Waste Argentina

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Negotiating Place and Value:Geographies of Waste and Scavenging

in Buenos Aires

Risa WhitsonDepartment of Geography and Program of Womens

and Gender Studies, Ohio University, USA;

[email protected]

Abstract: This article focuses on debates over the place and value of waste and waste

scavengers in Buenos Aires during and following the economic crisis of 2002 in order to

consider how waste functions as a fundamental category for organizing social space. I argue

that conceptualizations of waste as both zero value and matter out of place need to be combined

with a recognition of the commodity potential of waste in order to better understand how waste

works to constitute social structures and space. I demonstrate that while the displacement of

waste and waste scavengers associated with the crisis opened a space for the transformation of

established social relations, in ongoing negotiations, waste continues to be defined as that which

belongs 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 Argentinas political and

economic crisis, which peaked in 2002, was the increased presence of

informal garbage scavengersorcartonerosworking on the streets of

the countrys capital city, Buenos Aires. Estimates suggest that whereasbefore the crisis there were approximately 10,000 cartonerosworking

in Buenos Aires, by the end of 2002 over 40,000 men, women, and

children were working as informal garbage scavengers (Anguita 2003).

Like garbage scavengers elsewhere, cartoneros in Argentina earn a

living by sorting through household and commercial waste in order to

find recyclable material. Deriving their name from the most commonly

collected materialcart on, or cardboardthe cartoneros also collect

paper, metal, glass, and plastic, all items that are sold to recycling

centers for processing and resale for use in the formal manufacturing

sector. However, whilecartonerosin Argentina represent a critical first

link in a very lucrative economy of recycled trash, as in other parts of

the world, they continue to be socially stigmatized and marginalized.

Their work is both precarious and dangerous: not only is the work ofAntipodeVol. 43 No. 4 2011 ISSN 0066-4812, pp 14041433

doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8330.2010.00791.xC 2011 The Author

Antipode C 2011 Editorial Board ofAntipode.


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Geographies of Waste and Scavenging in Buenos Aires 1405

cartoneros entirely informal, but it was also illegal in Buenos Aires

until very recently. Cartoneros additionally suffer from exposure to

health hazards, harassment by police, and other types of abuse.

In large part because of the drastic increase in the scale of this

activity 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, and

national crisis. The activity of cartoneo (or scavenging) seeped into

the popular consciousness and imaginary as newspapers dedicated

series to investigating the lives of cartoneros, artists exhibited work

that made waste and waste scavenging their subject, and plays were

written based on the lives of cartoneros. Moreover, in the midst of

this explosion of cartoneros onto the citys streets and in the citys

imaginary, at the end of 2002 the City of Buenos Aires passed Law

992, the CartonerosLaw, which formally reversed over 25 years of

criminalization of informal trash collection, recognizing and legalizing

the work ofcartoneros. Soon afterwards, in November 2005, the citys

legislature passed another landmark law, commonly referred to as the

Zero Waste Law (Law 1.854/05), which gave cartoneros a critical role

in the future of urban waste management in the city. These laws not only

represent momentous changes in the policy that directs the management

of urban waste, but also signal a new state approach to those associatedwith informal garbage collection; rather than being criminalized, they

are re-envisioned as vital to the operation of one of the citys most central

functions. While the Zero Waste Law has yet to be fully implemented,

its significance as symbolic legislation that recognizes a need for social

change is remarkable.

Economic and social geographers have long focused on the

importance of geographies of production, and more recently geographies

of consumption, in understanding socio-spatial relations. As the recent

events surrounding informal garbage scavenging in Argentina indicate,however, geographies of waste and disposal are also increasingly central

to understanding social relations and social change. Rather than the

commoditys lifecycle ending at the point of consumption and use, they

continue to circulate through society in the process of disposal, deriving

meaning from and giving meaning to social interactions, identities, and

spaces. The continued significance of the commodity post-consumption

is not only evident at the scale of the city, but internationally as

well, as uneven global geographies of waste production and disposaldemonstrate (Lepawsky and McNabb Forthcoming). The increasing

importance of understanding geographies of waste and disposal has

resulted in a nascent literature on the topic, exploring themes of how

and why people choose to discard and dispose of material (Gregson

et al 2007a, 2007b); the geopolitics of waste management (Lepawsky

and McNabb Forthcoming; Moore 2008, 2009); the ethics and meaningC 2011 The Author



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1406 Antipode

of waste (Hawkins 2003, 2006; Lucas 2002); and disposal as a

key component of practices of consumption (Gregson et al 2005;

Hetherington 2004; Munro 2001).

In this article, I contribute to these discussions by drawing on recent

events in Argentina to address the ways that geographies of waste anddisposal are mutually constituted with social meaning, identity, and

relations. In particular, I focus on debates over the management of

household waste in the City of Buenos Aires to consider how waste

functions as a fundamental category for organizing social space, and

as such plays a key role in the maintenance of social subordination.

I analyze the ways in which waste and those associated with it

transgressed their prescribed places during the crisis, as well as ongoing

negotiations in the years following over the appropriate place of trash and

cartonerosin Buenos Aires society. I argue that, much like geographies

of production and consumption, geographies of waste and disposal have

the potential to transform or reinforce longstanding inequitable social

structures. As such, rather than representing a re-evaluation of societys

relationship to waste and cartoneros, the social changes apparent in

Argentina with respect to the cartoneros signaled a recognition of the

displacements occurring in the social and material order of the city and

an attempt to re-place trash and cartoneros on the periphery of this urban

space.To develop this argument, I begin by reviewing the social and

historical context in which the current regime of waste management

operates in Buenos Aires, discussing the history of waste legislation and

the concurrent development of the cartonero as a social and political

figure. Following this, I provide a theoretical basis for understanding

waste as a material discursive formation that is intimately tied to

the production of sociospatial order. In this section, I argue that

conceptualizations of waste as both zero value and matter out of

place (Douglas 1966:35) need to be combined with a recognition ofthe commodity potential of waste in order to better understand the way

that waste works to constitute social structures and social space. In

the subsequent sections, I demonstrate that the displacement of waste

and waste workers associated with the crisis opened a space for the

transformation of established social relations through the defetishization

of the commodity of waste. However, ongoing negotiations surrounding

the place of waste and cartoneros in the landscape of Buenos Aires

suggest that, fundamentally, waste continues to be defined as thatwhich belongs elsewhere and is of no value, further reinforcing the

marginalization of garbage scavengers. I conclude by arguing that a

focus on place and redefinition of waste must be central to struggles

against the continued marginalization of waste workers in this context

and others. Outside of this particular context, I also highlight the need

to move away from considering waste as simply a management orC 2011 The Author



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environmental sustainability issue, in favor of a more serious recognition

of disposal as a social process.

The information presented in this analysis is derived from formal and

informal interviews, document analysis, and ethnographic observation

conducted in 2002 and 2006. In particular, 38 formal, in-depth,semi-structured interviews were conducted with cartoneros, leaders

of cartonero cooperatives, environmental activists and organizations,

waste management companies, and representatives of Buenos Aires

Office of Urban Recycling Policy (Direccion General de Polticas de

Reciclado UrbanoDGPRU). Sources for document analysis include

newspaper articles from Buenos Aires three major papers, Clar n, La

Nacion, and Pagina 12, as well as legislative records concerning the

issues of recycling and scavenging in Buenos Aires. Finally, semi-

ethnographic observation was conducted during JanuaryDecember

2002, JuneJuly 2006, and December 2006. This observation allowed

me to speak with numerous people in an informal context regarding

the changing place of waste and scavengers in the context of Buenos

Aires.

Scavenging, Waste Management, and Crisis in Argentina

Scavenging has always been part of the urban landscape in Argentinaand its literal and figurative place in society is intimately tied to the citys

waste management system. The figure of the cirujaa pejorative term

used to refer to those who live from scavenging garbageappeared in

Argentina during the late 1800s when Buenos Aires implemented its

first modern waste management system.1 This system assigned an

official site on the outskirts of the city for the disposal and burning

of waste, around which a marginalized neighborhood grew up, called

the City of Tin Cans or the City of Frogs (Prignano 1998), the

residents of which scavenged materials both for subsistence and resale.While scavenging during this period was legal, and in certain cases

encouraged (Schamber and Suarez 2002), it was primarily concentrated

around incinerators and therefore far removed from city centers and

other middle-class population concentrations.

This system of incineration of waste stayed in place until the period

of the military dictatorship (19761983), which was an initial period of

privatization and neoliberalization in Argentina. During this time, the

government of the City of Buenos Aires collaborated with the authoritiesof the Province of Buenos Aires to drastically reform the citys waste

management system with the aims of modernization, privatization, and

centralization (Prignano 1998; Schamber and Suarez 2002). This was

achieved through the passage of a series of laws in 1977 and 1978,

including Provincial Law 9.111 and City Ordinance 33.581, which

prohibited the incineration of waste and mandated that waste insteadC 2011 The Author



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be buried in sanitary landfills.2 These laws also created the centralized,

semi-private state company CEAMSE (Coordinaci on Ecologica Area

Metropolitana Sociedad del EstatoState Society of the Coordination

of the Metropolitan Ecological Area), which was made responsible

for transporting the waste collected by private companies (contractedindividually by the cities), interring this waste, and managing the

sanitary landfills for the City of Buenos Aires and the surrounding

metropolitan area. CEAMSE was to be paid by the ton for the amount

of waste it interred and the cities were required by law to use its

services (Prignano 1998). As a result of this, informal garbage collection

was made explicitly illegal: the law prohibited any type of waste

collection outside of that done by those companies contracted by the

city. Although government administrationsboth at the municipal andnational levelschanged hands numerous times since the passage of

these laws, this system of waste management remained in place with

very little modification until the early 2000s. As a result, the activity

of scavenging, while continuing to exist both within and outside of the

landfills, became criminalized and clandestine. This was especially the

case in the City of Buenos Aires (as opposed to its provincial neighbors),

as all of CEAMSEs landfills were located in the municipalities

surrounding the Capital District and prohibitions to scavenging were

much more diligently enforced within the capital citys boundaries.With the end of the military dictatorship in 1983 there was a gradual

reappearance ofcartoneros on the landscape of Buenos Aires (Koehs

2005). However, the numbers ofcartonerosremained low until recent

years, which have witnessed a strong resurgence of this livelihood

strategy in large part as a result of the economic crisis that Argentina

experienced 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 many

lower- and middle-class Argentines had been deteriorating since the

mid-1990s, when under- and unemployment rates began to rise and real

wages to decline, effectively creating a new poor among lower- to

middle-class Argentines (Cerrutti 2000; Feijoo 2001; Rapoport 2002).

In 2002 this deteriorating economy entered into full crisis, resulting in

recession, inflation, and unemployment rates of over 25% in the capital

and even higher in the provinces. As a result, the cash economy came

to an abrupt halt and poverty rates reached over 50% in the country as

a whole (Insituto Nacional de Estadstica y Censos 2002). For manyportenos (Buenos Aireans), the effects of the crisis were felt most

directly through the loss of employment and the paucity of job prospects.

This was especially true for poor, informal workers, who were heavily

reliant on the cash economy and worked in jobs such as domestic labor

and home improvements that were increasingly viewed as unnecessary

luxuries by their middle-class employers (Whitson 2007). One effectC 2011 The Author



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of this was an explosion in the number ofcartoneros, expanding from

about 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 the

number ofcartonerosin the city is estimated to have dropped to below

10,000 (Ministerio de Ambiente y Espacio Publico 2008), the activityof scavenging continues to be an issue of concern for the government

and citizenry as a whole.

It was in the context of this crisis and the years that followed

that two important changes in legislation governing informal garbage

recycling occurred, representing the first significant revisions to the

legislation of waste management in the city since 1977. The first of

these is the Cartoneros Law, passed by the City of Buenos Aires

in December 2002. This law declared a state of emergency regarding

urban hygiene in the city and incorporated informal recyclers into the

urban sanitation system by allowing for the collection of reusable

and recyclable material. The law additionally created a registry for

cartoneros and cooperatives ofcartoneros; called for the creation and

implementation of an educational campaign to encourage residents to

separate their waste at the source; and required the implementation

of basic social and health programs to assist cartoneros. Finally, the

Cartoneros Law created the Office of Urban Recycling Policy (DGPRU)

within the Citys 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 to

as the Zero Waste Law), was much broader in scope than the

Cartoneros Law. Rather than dealing with only informal garbage

scavenging, the Zero Waste Law, passed in November 2005, established

guidelines for major transformation of the entire previous system of

waste management, considering all stages of the waste cycle. Following

models of zero waste legislation in other parts of the world, includingChristchurch, NZ, Western Australia, and San Francisco, CA, this law

requires that the quantity of waste sent to landfills be reduced by 30%

in 2010, 50% in 2012, and 75% in 2017 in comparison with 2004

levels. The final goal is set for 2020, at which time the law prohibits

the burial of any recyclable or reusable material. Thus, whereas prior to

2005, recycling was effectively prohibited through the criminalization

of scavenging, with the passage of the Zero Waste Law recycling

became mandated at very ambitious levels. The law also requiresseparation at the source; calls for the establishment ofcentros verdes(or resource recovery centers) where recyclables will be separated

and processed; guarantees the implementation of publicity campaigns

to promote separation at the source; and mandates that the city give

preference to the use of recycled and reusable products in its contracts.

While the majority of the document makes no specific reference toC 2011 The Author



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cartoneros, they nonetheless play an important role in the vision of

zero waste as it is written into this law. Chapter XII of the law states

that Urban recuperators [a.k.a.cartoneros] will be guaranteed priority

and inclusion in the process of collection and transport of dry solid

urban waste [recyclables] and in the activities of the resource recoverycenters (Ley de Gestion de Residuos Solidos Urbanos 2005). This

chapter also requires the city to work to develop lines of credit and

grants for cooperatives ofcartonerosto enable them to do this work.

Social Change in Context: Theorizing Geographies

of WasteThe passage of the Cartoneros Law and the Zero Waste Law together

represent a significant change in the position of the cartoneros and

their work with respect to the state and society. These changes were,

moreover, supported by and reflected in a number of other changes that

occurred at the same time, including the development of cooperatives of

cartoneros (Dimarco 2005; Fajn 2004; Foster 2002), the increased focus

on the work ofcartonerosin the media and arts (Adissi 2003), and slow

but discernible changes in the public perception of scavenging. What do

these changes mean, however, about and for the place ofcartonerosin

Argentine society? And how can answering this question provide insightinto the ways that geographies of waste and disposal are connected to

the maintenance of social inequality? In this section, I review current

geographic research on disposal, waste, and scavenging and propose a

threefold 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 commodity

potential. I assert that combining these three perspectives on waste

provides a framework for understanding the way that waste functions as

a material discursive formation to structure social space.One way of beginning to theorize how geographies of waste in

Argentina are connected to the maintenance of social inequality is

through an analysis of disposal as a social process, as is currently

being undertaken by a number of geographers responding to perceived

deficiencies in the literature on geographies of consumption. These

researchers argue that geographies of consumption focus primarily

on 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 disposal

merits study because it represents the end-point of consumption, and is

thus seen as a necessary issue integral to the whole process of viewing

consuming as a social activity (Hetherington 2004:158). Framing

geographies of disposal within the consumption literature facilitatesC 2011 The Author



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an understanding of disposal as part of larger economic, social, and

identity-producing practices that are intrinsically tied to the material

world. It also enables us to view the material-disposed-of as a matter with

a history, into which social relations are already inscribed, both through

the processes of production and previous practices of consumption. Thisperspective has thus enabled Gregson and Crewe (2003) and Gregson

et al (2007a, 2007b) to argue that disposal is not only important to the

reproduction of the social order through the production of narratives, but

that it also plays a key role in the articulations of ethics and moralities

that maintain social identities.

While highlighting the importance of disposal, these researchers have

found that this processbroadly understood as ridding, divestment, or

discardingis frequently not about the creation of waste, as it often

involves saving things or divesting in other ways (Gregson and Crewe

2003; Gregson et al 2007a). As such, the works of these authors focus

almost exclusively on non-wasting forms of disposal (such as giving

to thrift stores or passing unwanted items to friends or family). While

this focus serves to complicate the idea that discarded material has

necessarily ended its social life (Appadurai 1986), because of the lack

of attention given to disposed material as waste, there continues to be an

impression 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 step

in production, disposaland with it the creation of wasteis not only

the last stage in consumption. Rather, this stage holds the possibility

for continued life, albeit under a different logic than that which the

stages 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 for

theorizing the ways that geographies of waste are connected to themaintenance of social inequalities.

A second way of addressing the question of how changes in the

geography of waste in Buenos Aires interact with social relations is by

drawing on the insights provided by research conducted from a waste

management perspective. This research, conducted by geographers and

other social scientists, has tended to focus on resource conservation,

waste minimization and recovery, environmental justice, sustainable

development, and waste management alternatives (Davies et al 2005;Myers 2005; Parizeau et al 2008). Among those researching informal

recycling, there have been numerous investigations into the lives of

informal recyclers (or scavengers), studies of how informal recyclers

interact with formal waste management actors (including governments

and private firms), and recommendations for policy regarding informal

recycling (Gutberlet 2008; Koberlein 2003; Medina 2005; Nchito andC 2011 The Author



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Myers 2004). This literature clearly recognizes the marginalization of

informal recyclers, their lack of political power, and the importance of

the relationships among different actors involved in informal recycling,

including the private waste industry, residents who support or resist

separation of recyclables at the source, government regulators, andNGOs. However, the goals of this research remain policy-oriented, and

as such it employs an approach that does not problematize the social

construction, meaning, or definition of waste. Consequently, while it

provides a valuable resource for understanding some aspects of the

geographies of waste, it overlooks the role of waste as a fundamental

category for organizing social space, which is connected to processes of

identity and group formation and the expression of social power.

In order to bring a more fully theorized approach to research on

geographies of waste and the connection of these to the constitution

of social structures, I propose a conceptualization of waste as that

which belongs elsewhere, is perceived as valueless, and has commodity

potential. While each of these characteristics is present to some extent

in the conceptualizations of waste in the literature cited above, my

goal 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 of

disposal offer a starting point for understanding waste as that whichbelongs elsewhere. In her classic workPurity and Danger: An Analysis

of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo, Douglas (1966) argues that the

process of disposal is a creative effort to organize space by re-placing

things to eliminate disorder. In this way, disposal becomes more than

simply a mundane act of maintaining hygienic conditions, but instead

can be read as an act of preserving order through classification and

placement within a specific symbolic system (Douglas 1966). Thus,

according to Hetherington (2004:161), for Douglas, disposal is all

about questions of boundaries and orderit is about putting in place,beyond a certain threshold, all that threatens to pollute because it is

seen as out of place. In this way disposal is an inherently spatial

act that serves to placeand constitutewaste as that which belongs

elsewhere. Yet, as Lucas (2002:7) argues, unlike dirt, which Douglas

(1966:35) defines broadly as matter out of place, waste invariably

does have a place: in the trashcan, in the landfill, outside of town,

away from here.3 Not only is waste marked, therefore, by belonging

elsewhere, 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 that

fundamentally belongs elsewhere, waste may also be conceptualized

symbolically as valueless as a result of its alterity. Moore (2008)

develops this notion by identifying waste as that which is excluded and

marginalized in order to serve as the Other that constitutes the self. TheC 2011 The Author



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result of this, she argues, is that waste and those associated with it are

abject to the modern city and citizen. Similarly, as Thompson (1979) and

Hawkins and Muecke (2003) suggest, waste can be understood as the

zero-value that serves to reaffirm the positive valuation of bodies and

spaces as clean (Hawkins 2003:41). It is precisely, therefore, wastesperceived lack of value that gives it power to define the value of people

and places. The social constitution and definition of waste requires,

therefore, both a spatial element (placement through disposal away from

the ordered and constituted) as well as a relational element (a definition

of it, in relation to the self, as abject and valueless). These are connected

to the extent that the one is an expression of the other: place is a marker

of value, and the value of things present, in turn, helps constitute the

place.

Not only can waste be understood as valueless and belonging

elsewhere, but in seeking to understand the role of waste in constituting

social relations, it is also critical to recognize its commodity potential.

In asserting this, I follow Appadurais (1986:16) definition that

commodities are things that at a certainphasein their careers and in a

particular context, meet the requirements of commodity candidacy.5

OBriens research (1999, 2008) develops the idea that waste is

a commodity by arguing that the legal, political, and commercial

relationships established in order to situate the placement, channeling,and organization of waste comprise a regime of value that demonstrates

wastes potential commodity status. In this way, he argues that the value

of waste underpins entire sectors of the economy and that far from

representing the end of value or the transition to negative value, [wastes]

exhibit an enormous array of positive values (OBrien 2008:124). This

is apparent in Lepawsky and McNabbs (Forthcoming) research on

international flows of electronic waste, as they argue that the existence

of the trade and traffic in e-waste means, by definition, that some form

of value existsor is createdafterand, I would argue, throughdisposal of the commodities constituting e-waste. Thus, although I

argue that in the waste stage of a commoditys biography, material is

defined culturally and symbolically through its perceived lack of value

(Hawkins 2003; Hawkins and Muecke 2003; Thompson 1979), waste

continues to have the potential of economic value as a commodity, as

signified by the legal, commercial, and political relationships within

which 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 politics

surrounding waste management in a number of ways. First, it reminds

us that, just as we have to look backward in the life of a commodity to

understand the conditions under which it was produced and consumed,

it is important to look forward to understand the social, political, and

economic conditions that characterize the disposal stage, which startsC 2011 The Author



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with the act of disposal itself, but continues on. Second, and very much

related, this perspective underscores the idea that the meaning of a

waste is, in part, derived from the labor that goes into itnot just during

the original production processbut also during the disposal process

(including collection, sorting, storage, transport, processing, interment,etc). The social and political relations of disposal, and the culture and

economy that are established around this process, thus give meaning

to waste and position individuals with respect both to one another and

to the society that normalizes, sanctions, and regulates the process. In

other words, our waste bins contain what geographer Michael Watts

(1999:307) refers to as a bundle of social relations, and it becomes

possible, and even necessary, to argue that social identities, social

groups, and social power are constituted not only through production

and consumption but disposal as well.

Finally, recognizing waste as a commodity and disposal as not

simply the end point of consumption facilitates an awareness that the

power of waste in defining identities and structuring social relations

exists not just in terms of positioning people with respect to other

consumers (through the way in which commodities are purchased,

used, and disposed). Rather, waste creation and management also

position 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 often

remains obscured through the fetishization of the waste commodity

itself. As a result, the social character of the waste commodity is

naturalized and appears to exist independently apart from those who

interact with it (Bridge and Smith 2003; Watts 1999). Nonetheless,

understanding that these relationships are obscured through the process

of commodity fetishism represents the first step in identifying the

potential of the possibilities for defetishization (Bridge and Smith

2003). For research that seeks to address social inequalities throughexaminations of peoples relationships to commodities, the recognition

of waste as a commodity is therefore critical, as across the border and

into the waste stream is often where the most glaring inequalities are

situated.

Recognizing the productive tension between these three

characteristics of waste (as a commodity, as belonging elsewhere, and as

zero-value) provides insight into the unique ways that waste functions

to constitute the social world. First, this conceptualization highlightsthe material, discursive, and ideological elements of the formation of

waste. Waste does not exist outside of our definition of it, and this

definition almost always involves the spatial and relational elements

discussed above. Defining and categorizing material as waste not only

creates waste, but functions to constitute social identities, places, and

boundaries as well. Second, the fact that material may simultaneouslyC 2011 The Author



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be both valueless and valuable is an expression of social inequality, as

an individuals perspective on the value of waste frequently serves as

an indication of their place within the social structure as well as their

relation to hegemonic definitions of waste and value. The borders and

placings that define waste are not simply symbolic, but are imbuedwith power, as the authority to define what is out of place rests in

the hands of the most privileged (Cresswell 1996). Contestations over

what waste is are thus expressions of struggles to redefine peoples

roles within society through defining their relationship to waste. Thus,

in spite of the fact that waste may be economically valuable and is

intimately connected to every aspect of social functioning, its discursive

construction as valueless and belonging elsewhere has an enormous

effect on waste policy and the way that waste and waste workers are

dealt with by governments and society. As such, when ideas of what

constitutes value and waste are redefined, so are waste workers and their

place in society. Finally, these three elements help us to understand the

unique power of the waste economy and industry, which, drawing on the

commodity aspect of waste is extremely profitable, yet which remains

for most of society unconsidered and invisible, as it deals with material

that is viewed as both valueless and out of place.

Crisis and DisplacementsWhile every choice is subjective, few doubts remain that the urban

theme of 2002 has been, here, scavenging in all of its forms (Llados

2002b).

Waste was exceeding its limits, it was no longer contained in

appropriate places but was everywhere; classificatory boundaries were

collapsing. The condition of the environment was threatened by the

presence 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 the

management of household waste in Buenos Aires during and subsequent

to the crisis of 2002 in order to address the way that waste functions as

a fundamental category for organizing social space, and as such, plays

a role in the maintenance of social subordination. To this end, I focus

on three examples of the displacement of waste and waste workers that

occurred during and immediately following the crisis: the presence of

waste on the streets of Buenos Aires; the large scale appearance ofcartoneros working in the central city; and the failure of landfills to

contain waste and its byproducts in the greater metropolitan area of

Buenos Aires. I argue that the displacement of waste and waste workers

associated with the crisis opened a space for the transformation of

established social relations, primarily through the defetishization of the

commodity of waste.C 2011 The Author



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1416 Antipode

As the year 2002 progressed, the number of people working as

cartonerosin Buenos Aires grew, so that by October of that year there

were four times as many cartonerossearching the streets for recyclable

material as there had been when the year began (Anguita 2003). Because

of the fierce competition for recyclables that this situation presented,cartoneros rarely had time to clean up the trash bags that they had

opened to search for recyclables. The result of this situation was the

striking presence of waste scattered on streets and sidewalks throughout

the city at all times of day, prompting what the government and residents

alike referred to as an urban hygiene crisis. The language used in the

popular media reflected the powerful impression that the visibility of

this trash made on the public, as newspapers referred commonly to the

filth (suciedad) in the streets and the city becoming a trashcan (basural).

One reporter described how thecartonerosrip open thousands of trash

bags each night, and this has created an unbearable level of filth (Llados

2002b), while another writer commented that cartoneros have forsaken

all care of the cleanliness of the city and have turned the city into a

trashcan, going on to say that bags torn that later scatter waste on the

street have used up the patience of many (Llados 2002a). By the latter

part of the year, reporters were writing that for the neighbors, the dream

of clean streets has become a utopia (Crespi 2002). The importance

of waste belonging elsewhere thus became very clear when the garbagewas visibly and persistently notelsewhere for the residents of Buenos

Aires. The visibility of the waste on the sidewalks, aside from being

perceived as a health hazard and an inconvenience, became a very stark

symbol that the system that had maintained order in the city previously

was no longer functioning, as it was no longer able to maintain the

boundaries that ensured that trash be contained elsewhere. References

to the trash on the street invariably crept into conversations about the

economic crisis, the ineffectiveness of government officials, and the

state of the country as a whole.This anxiety over the municipalitys inability to maintain order in

the city was reflected in the comments ofportenos at the time. More

than one person mentioned to me that while Buenos Aires used to

be beautiful, it now looked just like Montevideo or any other city in

Latin Americafull of trash! Another interviewee lamented, What a

shame that you have to see it now! As this comment suggests, being

out of place (Douglas 1966) not only made the waste into filth by

disrupting established boundaries, but had implications for the role ofwaste in constituting place: Buenos Aires itself was changed by the

constant presence of waste on the streets. Moreover, the visibility of

waste and the way it was dealt with had implications for Argentinas

perceived place within the global hierarchy. As one young woman who

had only recently started collecting waste commented to me, Now

were just like Africa; were really worse off than Africa. Similarly,C 2011 The Author



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Figure 1. Neighborhoods of Buenos Aires

one newspaper reporter reflected, It is not, therefore, because we are in

the First World. It is, preciselyprecisely, 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 through

which that modernity is defined, when it became present and visible in

Buenos Aires, it called into question the modernity (and meaning more

generally) of Buenos Aires itself. As such, it was extremely important

for the government to show that they were able to confrontif not

the economic crisisthen at least the urban hygiene crisis. Mandatesencouragingand then requiringseparation at the source in 2002,

followed by the passage of the Cartoneros Law were, in the words of

one reporter, driven by the demand for greater order and cleanliness

on the part of the residents (Cruces 2002). While this law did affect the

relationship between the cartoneros and the state, it did little to ease the

repeated lost battles against filth in the streets (Castro 2007a). Rather,

in the years immediately following the crisis, the presence of waste on

the citys 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 the

increased presence of waste on the street brought about by scavenging

in particular areas within the city: primarily the central business district

located in the barrio of San Nicolas (see Figure 1) and the relatively

affluent neighborhoods that surround it. While poorer neighborhoodsC 2011 The Author



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1418 Antipode

on the outskirts of the city and in the provinces had long been the

location of waste dumping and scavenging activities, the presence of

waste emerged as a crisis only when it spread on a large scale to

affluent areas. While I have argued above that waste can be understood

as that which belongs elsewhere, the fact that waste and informalwaste work only became perceived by the public at large as a crisis in

2002 suggests that not every community has the same degree of power

to define what constitutes elsewhere for the society as a whole; as

Cresswell (1996:39) argues, those who can define what is out of place

are those with the most power in society.

The streets and sidewalks of the city, however, were not the only sites

that waste was being found out of place; in 2003 and 2004, indications

began to appear that waste and toxic by-products were leaching from

the over-full, deteriorating landfills established by CEAMSE in the late

1970s. The effect of this second displacement of waste was a search

on the part of CEAMSE for new neighborhoods in which to place

landfills in the municipalities surrounding the Capital District. Local

officials were often enthusiastic to support the placement of a dump in

their municipality thanks to the revenues it would generate. However,

residents of numerous locations, with the support of environmental

organizations, successfully mobilized against the construction of new

landfills in their neighborhoods. According to a representative of oneenvironmental organization, the need to present an alternative to the

previous landfill system, combined with the grassroots involvement

of middle-class citizens who did not want leaking landfills in their

neighborhoods, were powerful factors in the passage of the Zero Waste

Law in 2005. He explained that There was no way out with the old

system that we had, going on to comment:

Nowadays you can see the signs, the neighbors with sores walking on

the streets, the appearance of sicknesses, they had to close the landfillin Villa Dominica . . . these signs had been showing up that indicated

that there is no way out with the old system, so our work was to

demonstrate that there are other ways out, that there are solutions to

all of this, and we tried to convert this into law.

In this way, the reappearance of the citys waste in the form of

leachatesmuch like the reappearance of trash on the citys streets

further enabled a reevaluation of the previous system of waste

management, as it prompted residents to question why the current

systems ability to keep trash contained elsewhere was no longerfunctioning. While Hetherington (2004) argues that we dispose of things

in order to avoid dealing directly with their implications, the citizens

of Buenos Aires found in the last decade that they were forced to

deal directly with the results of their wasteboth in the central city

and in neighborhoods surrounding landfills. Thus, as Munro (2001)

C 2011 The Author



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argues, while disposal disperses and displaces, the matter (and meaning)

disposed of always has the ability to return and haunt those who wish

to see it gone, or in the words of Gregson et al (2007b), act back on its

disposers. In this case, one of the effects of this haunting was opening

a 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 following

the 2002 crisis in Buenos Aires, but those associated with waste

the cartoneroswere as well. This was the case largely as a result

of changes in the political economy surrounding the commodity of

waste. At the height of Argentinas economic crisis, as the value of

the Argentine peso plummeted on the international market, scavenging

became a much more lucrative activity than it had been previously.

As Argentine industries were no longer able to afford to purchase

raw materials from foreign sources, they instead relied increasingly on

recycled, domestic inputs, driving up the prices paid for recyclables

collected by the cartoneros (Anguita 2003; Schamber 2009). This

tripled and in some cases more than quadrupled the previous market

value of recyclable material. Cardboard alone rose in value from 6

centavos per kilo in December 2001 to 30 centavos per kilo in May

of the following year (Dandan 2002) and the amount sold from the

six major recycling companies in Buenos Aires into formal industryincreased 490% during the same time period (CEDEM 2002). During

the same period, scavenging was increasingly seen as an available job

of last resort with few or no barriers to entry for many who found

themselves 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 Nacional

de Estadstica y Censos 2002). Interviews conducted with cartonerosduring this time suggest that although they were earning on average

between 150 and 200 pesos a month from scavenging, in many casesthis was the primary source of their familys income.9

As a result of these conditions, by the middle of the year cartoneros

were no longer contained by the invisible boundaries established by

the former social order, which had tolerated their presence in poorer

areas on the outskirts of the city, in the provinces, and near landfills.

Rather, cartoneros were working en masse in the relatively affluent

areas in and surrounding the centro, including the CBD and high

income residential areas in Palermo, Recoleta, Retiro, San Nicolas,Puerto Madero, and Monserrat (see Figure 1), where consumption had

maintained relatively high levels and, consequently, relatively more

waste was being produced. As one respondent living in a moderately

affluent area of the Capital District mentioned to me in 2002, You

didnt really see scavenging around here before. There are a lot of

people that you wouldnt have seen doing this before and now you seeC 2011 The Author



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1420 Antipode

people even eating from the trash. You never saw this before. Another

interviewee commented, Just look at the number of scavengersit

makes you want to die. Ive never in my life seen so many people

scavenging . . . there is so much misery and so much hunger. For

many portenos, cartoneros thus achieved an unprecedented level ofvisibility.

Not only were there more people scavenging in the Capital District

than there had been previously, but the geography of scavenging changed

in another way as well, in that most of the cartoneroswere traveling in

from the provinces to do this work. Thus, while some of the cartoneroslived in or near the neighborhoods in which they worked, as the crisis

escalated, more and more people made their way into the city from

surrounding municipalities in the province in order to take advantage

of the quality and quantity of waste available. According to estimates

compiled by the earliest registry ofcartonerosconducted in early 2003,

over three-quarters of the 9101 cartoneros surveyed working in the

city center were traveling in from the provinces to do so (Direccion

General de Estadstica y Censos 2003). Special trains were even set

aside by a number of train companies, called White Trains, in order to

accommodate the large number of cartoneros commuting daily from

the provinces without disturbing other passengers. The influx of

non-residents exacerbated the feeling in the city that cartoneros wereeverywhere, as people talked about cartoneros invading and taking

over the citys streets.

In addition to the unprecedented presence and visibility ofcartoneros

in the central city, whereas prior to 2002 scavenging was associated

with homelessness and indigence, during the crisis the public face of

the scavenger began to change as well. One aspect of this change was the

appearance of what had previously been the working poor scavenging

on the street. One respondent who began working as a cartoneroin May

2002, traveling in to the capital from the province of San Fernando bytrain, remarked the following:

Before, the people you saw collecting garbage were homeless, you

know? But now, with the situation that we have here in Argentina,

now collecting garbage is something normal, because everyone is

doing it. People who never thought that they would come to this are

doing it.

For many people in the capital, this led to a humanization of the

cartoneros 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, but

women and children increasingly began to work as cartonerosas well.

As onecartoneradescribed to me:

C 2011 The Author



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There are all types, nowadays the whole family; the parents with their

kids from the littlest to the biggest are out now, because there are a lot

of people [scavenging] and very few things, so the whole family has

to collect trash. The husband goes one direction with some kids and

the 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 were

a lot more men, but now it is the whole family.

As such, during the crisis the public were able to see cartoneros not

only as men working alone, but also as women and children working in

unsafe conditions in the relative insecurity of the streets. In this way, the

people most powerfully associated with the home and the private sphere

were scavenging in the most public of placesthe streetcausing yet

another dislocation of people within the sociospatial order.

10

Thus, notonly was waste out of place during the crisis, but the people associated

with it, thecartoneros, were also out of place, invading the space of the

central city rather than staying on the margins, in the provinces or at

home.

While the passage of the Cartoneros Law and the Zero Waste Law

were both certainly influenced by the increase in numbers ofcartoneros,

their visibility in the central cityand their new humanized public

facewere also crucial to changing the publics perception of their work

and subsequent legislative reform. As the producer of one local newsprogram commented: No matter what we discussed, [news about the

cartoneros] never failed to attract the attention of the general public and

the middle class, overall because it dealt with people who were sharing

the streets of the city with them. It was as if poverty had jumped out of the

shanty towns and was rubbing shoulders like never before with the

middle class (Anon 2007a). The increased visibility ofcartoneroswas

also productive in helping to envision a new place forcartoneroswithin

this legislation. As a representative of one environmental organization

stated when asked why the cartoneros played such a large role in the

way that the Zero Waste Law would be implemented in Buenos Aires,

the visibility of the cartoneros in the city, and their direct interaction

with the citys residents, were critical. He explained in an interview:

You cant talk about a solution to this problem without considering

these 25,000 people who have newly passed into marginality or pass

a law of Zero Waste without them, when in reality you can integrate

these people. They were, for me, the same people who made us realize

the value, not just of the waste, but of the work that they do in thesystem of waste management . . . Also, each citizen has to change his

habits, and become used to separating the trash in their house. So the

role of thecartonerosis very important, because they have very direct

contact with the neighbors, which is a thing that the government can

never do. The government can send out a pamphlet for people to read

that says that they have to separate their trash, and people would throwC 2011 The Author



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1422 Antipode

the pamphlet out in the trash with their organic matter! So the role of

thecartoneros, in addition to the work that they do, is their presence

in the city, their contact with the neighbors.

Thus the physical presence and increased visibility of the cartoneros

in the city was critical to their integration into the Zero Waste Law,

in that it provided a mechanism for interaction between cartoneros

and city residents that led to a reevaluation of their relationship. This

was especially the case in areas where the cartoneros had formed

cooperatives: as one cartonera working in the upscale neighborhood

of Palermo commented to me, Everyone in this neighborhood knows

me now . . . everyone says, Youre the one from the coop! Obviously,

its because they see me everywhere around. Ethnographic observation

confirmed this: during my time spent working on the streets with acooperative of cartoneros, police and other residents knew them by

face, said hello, and asked how other members of the cooperative

were doing. Even outside of areas that were served by cooperatives

ofcartoneros, as one journalist argued, Desperation sometimes does

its own marketing . . . women go out with their smallest children in

order to sensitize those who produce the trash (Muleiro 2002).

The striking visibility of cartoneros, as well as the presence of

waste on the streets of Buenos Aires and the leaking of leachates

from metropolitan landfills, all worked together to lead to an increasedawareness of the lifecycle of trash as a commodity for the public

as a whole: people were increasingly aware of and concerned about

where their waste was going, who was dealing with it, and what

the environmental consequences of it were. According to Miller

(2003), this type of large-scale education about the lifecycle and

production conditions of a commodity may constitute an important

component of the process of commodity defetishization, as it limits

the ability of consumers (or in this case disposers) to deny whatwe should know about manufactureand disposaland to treat

goods as autonomous from their origins and destinations (Miller

2003:360). Additionally, by thinking about waste as a particular kind

of commodity, these dislocations can be understood as producing a

type of disintermediation working to defetishize waste (Bridge and

Smith 2003; Miller 2003). While the term disintermediation refers most

commonly to the removal of intermediaries in a supply chain, in this

context it can be understood as removing intermediaries in the waste

chain to lessen the separation between those disposing of waste andthose processing it. This, in turn, may result in the defetishization of

waste by increasing awareness of socioeconomic and environmental

conditions under which commodities are disposed of, thus creating

a space for thinking critically about the social responsibilities that

disposal entails (Bridge and Smith 2003:261). A shift in the geography

C 2011 The Author



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of waste and waste work in Buenos Aires during and following the crisis

thus opened a space for the transformation of established social relations

as reflected in the city and citizenrys relationship with the cartoneros

through the defetishization of the waste commodity.

Negotiating (Re)PlacementsWhile the year 2002 in Argentina was marked by the displacement

of both waste and people, the years that followed have witnessed a

struggle over where and howcartoneros, their work, and the waste with

which they are associated belong in theporteno landscape. In particular,

there have been two foci of negotiation, the first of which concerns

the definition of waste itself, and the second of which focuses on the

appropriate place for the work of thecartoneroswithin the city. In these

negotiations, it becomes possible to see the way that the definition of

waste and value interact to inform not only what is materially defined as

waste, but also the value and (literal) place of the work of the cartoneros

in society. In the remainder of this article, I focus on these negotiations in

order to analyze the extent to which the displacements discussed above

have been able to open spaces and dialogues for new ways to place and

value waste and informal waste workers. I argue that, in spite of the

potential for change brought about by the displacements discussed inthe previous section, waste continues to be defined as that which belongs

elsewhere and is of no value, further reinforcing the marginalization of

cartonerosand their work.

The first locus of negotiation concerns the definition of waste itself

and the subsequent placing and valuing of these disposed materials. In

accordance with the Zero Waste Law, which mandated separation at the

source for recyclables, in April 2007 the Mayor of Buenos Aires, Jorge

Telerman, instituted a system of differentiated containerization. This

was justified as an attempt to diminish the impact of the activity of thecartoneros in the public streets, which are more and more disorderly

all the time, in order to improve the quality of the environment and

allow the neighbors to enjoy the spaces that belong to everyone (Anon

2007d). Under this system, over 10,000 waste receptacles with separate

containers for wet (non-recyclable) and dry (recyclable) items

were placed on corners in residential areas to collect household waste.

Waste collection companies were then required to institute differential

collection and processing of this separated material. According to MarioModica, from the Ministry of the Environment, the goal of this system

was that trash not touch the street, and if it touches the street, it

remains there as little time as possible (Anon 2007d). At the most

basic level, the program of double containerization attempted to provide

a solution to the disorder that waste on the streets implied by creating

a new place for waste within the city, such that during its necessaryC 2011 The Author



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1424 Antipode

journey from residence to landfill it did not pollute the city streets.

Yet in addition to creating a new place for waste, this system also

attempted to redefine, and thus re-value, some of what had previously

been 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 hold

value.

While this process of redefining waste (or at least the recyclable

portions of it) as valuable had already occurred within distinct sectors

of societyin particular among the informal recycling industry, which

was, at the time, estimated by the citys Ministry of Public Revenue

as worth over 500 million pesos per year (Ruhl 2007), as well as

among environmentalists and legislators involved in the passage of

the Zero Waste Lawthe potential commodity status of waste had

not prompted a revaluation by society at large of the social value

of this material. This was evident in the reactions to the program of

double containerization by the residents of Buenos Aires, formal waste

collection companies, and the subsequent municipal administration.

By 2008, while space existed for both recyclable and non-recyclable

waste in the double containers, according to the Ministry of the

Environment and Public Space, waste was not being separated by

residents (Ministerio de Ambiente y Espacio Publico 2008). They arguedthat there had not been time to effectively implement an education and

sensitization program for the residents at large, and as such people

were unaware, or unconvinced, of the potential value of their waste.

To further complicate the situation, representatives of CEAMSE as

well as cooperatives of cartoneros suggested during interviews that,

while residents may have been making use of the dual containers, trash

collection companies were continuing to bring unseparated material to

both the newly established resource recovery centers and the separation

plants established by CEAMSE near the landfills.11 One cooperativerepresentative commented that, even if a resident wanted to support

the recycling effort (and thus re-value their waste), they would lose

their motivation after seeing both containers dumped into a single trash

truck. While trash collection companies were insistent that they were

fulfilling 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 that

recyclable material remained separated. In this way, the embedded

cultural and institutional organization of waste management, both

among private residents and waste collection companies, inhibited

a large-scale revaluation of waste to occur, in spite of the legal

commoditization of recyclable material that had recently occurred.C 2011 The Author



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As a result of this situation, on taking office in 2008, Mayor Mauricio

Macri chose to suspend the use of double containers and terminate the

requirement for the waste collection companies to conduct differential

collection of recyclables and waste. Rather, in place of Telermans

differentiated container strategy, Macri proposed a plan that wouldcontinue to require residents to separate their recyclables, but in which

cartoneros would collect these recyclables door-to-door (Gutman 2008).

This alternate solution was proposed not simply because Macri felt that

differentiated containerization was not working; rather, it emerged from

issues connected to the political economy of waste management in

Buenos Aires at that time as well. In particular, this represented an

effort by the city to deal with the increasingly elevated costs of trying

to formalize the commodity status and circulation of recyclable waste.

While the city had been paying approximately 296 million pesos per

year for trash collection in 2002, by 2008 they were paying over 700

million pesos per year for these services, in large part as a result of

the requirement of containerization imposed upon collection companies

(Sanchez 2009). While this figure constituted the citys largest single

contract, as the previous paragraph suggested, it was not resulting in

increased separation of recyclable material. Rather, as the Ministry of the

Environment and Public Space reported, while 280 tons of waste were

being recycled through this formal system in 2007, it was at a cost of193,000 pesos per ton to the city. In comparison, the informal networks

supported by the work of cartoneros were recycling an estimated

190,000 tons of material at the cost of approximately 400 pesos per

ton in the same year (Ministerio de Ambiente y Espacio Publico 2008).

Additionally, according to informal and formal interviews conducted at

the time, the waste collection companies remained steadfast in their lack

of support for recycling efforts in the city, as they did not see this as

a profitable venture. Thus, another factor inhibiting the revaluation of

waste at the social level was (paradoxically) struggles over the regimeof value (Appadurai 1986; OBrien 2008) surrounding the commodity of

waste itself. As OBrien (1999:288) argues, commoditization involves a

complex array of institutional relationships, including a negotiated

order of value that is inflected by government policy as well as

the market price of related goods and services and the constraints

and opportunities facing waste transporter, contractors, and licensers,

which, in this case, were not in alignment regarding the source of the

value of waste.While the decision to end containerization thus arose in part from

the complex negotiations surrounding the regime of value that governs

the circulation of waste as a commodity, Macris proposed strategy was

also an attempt to respond to the second focus of negotiation during the

years following the crisis: finding an appropriate place for the work of the

cartoneros within the city. During the years following 2002, while manyC 2011 The Author



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1426 Antipode

citizens and government officials supported the work of thecartoneros,

they did not believe that it should continue to be conducted on the citys

streets and sidewalks. As the following commentary published in 2007

in Buenos Aires newspaper La Naci on illustrates, the patience of the

public 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 the

streets with their children on their backs in order to seek salvation

from the trash of us all, the majority of porte nos looked on with

understanding . . . Five years later, even the most progressive . . . are

fed up with the cartoneros(Castro 2007c).

An early solution to the problem of the visibility ofcartonerosin the

street was to implement a time frame that would limit the hours and

establish specific locations that cartoneros would be allowed to work.

As city officials explained to the press: The idea is to develop a plan

that works for everyone. The recyclers can continue to select materials

to resell . . . but we can say where we will permit this to be done and until

what time they can remain there . . . We will not rule out asking for help

from the police (Castro 2007b). Another solution proposed by the citys

government, and written into the Zero Waste Law, was the concentration

ofcartonero work in the centros verdes, or resource recovery centers,which would be run by cooperatives ofcartoneros. However, while one

of the goals of the resource recovery centers is to give cartoneros a place

to work other than the street, this did not occur for two primary reasons.

First, the vast majority of cartoneros continued to work outside of

cooperatives as a result of both custom and lack of opportunity, and thus

were not incorporated into the semi-formalized workplace and status of

those working in the resource recovery centers. Second, by 2007, only

two of the six resource recovery centers projected to serve the citys

residents were in place and operational, because, according to the ZeroWaste Law, the responsibility to establish these centers remained in the

hands of the waste collection companies, who, for various reasons, were

slow to conform to this requirement.

The right of thecartonerosto do their work in public space continues

to be contested, both by the government and by residents of many

neighborhoods. Even Macris latest Plan for Inclusion ofCartoneros,

which gets cartoneros off of the street through door-to-door collection

of recyclables, has generated controversy. As Sergio Abrrevaya, from

the Civic Coalition stated, It is complicated to have the cartoneros

go door to door. It will create insecurity for both sides and a lot of

people are not going to want to open their doors to them (Gutman

2008). In the end, however, Macris goal in 2009 continues to be what

it was in 2002, when he stated: The informal recyclers cannot be in the

street. We must remove them from the street (Anon 2002a), and his

C 2011 The Author



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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 Zero

Waste Law legitimize the work of the cartoneros, this work continues

to 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 not

only environmental, but social as well. As one commentator succinctly

stated, Five years after the crisis, we want a city that is clean and

that doesnt have people rummaging through the garbage in order to

survive (Castro 2007c). In the case of waste, a fetishized commodity

is thus strongly desired by those disposing. As Hetherington argues, it

is a question of how we account for or are held accountable by that

which 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 and

government as a strong reminder of ways that the systemnot only

of waste management, but of social organizationcontinues to break

down. The visibility of waste and the cartoneros disturbs the illusion

that disposal is, truly, an end point in the life of the commodity because

it continues to remind people of their accountability for their waste and

for social injustices.

ConclusionIn this article, I have focused on recent events in Buenos Aires,

Argentina, to analyze the ways that shifts in the geographies of

waste affect and reflect changing social meaning and possibilities

for social change. I argue that the events surrounding cartoneros and

scavenging, both during and after the 2002 crisis, exemplify the ways

that geographies of waste and social relations are mutually constituted

in a number of ways. First, changing geographies of waste reflected notonly the shifting social structures and places of individuals within these

structures resulting from crisis conditions, but also societal disorder

on a more general level. In this way, they highlight the importance

of the way that we manage (categorize, place, and conceal) waste in

the production of social order. The disorder that was felt when waste

reappeared serves to illustrate that geographies of waste are important

not 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 new

ways of relating to waste and those who work with it, indicating that

shifts in geographies of waste have the potential to transform social

relations. In particular, the displacements of waste and those associated

with it away from the landfills and urban periphery and into the central

city were critical to legislative reform, as members of the upper- andC 2011 The Author



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1428 Antipode

middle-classes came face-to-face with both poverty and the

consequences of their consumption and disposal behavior in ways

that they had not previously. This, in turn, created an opportunity for

disintermediation and consequent defetishization of the disposal process

of the commodity that is waste. Finally, this article has demonstratedthat place is a critical component in the ongoing negotiation of what

constitutes waste and the role of those who work with waste in society.

While social reform has resulted from the displacements of waste

and waste workers caused by the crisis conditions in Buenos Aires, the

longer-term consequences of these changes are unclear. Considering the

controversy over the place of scavenging that continues to occur, as well

as the difficulties faced in the implementation of the new legislation, it is

possible that the disintermediation of the disposal process did not bring

about the transformed consciousness, or reinscription of the larger

humanity 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 waste

and cartonerosmay simply reflect a desire to develop a better method

of ensuring that both waste and those associated with it remain separate

from those who produce it. Scavengers are now concerned that as trash

is safely put in its place once again, they will be as well, and they are

striving to find ways to remain in the city, in the place that they havefound, and to remain visible, as the cooperativization of this activity

indicates. If the dislocations do not cause permanent destabilization

of the existing system, then waste and the cartoneros will easily slip

back into their old places in society unless a strong effort is made to

ensure otherwise.

Within the context of Buenos Aires, therefore, the results of this

research indicate that a continued focus on place and the redefinition of

waste must be central to struggles against the continued marginalization

ofcartonerosand their work. Bringing scavenging from the geographicand social periphery of Buenos Aires to the heart of the city was a critical

catalyst for the social and political integration ofcartoneros reflected

in the Cartoneros and Zero Waste Laws. As cartoneros continue to

struggle for a socially sanctioned place within society, however, it must

be recognized that to the extent that they and their activities remain

hiddeneven behind the walls of resource recovery centersthey

will continue to be devalued. If cartoneros and other environmental

activists in this context can continue to redefine their work, such thatthey are not seen as working with valueless material, but with valuable

social goods, they should not need to be elsewhere, as their work

could take a legitimate place in public space.

The implications of this analysis, however, extend beyond the context

of cartoneros in Argentina. As other researchers have documented,

informal waste workers continue to struggle for equality and recognition,C 2011 The Author



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not only throughout the Global South, but within North America and

Western Europe. The results presented in this article suggest that because

waste is not simply material, but is fundamentally also ideological and

discursive, it is important to view waste and its disposal not simply as

logistical problems to be solved, but as a theorized sociospatial categoryin any geographic context. In particular, this article underscores the

benefit of conceiving of waste not only as zero value or matter

out of place, but as a (potential) commodity as well, as each of

these perspectives plays a role in helping us to understand the way

that waste functions to organize social and geographic relations. These

three perspectives offer a critical lens for looking at the construction

of waste and value not only at the local scale, as I have done in this

article, but at the global scale as well, in order to better understand the

reasons behind and implications of global flows of waste. In particular,

this analysis argues for the idea of viewing waste as a commodity, not

simply in order to understand how it is being treated in the marketplace,

but also to understand its role in constituting social relations. This idea

is particularly important as it enables an analysis of the relationship

between those dealing with trash in different ways (through disposal,

recovery, reuse/resale, processing, regulation, etc) and the ways in

which these relations are obscured through the magical qualities of

the commodity [to] obliterate their origins andtheir final destination(Hawkins 2001:9). Finally, this article highlights the importance of

viewing disposal as a process in its own right, which extends the

social life of the commodity to form a triptych with the processes

of production and consumption (Munro 2001), such that each, albeit in

different ways, are constitutive of social relations and meaning.

AcknowledgementsI would like to thank Mike Boruta for his wonderful work in the creation of Figure 1

and Melissa Myers for her assistance in collecting and cataloguing newspaper articlesfor this project. I am also indebted to Brad Jokisch, Harold Perkins, and the three

anonymous reviewers for their helpful direction and suggestions for improvements on

this article. Finally, my heartfelt gratitude goes to Vanesa Cernadas for her invaluable

assistance with this research as well as her continued friendship and support.

Endnotes1 While the term cartonero is now considered to be more politically acceptable than

that ofciruja, both words are still in use to describe informal garbage scavengers. Since

2002, 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 to

environmental justice issues through focusing on their role as recyclers. These terms are

recuperadores urbanos (urban recuperators) and recicladores urbanos (urban recyclers).

I continue to use the termcartonerosin this work as it is the most commonly used term

to 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 Province

C 2011 The Author



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1430 Antipode

of Buenos Aires. However, because the Buenos Aires metropolitan area (Gran Buenos

Aires) includes both the Federal District as well as the 24 municipalities that surround

it, in some cases there is coordination between the two, otherwise unrelated, governing

bodies. Unless otherwise specified, references to Buenos Aires in this article refer to

the 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 from

production, through exchange/distribution, to consumption, even he views the total

trajectory of a commoditys 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 meanings

are plural and contested (Bridge and Smith 2003), waste may not only have commodity

potential, but it may be both without value and a commodity, as it can be viewed

simultaneously as a commodity by one person and as something else by another

(Kopytoff 1986:64). Thus, what some have singularized as worthless through the process

of disposal and the subsequent definition as waste, others may view as a commodity

with use and/or exchange value (Gregson and Crewe 2003; OBrien 1999, 2008). The

differential 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 ofLa Nacioncommented: The quantity of trash on

the streets widely surpasses that of any other large city in a civilized country (Anon

2009).8 The persistence of this problem for the city government was especially evident during

election years, as newspaper reporters suggested in 2003 that the problem of urban

waste is one that candidates cannot overlook in their campaigning (Rocha 2003). This

theme arose as well in the 2007 mayoral election, with reporters commenting that a

solution to the eternal problem of filth in the Capital has been one of the preoccupations

of 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 Buenos

Aires estimated that cartoneros were earning, on average, 156 pesos per month, while

CEAMSE estimated incomes of approximately 190 pesos per month from scavenging

(Anon 2002b).10 According to the female cartoneras interviewed for this research, they felt that

the neighbors in the areas that they scavenged were more sympathetic to their plight

precisely because they were women: rather than having trouble with them, nei

Waste Argentina

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