Reciclar la vida
Translator: Gisela Giardino
Reviewer: Sebastian Betti
When I came from Entre Rios
I thought I was coming to the best
place of the world, Buenos Aires.
No family, not knowing how
to read or write, as a child.
The cemetery was the first place
I lay down, in Chacarita,
to start looking around.
I marveled at the city of Buenos Aires.
I had to decide quite fast
how I was going to live.
So rather quickly, Coco, the “cartonero”,
garbage digger, was born.
A bridge was the place
I found to find peace,
so no one bothered me.
And that’s how I started
this obstacle race, like a marathonist.
Jump, jump, jump, jump.
In one of those jumps is
when I decide to go to school.
Under the bridge I attended catechesis,
politicians came,
they came looking for cheap labor
to steal, for example.
The offspring came under the bridge.
That’s when I become aware
of human irresponsibility.
That was a very important
event in my life,
I was able to decide that
this was no longer my way of life.
I was bringing human beings who
were going to get a car to dig garbage,
a bridge to live, and I decided
carry out a project
called “The Roadrunner Cooperative”.
It wasn’t easy, I knew nothing
about management.
But I could read already, and I found
a magazine that talked about cooperatives.
I fell in love with the tool.
And I followed that cooperative tool.
I attended several courses.
I got among coaches.
I got in international studies.
I mingled with entrepreneurs,
with courses in bill of materials
that allowed me to discover
how to understand the point
of equilibrium in a project.
In order to interpret what
the entire project community needs
to be able to sustain the project.
This is the start-up
and infrastructure
of a cooperative of “cartoneros”
called The Road Runner,
in which we are dedicated
to waste management.
More than 20 products in the chain,
derivatives of nature
we recover, classify and provide
to the industries
to make new products
for the consumer market.
Our idea isn’t just
to recycle ecologically
but to try to recycle life.
There are many people
who are like human waste,
scattered in our country,
with no employment, no housing,
no health, no good nutrition,
and we found an enabling scenario in waste
to generate a real circular economy
that can meet those needs
our community has.
And we also realized that
it’s not just the cartonero,
the homeless, the unemployed,
the one in trouble.
People with consumer power has
a great need of care, too.
And that’s where
we aim to be useful
with a service to the community
that recover materials for recycling.
And we do it from the extreme
of begging.
We were born in the landfills,
in the slums, the settlements.
And our goal is, why not,
to fill Argentina with
productive cooperatives
focused on ecology.
You might say:
Why did you come up with this?
I didn’t come up with it.
Necessity buried me and,
as I didn’t want to become a criminal,
as I didn’t want to become anti-social,
a counterweight in my society,
I decided to create an option
in life, and work…
I got proposals and such
since I started going to school.
I learned how to read and write,
and there I found in the tool,
in the management
of the cooperative format,
a huge solution to a community
that screams everywhere:
“I need you to help me”.
Now, the cooperative has a format
in which you don’t have to put money,
you have to fill it with problems.
We got to work on the vulnerability.
I started looking at myself.
And once I found myself,
well, I discovered myself
and I started to have different
self-proposals, initiatives,
and I started putting them into practice.
And I ended up in an institution
called The Road Runner,
I hope I can replicate it
at a global scale.
My roots are homelessness.
I come without a family.
I don’t know my parents,
I grew up in a priest school.
That’s where I was educated
in the culture of work.
From a very young age
I took on responsibilities.
It wasn’t easy to achieve
social inclusion.
So, that lack of affection,
that lack of culture,
but with a strong culture of work,
allowed me to start living
in the community
and start earning
the respect of the community.
I don’t see garbage, I see treasures.
And I want to train
a lot human beings, families,
who believe that the train
of life has passed.
And I want to motivate
the community who is suffering,
to start over with something new.
For example, in recycling waste,
that can be re-industrialized,
and be able to live with an activity
within the law.
That’s why we educate in recycling people.
Because if I recycle myself
it is possible to achieve what I intend.
That’s why I think we should,
instead of looking at
what’s wrong with others,
or what others have,
start looking at what we have,
to invest it positively
to achieve what we need
to live with quality.
The Road Runner is a kind of
occupational antibiotics, I say,
because it allows us to heal
different social impurities,
such as eradicating conflicts.
Also we recycle behavior,
we throw away our prejudices,
and start to understand that
what I don’t do, nobody will.
I decided to carry out
an inclusive project
that thousands of people can replicate,
copy easily, without franchises,
an opportunity to create
an option to live.
The Road Runner is an institution
of vulnerable people,
coming from the most extreme
of vulnerabilities,
but we recycle life in this place.
Starting to take on commitments,
change behaviors, a place –
an environmental, human
and ecological operating room –
to live better.
The goal of the cooperative
is to recycle people.
What is the way to recycle people?
Identifying the most vulnerable people
that exist in our society.
For example, someone who is buried
in addictions, alcohol,
comes out of jail after 10 years,
they enter your ID number
in the system and you are over.
You can’t get a job.
Who is going to hire an ex-convict?
Someone who is a drug addict
can’t sustain a life story.
Someone who’s into alcohol,
domestic violence,
well, that is what we work
at the cooperative.
And the kind of resume with priority
to get in the project
is that kind of people,
the person no one’s going to give
a chance to get better.
A person who went through
different institutions,
ended up in the streets seeking peace,
we go looking after them.
Today, the cooperative
works with companies.
The companies offer
to pay the cooperative
for what we used to do for free.
I do the same I did with a cart.
But now we do it
at a greater scale
where we’ve managed to evolve
and organize work teams.
For example, the administrative area,
is managed today
by a cartonero’s daughter
who keeps the records in an Excel sheet
of the cooperative’s movements.
Evolution found me paying taxes.
A homeless man is becoming
a taxpayer.
Many homeless people
must become taxpayers.
Managing and not pushing is one
of the cooperative’s merits.
It manages what it needs
to develop,
without exerting pressure
to any institution.
We don’t eat from the trash today.
It’s a great evolution.
Today, we buy what we need to eat.
We’re studying how to feed ourselves.
What is the healthiest diet
for the kids?
What is the prevention we generate
with the economic resources
we generate in the cooperative
to prevent disease in a child
who are just born?
For example.
Things we couldn’t do before.
Today, it’s a big evolution
for the cooperative.
The idea is to access quality of life.
You don’t have to have a lot
to access quality of life.
Now, not many can
achieve the surpluses
that perhaps these projects
such as cooperatives
achieve by working collectively
to help others.
My idea is not to become a millionaire.
My idea is to be able to help
as many people as possible,
families, children,
so that they study, understand
how to declare freedom
but autonomously, with autonomy.
The freedom of debauchery doesn’t work.
I don’t want to cut a street,
I want to cut the vicious cycle
that abuses of people like Coco,
who were born without a family,
were raised in a priest school,
who lived under bridges,
who can’t read, can’t write,
and don’t have a trade.
So, I want to cut the vicious cycle
of abusing people
who is culturally vulnerable.
If I show you a valid option,
that the return is profitable
with the effort you generate,
we have a free country, individually,
and working collectively.
We can help by targeting
waste adequately.
They have no idea
they can become employers.
Because they’re resource generators
and not garbage generators.
Everyone charges to bury
and pollute our planet.
If we properly allocate the waste
we’re generating jobs massively.
While recycling the life
of millions of people.