The enemy of the recycling culture in Bogotá

Bogotá is the capital city of Colombia and the largest city in the country in terms of land area. It is one of the biggest in Latin America and figures among the 30 largest cities of the world and the third-highest capital city in South America at 2,625 meters above sea level. With an area of 1.587 km², 7.363.782 inhabitants and a GDP of 140,9 million dollars (24.5% of the national GDP), Bogotá was ranked 54th in the 2010 Global Cities Index.

Furthermore, the capital issued 10,873,331 tons per year of carbon dioxide (CO²) a low rate if it is compared with the 77 million tons of CO² in the Australian capital, the 62 tons in Santiago de Chile and Mexico City, the 58 in New York and 23 in Buenos Aires and Toronto. Just Quito and Lima are below Bogotá, with 2.6 and 2.5 million tones per year. Three years ago, the city produced six tons of recyclable waste per year and only recycled the 10% of it. Additionally, Bogotá has the biggest open-air dump of Latin America that is called Relleno Sanitario Doña Juana. According to 2010 figures, at Doña Juana are arranged daily more than 6000 tons in which approximately 60% is organic waste, and the remaining 40% is inorganic waste within which most are potentially recyclable materials.

Moreover, because the private companies do not do the process of recycling and the citizens are not used to separate the waste, a community of recyclers separated the garbage and did their own harvest of recycle materials informally and before these companies picked up, of course very late in the night or even at early morning hours. These recycling workers are citizens who for many years had worked without social recognition and the whole family has being a productive unit (women, children and men). Most of them do this activity in precarious conditions, under difficult circumstances and recover the materials in bins or garbage bags, with transportation that require great physical effort, without proper management of occupational risks, low knowledge of market dynamics and with almost no chance of improving their marketing channels. Despite the fact that these recycling activities generate income for their livelihood, the recyclers are isolated from the social network of the city as well as of the community organizations that could help them to overcome the conditions of life determined by a job with large and strong social stigmas: working in the street and working with waste.

About a year ago, the mayor or Bogotá launched a program called Basura Cero. This program was created by the mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg and has come under some criticism, particularly as a model unwanted in the private sector. This situation resembles the general opinion created in Bogotá with the implementation of the new model of garbage collection, basically because this program is based in the recycling and seeks to develop recyclers as the protagonist, what affects the business and the income private companies received from collecting more waste, not recycled, of the homes of 7 million inhabitants.

Basura Cero is a program and action plan, which aims to ensure that non-recyclable solid waste usable will not be buried or cremated, but recycled and returned in a 100% into the production cycle. More than this, the program pursues to promote a conscious culture of responsible consumption. Also, the fact of integrating the recyclers into the program as formal workers gives them the chance of having capacitation for the specialization of their knowledge and to generate productive opportunities. Basura Cero is an inclusive project with a bottom-up strategy in which through social innovation the city will benefit by the creation of a new culture of conscious consumption and recycling, the progressive ending of the landfill and the creation of new jobs that formalize the important work that more than 13.000 recyclers do in the city.

Despite all the improvements that the program could bring to the city, the environment and the society, private companies decided to be against it. The mayor wanted to begin with the implementation of Basura Cero, but because of the dates of contract completion with the private companies, he had to extend it until the new activities could begin. Private companies took advantage of the situation and came together to decline the last extension of the contract so that chaos in the garbage collection were generated. The chaos actually occurred the 18th of December of 2012, for almost 3 days the garbage wasn’t recollected, the city collapsed and citizens where aggravated. Besides citizens were ignorant of what was really happening, so for them the program was a fraud and the responsible of all the waste in the streets.

All in all, the emergency situation was solved, the garbage was picked up but the Mayor had to made big decisions. He invested money to rent and buy harvest garbage trucks, hired other company for the recollection work and with time began working with the recyclers. The education campaign was launched and Basura Cero began despite the initiative proposed to remove the Mayor because of this event. One year later, the past 9th of December the Mayor was dismiss by the Public Affairs control agency (Procuraduría). He has been reproached of giving the tender for garbage collection without warranties and also of fouling in the implementation of the cleanness scheme for the city.

Basura Cero TV Commercial

After all, I can conclude that political conflicts and business interests of a few can also affect the urban planning of a city. Environment and the future of a whole community are now in risk because of the battle for power and the lack of respect for democracy. During a year of discussions and researches, the city continued generating waste, the open-air dump probably has more waste and CO² emissions were still produced. This situation for me is the evidence that priorities are the self-benefit of some, that companies are not committed with development and that business are more important than the environmental future of a city.

References
1. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/node/373401#sthash.QzgHcMIw.x6sqLSv8.dpbs
2. Corredor, Marta, “El sector reciclaje en Bogotá y su región: oportunidades para los negocios inclusivos”, Serie Guías Sectoriales FUNDES. Retrived from: http://www.fundes.org/uploaded/content/publicacione/1511074433.pdf

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