Cartoneros

As the evening arrives to Buenos Aires, they begin to appear. They trawl the streets of virtually every neighbourhood of the capital. They get in the rubbish and tear up all those black sacks and plastic bags of refuge emptied from the city’s apartment buildings onto the pavements; and they cause what is let’s face it, a rather ugly mess. 

They are however a hard working lot and like it or lump it, they’re providing a service.

The tens of thousands of cartoneros, perhaps best translated as cardboard people, make their living by extracting recyclable materials from the city’s rubbish.

Generally working in teams, whose members will commonly include children as young as seven or eight, they roam the streets from the early evening until the early morning, pushing carts from one corner to the next and ransacking the rubbish bags that are left for the binmen, in search of paper, plastics, metals and anything else they can flog.

Though cartoneros, also known as botelleros, existed to a lesser extent prior to 2001, it was the infamous economic and political crisis of that year which sent the numbers soaring, as the newly unemployed and impoverished class resorted to desperate measures. In 2001-2002, it was estimated that 40,000 cartoneros flooded the city each night in search of recyclables.  

The situation was at first permitted but despite the economic recovery which eventually followed the state of emergency declared by President Fernando de la Rua as the country crumbled, the authorities, like is so often the case here, did not nip the problem in the bud when they had the chance and instead went as far as to actually semi-officialise the activity so that it is now a job which even has its own union.

Anyone who has wandered the streets of Buenos Aires after dark will have seen the cartoneros at work.

Some visitors may even feel threatened by what are often topless, marijuana smoking folk in for a night’s work from the somewhat humble towns that surround the city; but it's more than likely that they needn’t worry. Cartoneros are workers, perhaps doing the only job they can, and the fact they are doing what is clearly a hard graft suggests they are not criminally minded. (Reports of them committing crimes are rare).

They can however be a nuisance. The pushing of their carts in the road often causes traffic problems, while the strewn open bags of rotten vegetables, nappies and other household garbage (later disposed of by the city’s dustmen) left lining the streets are disgustingly unsightly and an embarrassment for Buenos Aires.

Many here would like action taken to rid the city of the activity. But if the government wanted to do something about it, it would be difficult. Introducing an official and taxable system of recycling to replace cartoneros, in which every city resident is responsible for separating his or her papers and plastics before chucking out the rubbish, would mean putting the tens of thousands who rely on sifting through it all with their bare hands for a living, out of work.

The government instead tends to assist them. Until a few years back it provided special service commuter trains, called cartoneos, to transport the cardboard people into the city.  

El tren blanco

El tren blanco (the white train) ran from José León Suárez station to Retiro in the capital and provided transport specifically catered to the cartoneros and their carts. Its ancient and battered carriages however were mere shells and the service was eventually cancelled; considered, if not demeaning, then at least too dangerous.

Nowadays most cartoneros get to the city in shared lorries. Once their commute is over they roll out their carts and hit the streets to gather up all they can. Mothers and fathers send their children in one direction while they hit the other; all later meeting up to bulk together what they have gathered, ready for sale to the recycling companies. In 2009 the price they could get for white paper was 40 US cents per kilo, for cardboard 20 cents, plastic bottles around 35 cents while for aluminium they could get almost 90 cents a kilogram. (As a reference the 2009 price for a kilo of cheap sandwich ham was around US$6.50 for a kilo).

There remains today very little money to be had in it all but for many it is their only way of making a living.

Unfortunately the sight of the cartoneros going about their work on the streets at night and the mess they leave behind is extremely ugly and is just another detail which demonstrates that as much as Buenos Aires pretends to be otherwise, Argentina is still a long way from truly being a country of the developed world.

(Prices for recyclables from lanacion.com economía 29/11/09)