as a fundamentalcategory for organizing social space, which is connected to processes ofidentity and group formation and the expression of social power.

In order to bring a more fully theorized approach to research ongeographies of waste and the connection of these to the constitutionof social structures, I propose a conceptualization of waste as thatwhich belongs elsewhere, is perceived as valueless, and has commoditypotential. While each of these characteristics is present to some extentin the conceptualizations of waste in the literature cited above, mygoal here is to bring them into explicit conversation with one another,highlighting the role each plays in the formation of waste.

The writings of anthropologist Mary Douglas on the process ofdisposal offer a starting point for understanding waste as that whichbelongs elsewhere. In her classic work Purity and Danger: An Analysisof the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo, Douglas (1966) argues that theprocess of disposal is a creative effort to organize space by re-placingthings to eliminate disorder. In this way, disposal becomes more thansimply a mundane act of maintaining hygienic conditions, but insteadcan be read as an act of preserving order through classification andplacement within a specific symbolic system (Douglas 1966). Thus,according to Hetherington (2004:161), for Douglas, disposal “is allabout questions of boundaries and order—it is about putting in place,beyond a certain threshold, all that threatens to pollute because it isseen as out of place”. In this way disposal is an inherently spatialact that serves to place—and constitute—waste as that which belongselsewhere. Yet, as Lucas (2002:7) argues, unlike dirt, which Douglas(1966:35) defines broadly as “matter out of place”, waste “invariablydoes have ‘a place’”: in the trashcan, in the landfill, outside of town,away from here.3 Not only is waste marked, therefore, by belongingelsewhere, it is also marked by having a specific elsewhere to which itbelongs: “outside” of the spaces that are clean and ordered.4

In addition to a spatial understanding of waste as matter thatfundamentally belongs elsewhere, waste may also be conceptualizedsymbolically as valueless as a result of its alterity. Moore (2008)develops this notion by identifying waste as that which is excluded andmarginalized in order to serve as the Other that constitutes the self. TheC© 2011 The AuthorAntipode C© 2011 Editorial Board of Antipode.


result of this, she argues, is that waste and those associated with it areabject to the modern city and citizen. Similarly, as Thompson (1979) andHawkins and Muecke (2003) suggest, waste can be understood as thezero-value that serves to reaffirm the “positive valuation of bodies andspaces as clean” (Hawkins 2003:41). It is precisely, therefore, waste’sperceived lack of value that gives it power to define the value of peopleand places. The social constitution and definition of waste requires,therefore, both a spatial element (placement through disposal away fromthe ordered and constituted) as well as a relational element (a definitionof it, in relation to the self, as abject and valueless). These are connectedto the extent that the one is an expression of the other: place is a markerof value, and the value of things present, in turn, helps constitute theplace.

Not only can waste be understood as valueless and belongingelsewhere, but in seeking to understand the role of waste in constitutingsocial relations, it is also critical to recognize its commodity potential.In asserting this, I follow Appadurai’s (1986:16) definition thatcommodities are things that “at a certain phase in their careers and in aparticular context, meet the requirements of commodity candidacy”.5

O’Brien’s research (1999, 2008) develops the idea that waste isa commodity by arguing that the legal, political, and commercialrelationships established in order to situate the placement, channeling,and organization of waste comprise a regime of value that demonstrateswaste’s potential commodity status. In this way, he argues that the valueof waste underpins entire sectors of the economy and that “far fromrepresenting the end of value or the transition to negative value, [wastes]exhibit an enormous array of positive values” (O’Brien 2008:124). Thisis apparent in Lepawsky and McNabb’s (Forthcoming) research oninternational flows of electronic waste, as they argue that “the existenceof the trade and traffic in e-waste means, by definition, that some formof value exists—or is created—after”—and, I would argue, through—“disposal of the commodities constituting e-waste”. Thus, although Iargue that in the waste stage of a commodity’s biography, material isdefined culturally and symbolically through its perceived lack of value(Hawkins 2003; Hawkins and Muecke 2003; Thompson 1979), wastecontinues to have the potential of economic value as a commodity, assignified by the legal, commercial, and political relationships withinwhich it is produced and circulated.6

Viewing waste as a commodity helps us to understand not only itseconomic significance, but also sheds light on the socio-spatial politicssurrounding waste management in a number of ways. First, it remindsus that, just as we have to look backward in the life of a commodity tounderstand the conditions under which it was produced and consumed,it is important to look forward to understand the social, political, andeconomic conditions that characterize the disposal stage, which startsC© 2011 The AuthorAntipode C© 2011 Editorial Board of Antipode.

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with the act of disposal itself, but continues on. Second, and very muchrelated, this perspective underscores the idea that the meaning of awaste is, in part, derived from the labor that goes into it—not just duringthe “original” production process—but also during the disposal process(including collection, sorting, storage, transport, processing, interment,etc). The social and political relations of disposal, and the culture andeconomy that are established around this process, thus give meaningto waste and position individuals with respect both to one another andto the society that normalizes, sanctions, and regulates the process. Inother words, our waste bins contain what geographer Michael Watts(1999:307) refers to as a “bundle of social relations”, and it becomespossible, and even necessary, to argue that social identities, socialgroups, and social power are constituted not only through productionand consumption but disposal as well.

Finally, recognizing waste as a commodity and disposal as notsimply the end point of consumption facilitates an awareness that thepower of waste in defining identities and structuring social relationsexists not just in terms of positioning people with respect to otherconsumers (through the way in which commodities are purchased,used, and disposed). Rather, waste creation and management alsoposition people with respect to those who will use, process, sell,sort, bury, and otherwise interact with the “waste” that is produced.Unfortunately, however, this commodity-mediated relationship oftenremains obscured through the fetishization of the waste commodityitself. As a result, the social character of the waste commodity isnaturalized and appears to exist independently apart from those whointeract with it (Bridge and Smith 2003; Watts 1999). Nonetheless,understanding that these relationships are obscured through the processof commodity fetishism represents the first step in identifying thepotential of the possibilities for defetishization (Bridge and Smith2003). For research that seeks to address social inequalities throughexaminations of people’s relationships to commodities, the recognitionof waste as a commodity is therefore critical, as across “the border” andinto the “waste stream” is often where the most glaring inequalities aresituated.

Recognizing the productive tension between these threecharacteristics of waste (as a commodity, as belonging elsewhere, and aszero-value) provides insight into the unique ways that waste functionsto constitute the social world. First, this conceptualization highlightsthe material, discursive, and ideological elements of the formation ofwaste. Waste does not exist outside of our definition of it, and thisdefinition almost always involves the spatial and relational elementsdiscussed above. Defining and categorizing material as waste not onlycreates waste, but functions to constitute social identities, places, andboundaries as well. Second, the fact that material may simultaneouslyC© 2011 The AuthorAntipode C© 2011 Editorial Board of Antipode.


be both valueless and valuable is an expression of social inequality, asan individual’s perspective on the value of waste frequently serves asan indication of their place within the social structure as well as theirrelation to hegemonic definitions of waste and value. The borders andplacings that define waste are not simply symbolic, but are imbuedwith power, as the authority to define what is out of place rests inthe hands of the most privileged (Cresswell 1996). Contestations overwhat waste is are thus expressions of struggles to redefine people’sroles within society through defining their relationship to waste. Thus,in spite of the fact that waste may be economically valuable and isintimately connected to every aspect of social functioning, its discursiveconstruction as valueless and belonging elsewhere has an enormouseffect on waste policy and the way that waste and waste workers aredealt with by governments and society. As such, when ideas of whatconstitutes value and waste are redefined, so are waste workers and theirplace in society. Finally, these three elements help us to understand theunique power of the waste economy and industry, which, drawing on thecommodity aspect of waste is extremely profitable, yet which remainsfor most of society unconsidered and invisible, as it deals with materialthat is viewed as both valueless and out of place.

Crisis and DisplacementsWhile every choice is subjective, few doubts remain that the urbantheme of 2002 has been, here, scavenging in all of its forms (Llados2002b).

Waste was exceeding its limits, it was no longer contained inappropriate places but was everywhere; classificatory boundaries werecollapsing. The condition of “the environment” was threatened by thepresence of rubbish, so too was the urban order (Hawkins 2001:10).

It is an apotheosis of trash (Muleiro 2002).

In this and the following section, I examine the debates over themanagement of household waste in Buenos Aires during and subsequentto the crisis of 2002 in order to address the way that waste functions asa fundamental category for organizing social space, and as such, playsa role in the maintenance of social subordination. To this end, I focuson three examples of the displacement of waste and waste workers thatoccurred during and immediately following the crisis: the presence ofwaste on the streets of Buenos Aires; the large scale appearance ofcartoneros working in the central city; and the failure of landfills tocontain waste and its byproducts in the greater metropolitan area ofBuenos Aires. I argue that the displacement of waste and waste workersassociated with the crisis opened a space for the transformation ofestablished social relations, primarily through the defetishization of thecommodity of waste.C© 2011 The AuthorAntipode C© 2011 Editorial Board of Antipode.

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As the year 2002 progressed, the number of people working ascartoneros in Buenos Aires grew, so that by October of that year therewere four times as many cartoneros searching the streets for recyclablematerial as there had been when the year began (Anguita 2003). Becauseof the fierce competition for recyclables that this situation presented,cartoneros rarely had time to “clean up” the trash bags that they hadopened to search for recyclables. The result of this situation was thestriking presence of waste scattered on streets and sidewalks throughoutthe city at all times of day, prompting what the government and residentsalike referred to as an “urban hygiene crisis”. The language used in thepopular media reflected the powerful impression that the visibility ofthis trash made on the public, as newspapers referred commonly to thefilth (suciedad) in the streets and the city becoming a trashcan (basural).One reporter described how “the cartoneros rip open thousands of trashbags each night, and this has created an unbearable level of filth” (Llados2002b), while another writer commented that “cartoneros have forsakenall care of the cleanliness of the city and have turned the city into atrashcan”, going on to say that “bags torn that later scatter waste on thestreet have used up the patience of many” (Llados 2002a). By the latterpart of the year, reporters were writing that “for the neighbors, the dreamof clean streets has become a utopia” (Crespi 2002). The importanceof waste belonging elsewhere thus became very clear when the garbagewas visibly and persistently not elsewhere for the residents of BuenosAires. The visibility of the waste on the sidewalks, aside from beingperceived as a health hazard and an inconvenience, became a very starksymbol that the system that had maintained order in the city previouslywas no longer functioning, as it was no longer able to maintain theboundaries that ensured that trash be contained “elsewhere”. Referencesto the trash on the street invariably crept into conversations about theeconomic crisis, the ineffectiveness of government officials, and thestate of the country as a whole.

This anxiety over the municipality’s inability to maintain order inthe city was reflected in the comments of portenos at the time. Morethan one person mentioned to me that while Buenos Aires used tobe beautiful, it now “looked just like Montevideo or any other city inLatin America—full of trash!” Another interviewee lamented, “What ashame that you have to see it now!” As this comment suggests, being“out of place” (Douglas 1966) not only made the waste into “filth” bydisrupting established boundaries, but had implications for the role ofwaste in constituting place: Buenos Aires itself was changed by theconstant presence of waste on the streets. Moreover, the visibility ofwaste and the way it was dealt with had implications for Argentina’sperceived place within the global hierarchy. As one young woman whohad only recently started collecting waste commented to me, “Nowwe’re just like Africa; we’re really worse off than Africa”. Similarly,C© 2011 The AuthorAntipode C© 2011 Editorial Board of Antipode.


Figure 1. Neighborhoods of Buenos Aires

one newspaper reporter reflected, “It is not, therefore, because we are inthe First World. It is, precisely—precisely, paradoxically, and sadly—because we are in the last” (Feinmann 2002).7 Because, as Moore (2008,2009) argues, waste in the modern city serves as the abject throughwhich that modernity is defined, when it became present and visible inBuenos Aires, it called into question the modernity (and meaning moregenerally) of Buenos Aires itself. As such, it was extremely importantfor the government to show that they were able to confront—if notthe economic crisis—then at least the urban hygiene crisis. Mandatesencouraging—and then requiring—separation at the source in 2002,followed by the passage of the Cartoneros Law were, in the words ofone reporter, “driven by the demand for greater order and cleanliness”on the part of the residents (Cruces 2002). While this law did affect therelationship between the cartoneros and the state, it did little to ease “therepeated lost battles against filth in the streets” (Castro 2007a). Rather,in the years immediately following the crisis, the presence of waste onthe city’s sidewalks and streets continued to be an issue for residentsand the government alike.8

It is important to note that this “crisis of waste” was precipitated by theincreased presence of waste on the street brought about by scavengingin particular areas within the city: primarily the central business districtlocated in the barrio of San Nicolas (see Figure 1) and the relativelyaffluent neighborhoods that surround it. While poorer neighborhoodsC© 2011 The AuthorAntipode C© 2011 Editorial Board of Antipode.

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on the outskirts of the city and in the provinces had long been thelocation of waste dumping and scavenging activities, the presence ofwaste emerged as a “crisis” only when it spread on a large scale toaffluent areas. While I have argued above that waste can be understoodas that which “belongs elsewhere”, the fact that waste and informalwaste work only became perceived by the public at large as a crisis in2002 suggests that not every community has the same degree of powerto define what constitutes “elsewhere” for the society as a whole; asCresswell (1996:39) argues, “those who can define what is out of placeare those with the most power in society”.

The streets and sidewalks of the city, however, were not the only sitesthat waste was being found out of place; in 2003 and 2004, indicationsbegan to appear that waste and toxic by-products were leaching fromthe over-full, deteriorating landfills established by CEAMSE in the late1970s. The effect of this second “displacement” of waste was a searchon the part of CEAMSE for new neighborhoods in which to placelandfills in the municipalities surrounding the Capital District. Localofficials were often enthusiastic to support the placement of a dump intheir municipality thanks to the revenues it would generate. However,residents of numerous locations, with the support of environmentalorganizations, successfully mobilized against the construction of newlandfills in their neighborhoods. According to a representative of oneenvironmental organization, the need to present an alternative to theprevious landfill system, combined with the grassroots involvementof middle-class citizens who did not want leaking landfills in theirneighborhoods, were powerful factors in the passage of the Zero WasteLaw in 2005. He explained that “There was no way out with the oldsystem that we had”, going on to comment:

Nowadays you can see the signs, the neighbors with sores walking onthe streets, the appearance of sicknesses, they had to close the landfillin Villa Dominica . . . these signs had been showing up that indicatedthat there is no way out with the old system, so our work was todemonstrate that there are other ways out, that there are solutions toall of this, and we tried to convert this into law.

In this way, the reappearance of the city’s waste in the form ofleachates—much like the reappearance of trash on the city’s streets—further enabled a reevaluation of the previous system of wastemanagement, as it prompted residents to question why the currentsystem’s ability to keep trash contained “elsewhere” was no longerfunctioning. While Hetherington (2004) argues that we dispose of thingsin order to avoid dealing directly with their implications, the citizensof Buenos Aires found in the last decade that they were forced todeal directly with the results of their waste—both in the central cityand in neighborhoods surrounding landfills. Thus, as Munro (2001)

C© 2011 The AuthorAntipode C© 2011 Editorial Board of Antipode.


argues, while disposal disperses and displaces, the matter (and meaning)disposed of always has the ability to return and “haunt” those who wishto see it gone, or in the words of Gregson et al (2007b), “act back” on itsdisposers. In this case, one of the effects of this “haunting” was openinga space for discussion about “the old system”, which culminated in thepassage of the Zero Waste Law.

Not only was waste found “out of place” during and followingthe 2002 crisis in Buenos Aires, but those associated with waste—the cartoneros—were as well. This was the case largely as a resultof changes in the political economy surrounding the commodity ofwaste. At the height of Argentina’s economic crisis, as the value ofthe Argentine peso plummeted on the international market, scavengingbecame a much more lucrative activity than it had been previously.As Argentine industries were no longer able to afford to purchaseraw materials from foreign sources, they instead relied increasingly onrecycled, domestic inputs, driving up the prices paid for recyclablescollected by the cartoneros (Anguita 2003; Schamber 2009). Thistripled and in some cases more than quadrupled the previous marketvalue of recyclable material. Cardboard alone rose in value from 6centavos per kilo in December 2001 to 30 centavos per kilo in Mayof the following year (Dandan 2002) and the amount sold from thesix major recycling companies in Buenos Aires into formal industryincreased 490% during the same time period (CEDEM 2002). Duringthe same period, scavenging was increasingly seen as an available jobof “last resort” with few or no barriers to entry for many who foundthemselves under- and unemployed in a context in which over 25%of the economically active population was unemployed and over 50%of the population was living below the poverty line (Insituto Nacionalde Estadıstica y Censos 2002). Interviews conducted with cartonerosduring this time suggest that although they were earning on averagebetween 150 and 200 pesos a month from scavenging, in many casesthis was the primary source of their family’s income.9

As a result of these conditions, by the middle of the year cartoneroswere no longer contained by the invisible boundaries established bythe former social order, which had tolerated their presence in poorerareas on the outskirts of the city, in the provinces, and near landfills.Rather, cartoneros were working en masse in the relatively affluentareas in and surrounding the centro, including the CBD and highincome residential areas in Palermo, Recoleta, Retiro, San Nicolas,Puerto Madero, and Monserrat (see Figure 1), where consumption hadmaintained relatively high levels and, consequently, relatively morewaste was being produced. As one respondent living in a moderatelyaffluent area of the Capital District mentioned to me in 2002, “Youdidn’t really see scavenging around here before. There are a lot ofpeople that you wouldn’t have seen doing this before and now you seeC© 2011 The AuthorAntipode C© 2011 Editorial Board of Antipode.

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people even eating from the trash. You never saw this before”. Anotherinterviewee commented, “Just look at the number of scavengers—itmakes you want to die. I’ve never in my life seen so many peoplescavenging . . . there is so much misery and so much hunger”. Formany portenos, cartoneros thus achieved an unprecedented level ofvisibility.

Not only were there more people scavenging in the Capital Districtthan there had been previously, but the geography of scavenging changedin another way as well, in that most of the cartoneros were traveling infrom the provinces to do this work. Thus, while some of the cartoneroslived in or near the neighborhoods in which they worked, as the crisisescalated, more and more people made their way into the city fromsurrounding municipalities in the province in order to take advantageof the quality and quantity of waste available. According to estimatescompiled by the earliest registry of cartoneros conducted in early 2003,over three-quarters of the 9101 cartoneros surveyed working in thecity center were traveling in from the provinces to do so (DireccionGeneral de Estadıstica y Censos 2003). Special trains were even setaside by a number of train companies, called “White Trains”, in order toaccommodate the large number of cartoneros commuting daily fromthe provinces without “disturbing” other passengers. The influx ofnon-residents exacerbated the feeling in the city that cartoneros were“everywhere”, as people talked about cartoneros “invading” and “takingover” the city’s streets.

In addition to the unprecedented presence and visibility of cartonerosin the central city, whereas prior to 2002 scavenging was associatedwith homelessness and indigence, during the crisis the public face ofthe scavenger began to change as well. One aspect of this change was theappearance of what had previously been the “working poor” scavengingon the street. One respondent who began working as a cartonero in May2002, traveling in to the capital from the province of San Fernando bytrain, remarked the following:

Before, the people you saw collecting garbage were homeless, youknow? But now, with the situation that we have here in Argentina,now collecting garbage is something normal, because everyone isdoing it. People who never thought that they would come to this aredoing it.

For many people in the capital, this led to a humanization of thecartoneros that had not occurred when the activity was removed fromtheir day-to-day lives as well as being strongly associated with the“poorest of the poor”.

Not only had the class status of scavengers changed, however, butwomen and children increasingly began to work as cartoneros as well.As one cartonera described to me:C© 2011 The AuthorAntipode C© 2011 Editorial Board of Antipode.


There are all types, nowadays the whole family; the parents with theirkids from the littlest to the biggest are out now, because there are a lotof people [scavenging] and very few things, so the whole family hasto collect trash. The husband goes one direction with some kids andthe wife goes another direction with the other kids in order to try toget a hold of the most that they can. Before it was different, there werea lot more men, but now it is the whole family.

As such, during the crisis the public were able to see cartoneros notonly as men working alone, but also as women and children working inunsafe conditions in the relative insecurity of the streets. In this way, thepeople most powerfully associated with the home and the private spherewere scavenging in the most public of places—the street—causing yetanother dislocation of people within the sociospatial order.10 Thus, notonly was waste out of place during the crisis, but the people associatedwith it, the cartoneros, were also out of place, invading the space of thecentral city rather than staying on the margins, in the provinces or athome.

While the passage of the Cartoneros Law and the Zero Waste Lawwere both certainly influenced by the increase in numbers of cartoneros,their visibility in the central city—and their new “humanized” publicface—were also crucial to changing the public’s perception of their workand subsequent legislative reform. As the producer of one local newsprogram commented: “No matter what we discussed, [news about thecartoneros] never failed to attract the attention of the general public andthe middle class, overall because it dealt with people who were sharingthe streets of the city with them. It was as if poverty had jumped out of theshanty towns and was rubbing shoulders like never before with themiddle class” (Anon 2007a). The increased visibility of cartoneros wasalso productive in helping to envision a new place for cartoneros withinthis legislation. As a representative of one environmental organizationstated when asked why the cartoneros played such a large role in theway that the Zero Waste Law would be implemented in Buenos Aires,the visibility of the cartoneros in the city, and their direct interactionwith the city’s residents, were critical. He explained in an interview:

You can’t talk about a solution to this problem without consideringthese 25,000 people who have newly passed into marginality or passa law of Zero Waste without them, when in reality you can integratethese people. They were, for me, the same people who made us realizethe value, not just of the waste, but of the work that they do in thesystem of waste management . . . Also, each citizen has to change hishabits, and become used to separating the trash in their house. So therole of the cartoneros is very important, because they have very directcontact with the neighbors, which is a thing that the government cannever do. The government can send out a pamphlet for people to readthat says that they have to separate their trash, and people would throw


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the pamphlet out in the trash with their organic matter! So the role ofthe cartoneros, in addition to the work that they do, is their presencein the city, their contact with the neighbors.

Thus the physical presence and increased visibility of the cartonerosin the city was critical to their integration into the Zero Waste Law,in that it provided a mechanism for interaction between cartonerosand city residents that led to a reevaluation of their relationship. Thiswas especially the case in areas where the cartoneros had formedcooperatives: as one cartonera working in the upscale neighborhoodof Palermo commented to me, “Everyone in this neighborhood knowsme now . . . everyone says, ‘You’re the one from the coop!’ Obviously,it’s because they see me everywhere around”. Ethnographic observationconfirmed this: during my time spent working on the streets with acooperative of cartoneros, police and other residents knew them byface, said hello, and asked how other members of the cooperativewere doing. Even outside of areas that were served by cooperativesof cartoneros, as one journalist argued, “Desperation sometimes doesits own “marketing” . . . women go out with their smallest children inorder to sensitize those who produce the trash” (Muleiro 2002).

The striking visibility of cartoneros, as well as the presence ofwaste on the streets of Buenos Aires and the leaking of leachatesfrom metropolitan landfills, all worked together to lead to an increasedawareness of the lifecycle of trash as a commodity for the publicas a whole: people were increasingly aware of and concerned aboutwhere their waste was going, who was dealing with it, and whatthe environmental consequences of it were. According to Miller(2003), this type of large-scale “education” about the lifecycle andproduction conditions of a commodity may constitute an importantcomponent of the process of commodity defetishization, as it limitsthe ability of consumers (or in this case disposers) to “deny whatwe should know about manufacture”—and disposal—“and to treatgoods as autonomous from their origins” and destinations (Miller2003:360). Additionally, by thinking about waste as a particular kindof commodity, these dislocations can be understood as producing atype of “disintermediation” working to defetishize waste (Bridge andSmith 2003; Miller 2003). While the term disintermediation refers mostcommonly to the removal of intermediaries in a supply chain, in thiscontext it can be understood as removing intermediaries in the wastechain to lessen the separation between those disposing of waste andthose processing it. This, in turn, may result in the defetishization ofwaste by increasing “awareness of socioeconomic and environmentalconditions” under which commodities are disposed of, thus “creatinga space for thinking critically about the social responsibilities” thatdisposal entails (Bridge and Smith 2003:261). A shift in the geography



of waste and waste work in Buenos Aires during and following the crisisthus opened a space for the transformation of established social relationsas reflected in the city and citizenry’s relationship with the cartonerosthrough the defetishization of the waste commodity.

Negotiating (Re)PlacementsWhile the year 2002 in Argentina was marked by the displacementof both waste and people, the years that followed have witnessed astruggle over where and how cartoneros, their work, and the waste withwhich they are associated belong in the porteno landscape. In particular,there have been two foci of negotiation, the first of which concernsthe definition of waste itself, and the second of which focuses on theappropriate place for the work of the cartoneros within the city. In thesenegotiations, it becomes possible to see the way that the definition ofwaste and value interact to inform not only what is materially defined aswaste, but also the value and (literal) place of the work of the cartonerosin society. In the remainder of this article, I focus on these negotiations inorder to analyze the extent to which the displacements discussed abovehave been able to open spaces and dialogues for new ways to place andvalue waste and informal waste workers. I argue that, in spite of thepotential for change brought about by the displacements discussed inthe previous section, waste continues to be defined as that which belongselsewhere and is of no value, further reinforcing the marginalization ofcartoneros and their work.

The first locus of negotiation concerns the definition of waste itselfand the subsequent placing and valuing of these disposed materials. Inaccordance with the Zero Waste Law, which mandated separation at thesource for recyclables, in April 2007 the Mayor of Buenos Aires, JorgeTelerman, instituted a system of “differentiated containerization”. Thiswas justified as an attempt “to diminish the impact of the activity of thecartoneros in the public streets, which are more and more disorderlyall the time, in order to improve the quality of the environment andallow the neighbors to enjoy the spaces that belong to everyone” (Anon2007d). Under this system, over 10,000 waste receptacles with separatecontainers for “wet” (non-recyclable) and “dry” (recyclable) itemswere placed on corners in residential areas to collect household waste.Waste collection companies were then required to institute differentialcollection and processing of this separated material. According to MarioModica, from the Ministry of the Environment, the goal of this systemwas “that trash not touch the street, and if it touches the street, itremains there as little time as possible” (Anon 2007d). At the mostbasic level, the program of double containerization attempted to providea solution to the disorder that waste on the streets implied by creatinga new place for waste within the city, such that during its necessaryC© 2011 The AuthorAntipode C© 2011 Editorial Board of Antipode.

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journey from residence to landfill it did not pollute the city streets.Yet in addition to creating a new place for waste, this system alsoattempted to redefine, and thus re-value, some of what had previouslybeen considered valueless by the “public institutions of singularization”(Kopytoff 1986) in the city, by naming some waste as recyclable, andproviding a distinct place for it that marked it as continuing to holdvalue.

While this process of redefining waste (or at least the recyclableportions of it) as valuable had already occurred within distinct sectorsof society—in particular among the informal recycling industry, whichwas, at the time, estimated by the city’s Ministry of Public Revenueas worth over 500 million pesos per year (Ruhl 2007), as well asamong environmentalists and legislators involved in the passage ofthe Zero Waste Law—the potential commodity status of waste hadnot prompted a revaluation by society at large of the social valueof this material. This was evident in the reactions to the program ofdouble containerization by the residents of Buenos Aires, formal wastecollection companies, and the subsequent municipal administration.By 2008, while space existed for both recyclable and non-recyclablewaste in the double containers, according to the Ministry of theEnvironment and Public Space, waste was not being separated byresidents (Ministerio de Ambiente y Espacio Publico 2008). They arguedthat there had not been time to effectively implement an education andsensitization program for the residents at large, and as such peoplewere unaware, or unconvinced, of the potential value of their waste.To further complicate the situation, representatives of CEAMSE aswell as cooperatives of cartoneros suggested during interviews that,while residents may have been making use of the dual containers, trashcollection companies were continuing to bring unseparated material toboth the newly established resource recovery centers and the separationplants established by CEAMSE near the landfills.11 One cooperativerepresentative commented that, even if a resident wanted to supportthe recycling effort (and thus re-value their waste), they would losetheir motivation after seeing both containers dumped into a single trashtruck. While trash collection companies were insistent that they werefulfilling their obligation of differential collection, other interviewees,including representatives of CEAMSE, cooperatives of cartoneros,and representatives of environmental organizations argued otherwise,suggesting that as long as there was no effective oversight, it wouldnot be in the interest of waste collection companies to ensure thatrecyclable material remained separated. In this way, the embeddedcultural and institutional organization of waste management, bothamong private residents and waste collection companies, inhibiteda large-scale revaluation of waste to occur, in spite of the legalcommoditization of recyclable material that had recently occurred.C© 2011 The AuthorAntipode C© 2011 Editorial Board of Antipode.


As a result of this situation, on taking office in 2008, Mayor MauricioMacri chose to suspend the use of double containers and terminate therequirement for the waste collection companies to conduct differentialcollection of recyclables and waste. Rather, in place of Telerman’sdifferentiated container strategy, Macri proposed a plan that wouldcontinue to require residents to separate their recyclables, but in whichcartoneros would collect these recyclables door-to-door (Gutman 2008).This alternate solution was proposed not simply because Macri felt thatdifferentiated containerization was not working; rather, it emerged fromissues connected to the political economy of waste management inBuenos Aires at that time as well. In particular, this represented aneffort by the city to deal with the increasingly elevated costs of tryingto formalize the commodity status and circulation of recyclable waste.While the city had been paying approximately 296 million pesos peryear for trash collection in 2002, by 2008 they were paying over 700million pesos per year for these services, in large part as a result ofthe requirement of containerization imposed upon collection companies(Sanchez 2009). While this figure constituted the city’s largest singlecontract, as the previous paragraph suggested, it was not resulting inincreased separation of recyclable material. Rather, as the Ministry of theEnvironment and Public Space reported, while 280 tons of waste werebeing recycled through this formal system in 2007, it was at a cost of193,000 pesos per ton to the city. In comparison, the informal networkssupported by the work of cartoneros were recycling an estimated190,000 tons of material at the cost of approximately 400 pesos perton in the same year (Ministerio de Ambiente y Espacio Publico 2008).Additionally, according to informal and formal interviews conducted atthe time, the waste collection companies remained steadfast in their lackof support for recycling efforts in the city, as they did not see this asa profitable venture. Thus, another factor inhibiting the revaluation ofwaste at the social level was (paradoxically) struggles over the regimeof value (Appadurai 1986; O’Brien 2008) surrounding the commodity ofwaste itself. As O’Brien (1999:288) argues, commoditization involves acomplex array of institutional relationships, including “a negotiatedorder of value that is inflected by government policy” as well as“the market price of related goods and services and the constraintsand opportunities facing waste transporter, contractors, and licensers”,which, in this case, were not in alignment regarding the source of thevalue of waste.

While the decision to end containerization thus arose in part fromthe complex negotiations surrounding the regime of value that governsthe circulation of waste as a commodity, Macri’s proposed strategy wasalso an attempt to respond to the second focus of negotiation during theyears following the crisis: finding an appropriate place for the work of thecartoneros within the city. During the years following 2002, while manyC© 2011 The AuthorAntipode C© 2011 Editorial Board of Antipode.

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citizens and government officials supported the work of the cartoneros,they did not believe that it should continue to be conducted on the city’sstreets and sidewalks. As the following commentary published in 2007in Buenos Aires’ newspaper La Nacion illustrates, the patience of thepublic with seeing the cartoneros work on the streets and sidewalkswaned with recovery from the crisis:

When the crisis pushed thousands of unemployed parents out into thestreets with their children on their backs in order to seek salvationfrom the trash of us all, the majority of portenos looked on withunderstanding . . . Five years later, even the most progressive . . . arefed up with the cartoneros (Castro 2007c).

An early solution to the “problem” of the visibility of cartoneros in thestreet was to implement a time frame that would limit the hours andestablish specific locations that cartoneros would be allowed to work.As city officials explained to the press: “The idea is to develop a planthat works for everyone. The recyclers can continue to select materialsto resell . . . but we can say where we will permit this to be done and untilwhat time they can remain there . . . We will not rule out asking for helpfrom the police” (Castro 2007b). Another solution proposed by the city’sgovernment, and written into the Zero Waste Law, was the concentrationof cartonero work in the centros verdes, or resource recovery centers,which would be run by cooperatives of cartoneros. However, while oneof the goals of the resource recovery centers is to give cartoneros a placeto work other than the street, this did not occur for two primary reasons.First, the vast majority of cartoneros continued to work outside ofcooperatives as a result of both custom and lack of opportunity, and thuswere not incorporated into the semi-formalized workplace and status ofthose working in the resource recovery centers. Second, by 2007, onlytwo of the six resource recovery centers projected to serve the city’sresidents were in place and operational, because, according to the ZeroWaste Law, the responsibility to establish these centers remained in thehands of the waste collection companies, who, for various reasons, wereslow to conform to this requirement.

The right of the cartoneros to do their work in public space continuesto be contested, both by the government and by residents of manyneighborhoods. Even Macri’s latest “Plan for Inclusion of Cartoneros”,which gets cartoneros “off of the street” through door-to-door collectionof recyclables, has generated controversy. As Sergio Abrrevaya, fromthe Civic Coalition stated, “It is complicated to have the cartonerosgo door to door. It will create insecurity for both sides and a lot ofpeople are not going to want to open their doors to them” (Gutman2008). In the end, however, Macri’s goal in 2009 continues to be whatit was in 2002, when he stated: “The informal recyclers cannot be in thestreet. We must remove them from the street” (Anon 2002a), and hisC© 2011 The AuthorAntipode C© 2011 Editorial Board of Antipode.


administration has suggested that once his proposed plan is approved,the cartoneros will be prohibited from scavenging on the city streets(Videla 2008).12 Thus, while both the Cartoneros Law and the ZeroWaste Law legitimize the work of the cartoneros, this work continuesto be “out of place” in the streets of the city, as residents do not want tobe confronted with the implications of their own waste, which are notonly environmental, but social as well. As one commentator succinctlystated, “Five years after the crisis, we want a city that is clean andthat doesn’t have people rummaging through the garbage in order tosurvive” (Castro 2007c). In the case of waste, a fetishized commodityis thus strongly desired by those disposing. As Hetherington argues, “itis a question of how we account for or are held accountable by thatwhich we have tried to dispose of but have left unfinished” (2004:163).In the context of post-crisis Buenos Aires, this includes not only waste,but those associated with it, as well, as they serve for the populace andgovernment as a strong reminder of ways that the system—not onlyof waste management, but of social organization—continues to breakdown. The visibility of waste and the cartoneros disturbs the illusionthat disposal is, truly, an end point in the life of the commodity becauseit continues to remind people of their accountability for their waste andfor social injustices.

ConclusionIn this article, I have focused on recent events in Buenos Aires,Argentina, to analyze the ways that shifts in the geographies ofwaste affect and reflect changing social meaning and possibilitiesfor social change. I argue that the events surrounding cartoneros andscavenging, both during and after the 2002 crisis, exemplify the waysthat geographies of waste and social relations are mutually constitutedin a number of ways. First, changing geographies of waste reflected notonly the shifting social structures and places of individuals within thesestructures resulting from crisis conditions, but also societal disorderon a more general level. In this way, they highlight the importanceof the way that we manage (categorize, place, and conceal) waste inthe production of social order. The disorder that was felt when wastereappeared serves to illustrate that geographies of waste are importantnot only for self-definition and creation of narratives about individuals(as Gregson et al (2007b) have argued) but about places as well. Second,new geographies of waste opened up space for a consideration of newways of relating to waste and those who work with it, indicating thatshifts in geographies of waste have the potential to transform socialrelations. In particular, the displacements of waste and those associatedwith it away from the landfills and urban periphery and into the centralcity were critical to legislative reform, as members of the upper- andC© 2011 The AuthorAntipode C© 2011 Editorial Board of Antipode.

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middle-classes came face-to-face with both poverty and theconsequences of their consumption and disposal behavior in waysthat they had not previously. This, in turn, created an opportunity fordisintermediation and consequent defetishization of the disposal processof the commodity that is waste. Finally, this article has demonstratedthat place is a critical component in the ongoing negotiation of whatconstitutes waste and the role of those who work with waste in society.

While social reform has resulted from the displacements of wasteand waste workers caused by the crisis conditions in Buenos Aires, thelonger-term consequences of these changes are unclear. Considering thecontroversy over the place of scavenging that continues to occur, as wellas the difficulties faced in the implementation of the new legislation, it ispossible that the disintermediation of the disposal process did not bringabout the transformed consciousness, or “reinscription of the largerhumanity we share as both workers and consumers” (Miller 2003:371),that those interested in defetishizing commodities hope to achieve(Bridge and Smith 2003). Rather, the ongoing negotiations around wasteand cartoneros may simply reflect a desire to develop a better methodof ensuring that both waste and those associated with it remain separatefrom those who produce it. Scavengers are now concerned that as trashis safely put in its place once again, they will be as well, and they arestriving to find ways to remain in the city, in the place that they havefound, and to remain visible, as the cooperativization of this activityindicates. If the “dislocations” do not cause permanent destabilizationof the existing system, then waste and the cartoneros will easily slipback into their “old” places in society unless a strong effort is made toensure otherwise.

Within the context of Buenos Aires, therefore, the results of thisresearch indicate that a continued focus on place and the redefinition ofwaste must be central to struggles against the continued marginalizationof cartoneros and their work. Bringing scavenging from the geographicand social periphery of Buenos Aires to the heart of the city was a criticalcatalyst for the social and political integration of cartoneros reflectedin the Cartoneros and Zero Waste Laws. As cartoneros continue tostruggle for a socially sanctioned place within society, however, it mustbe recognized that to the extent that they and their activities remainhidden—even behind the walls of “resource recovery centers”—theywill continue to be devalued. If cartoneros and other environmentalactivists in this context can continue to redefine their work, such thatthey are not seen as working with valueless material, but with valuablesocial goods, they should not need to be “elsewhere”, as their workcould take a legitimate place in public space.

The implications of this analysis, however, extend beyond the contextof cartoneros in Argentina. As other researchers have documented,informal waste workers continue to struggle for equality and recognition,C© 2011 The AuthorAntipode C© 2011 Editorial Board of Antipode.


not only throughout the Global South, but within North America andWestern Europe. The results presented in this article suggest that becausewaste is not simply material, but is fundamentally also ideological anddiscursive, it is important to view waste and its disposal not simply aslogistical problems to be solved, but as a theorized sociospatial categoryin any geographic context. In particular, this article underscores thebenefit of conceiving of waste not only as “zero value” or “matterout of place”, but as a (potential) commodity as well, as each ofthese perspectives plays a role in helping us to understand the waythat waste functions to organize social and geographic relations. Thesethree perspectives offer a critical lens for looking at the constructionof waste and value not only at the local scale, as I have done in thisarticle, but at the global scale as well, in order to better understand thereasons behind and implications of global flows of waste. In particular,this analysis argues for the idea of viewing waste as a commodity, notsimply in order to understand how it is being treated in the marketplace,but also to understand its role in constituting social relations. This ideais particularly important as it enables an analysis of the relationshipbetween those dealing with trash in different ways (through disposal,recovery, reuse/resale, processing, regulation, etc) and the ways inwhich these relations are obscured through “the magical qualities ofthe commodity [to] obliterate their origins and their final destination”(Hawkins 2001:9). Finally, this article highlights the importance ofviewing disposal as a process in its own right, which extends thesocial life of the commodity to form a “triptych” with the processesof production and consumption (Munro 2001), such that each, albeit indifferent ways, are constitutive of social relations and meaning.

AcknowledgementsI would like to thank Mike Boruta for his wonderful work in the creation of Figure 1and Melissa Myers for her assistance in collecting and cataloguing newspaper articlesfor this project. I am also indebted to Brad Jokisch, Harold Perkins, and the threeanonymous reviewers for their helpful direction and suggestions for improvements onthis article. Finally, my heartfelt gratitude goes to Vanesa Cernadas for her invaluableassistance with this research as well as her continued friendship and support.

Endnotes1 While the term cartonero is now considered to be more politically acceptable thanthat of ciruja, both words are still in use to describe informal garbage scavengers. Since2002, a number of other terms have also been used, both by scavengers themselves aswell as public officials and documents, which aim to connect the work of scavengers toenvironmental justice issues through focusing on their role as recyclers. These terms arerecuperadores urbanos (urban recuperators) and recicladores urbanos (urban recyclers).I continue to use the term cartoneros in this work as it is the most commonly used termto describe these workers, both by themselves and others.2 The City of Buenos Aires, also known as the Federal District or the Federal Capital,is an autonomous federal district that is located within, but is not part of, the ProvinceC© 2011 The AuthorAntipode C© 2011 Editorial Board of Antipode.

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of Buenos Aires. However, because the Buenos Aires metropolitan area (Gran BuenosAires) includes both the Federal District as well as the 24 municipalities that surroundit, in some cases there is coordination between the two, otherwise unrelated, governingbodies. Unless otherwise specified, references to “Buenos Aires” in this article refer tothe City of Buenos Aires.3 It is important to note here that not all dirt is dealt with through disposal, as some“dirty” things may be “put away” rather than disposed of (as illustrated by Douglas’(1966:36) classic examples of “clothing lying on chairs; out-door things in-doors; [and]upstairs things downstairs”).4 However, as Gregson et al (2007b:198) argue, “this ‘outside’ is actually ‘in’” as it is“both representationally and physically somewhere”.5 Although Appadurai (1986:13) is “breaking significantly with the production-dominated Marxian view of the commodity and focusing on its total trajectory fromproduction, through exchange/distribution, to consumption”, even he views the “totaltrajectory” of a commodity’s life ending at the stage of consumption. He does, however,make passing mention of the disposal process through comments about antiques andsecond-hand markets.6 While this presents a tension with the idea that waste is a marker of zero-value,because the commodity status of an object is unstable (Kopytoff 1986) and its meaningsare plural and contested (Bridge and Smith 2003), waste may not only have commoditypotential, but it may be both without value and a commodity, as it can be viewedsimultaneously “as a commodity by one person and as something else by another”(Kopytoff 1986:64). Thus, what some have singularized as worthless through the processof disposal and the subsequent definition as waste, others may view as a commoditywith use and/or exchange value (Gregson and Crewe 2003; O’Brien 1999, 2008). Thedifferential valuing of waste becomes strikingly evident when considering the work ofcartoneros in Argentina, or garbage scavengers in any part of the world.7 Even as late as 2009, one reader of La Nacion commented: “The quantity of trash onthe streets widely surpasses that of any other large city in a civilized country” (Anon2009).8 The persistence of this problem for the city government was especially evident duringelection years, as newspaper reporters suggested in 2003 that “the problem of urbanwaste is one that candidates cannot overlook” in their campaigning (Rocha 2003). Thistheme arose as well in the 2007 mayoral election, with reporters commenting that “asolution to the eternal problem of filth in the Capital has been one of the preoccupationsof the campaign” (Anon 2007c), as complaints about trash in the street ranked secondonly to concerns over safety (Anon 2007e; Castro 2007a).9 At the time of the crisis in 2002, the Public Services Regulatory Entity of BuenosAires estimated that cartoneros were earning, on average, 156 pesos per month, whileCEAMSE estimated incomes of approximately 190 pesos per month from scavenging(Anon 2002b).10 According to the female cartoneras interviewed for this research, they felt thatthe neighbors in the areas that they scavenged were more sympathetic to their plightprecisely because they were women: rather than having trouble with them, neighborswould save used clothes or household goods to pass on to them, and the police wouldbe less likely to confiscate their carts, especially if children accompanied them.11 When this claim was used as a justification for terminating the system of doublecontainerization in the following year, however, this claim was contested by GreenpeaceArgentina (2009:21), which argued that “the evaluation of the inefficiency of the formalsystem [of recycling] declared by the Government of the Autonomous City of BuenosAires has not been conducted in depth or reliably”.12 While the city contends that their desire to remove the cartoneros from the city streetsstems from urban hygiene concerns, the cartoneros themselves argue otherwise, stating



that “we cannot tolerate that the city says that the environmental problems of the cityare due to some cartonero tearing open bags of trash, when we recuperate and recycle15% of the 5,000 tons of waste generated by the city daily” (Anon 2007b).

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Documents

Negotiating Place and Value: Geographies of Waste and Scavenging in Buenos Aires