Case: Revolutionizing Waste (and waste-picking) in Peru’s cities
In Peru, the social entrepreneur Albina Ruiz created a movement that collaborated closely with municipalities and the national government to transform the lives of thousands of waste pickers from stigmatized informal workers to recycling professionals protected by law and contracted to deliver municipal waste services.
This is the blog version of Cities and Social Entrepreneurs: A Playbook for Catalytic Change that I wrote in collaboration with Manmeet Mehta and David Lubell, published by Ashoka and Catalyst 2030.
Here is what happened in three Acts.
Act I — The Prototype
Reframing the problem of urban waste as an opportunity to lift a stigmatized community out of poverty.
Imagine yourself in the Amazonian rainforest for a moment. The deep green, vegetation; the rich smells and sounds. Albina Ruiz was sixteen when she left her home in Moyobamba, known as the city of orchids, in the Peruvian rainforest to travel a thousand kilometers to Lima, Peru’s capital city. She left her home to study engineering. Her older siblings already lived in Lima, and were to be her guide to teach her everything about living in a city with over five million inhabitants. Like how to use a bus, or how to stay safe. They lived in Villa El Salvador, one of the poorest areas on the outskirts of the city.
At the time, Villa El Salvador was a shanty town, and it was notorious for waste. Huge mountains of trash were dumped all over the neighborhood. Albina had never seen anything like this before. There is no waste in the jungle. Waste, like the mountains in El Agustino, was a big problem all over Peru. Waste was managed poorly, and as was the case in Lima, it was dumped in the poorest neighborhoods on the outskirts of the cities. Albina tells me that, at the time, municipal leaders were stigmatizing the poor. She herself worked in municipal government as the director of services early in her career. They thought that poor people wouldn’t mind the dirt because they were dirty themselves. And since poor people mostly didn’t pay taxes, they didn’t deserve proper municipal services. Across the country, families lived among mountains of trash in neighborhoods like Villa El Salvador. People were feeding their animals off trash, finding scraps among the waste. So-called recyclers, waste pickers, were scouring the mountains to collect materials to sell. They were eyed with suspicion, harassed and persecuted by local police.
Albina completed her studies in industrial engineering and environmental management and went on to earn a PhD in chemistry. Already in her first years of engineering studies, on project placement in El Agustino, her research revealed how broken the official waste collection system was. There was corruption everywhere, for example, when companies sold fancy trucks to municipalities for a lot of money. Employees were selling off gasoline instead of doing their collection routes. They would give officials illegal kickbacks, cash as a reward for buying expensive machines. She began to see that, to improve things, municipalities needed good people in waste management. People who were motivated to improve the city. But instead, with the little money they had left after buying costly vehicles, they mostly hired unqualified people, mainly men who didn’t care for their communities and carried out their work poorly.
And waste in Peru was not just an environmental problem. It was a mirror of society. Next to corruption, there was a lot of false prejudice. The prejudice against poor people was that they were dirty, but it turned out that it was the rich who were dumping their waste everywhere, even out of the windows of their cars. The difference, Albina recalls, was that in rich areas the streets would be cleaned. In the poor areas, no one came to clean up. Prejudice translates into the way you treat people, and letting poor people live among mountains of waste was just one of many insults they had to endure.
But in Albina’s eyes, waste also had a value. There was value in collection, recycling, and materials. She began to help people in areas like El Agustino start micro-businesses to collect and treat waste. Many were started by women who went from picking through waste for scraps to building small businesses. They were creating thousands of jobs as well as making their communities cleaner and healthier. She first set up a local, then a national association of recyclers. Together, they approached municipalities to offer their waste management services. Instead of expensive vehicles, they used tricycles. They offered no kickbacks, but good waste management. Some recyclers went from earning three dollars a day to earning closer to fifteen dollars. Some families were able to save enough to send their children to university.
Act I — Take Aways
“Reframe what, at first glance, may seem like an engineering or management problem, to include social conditions and human behaviors. This can put you on a trajectory not just to service, but solve a problem.”
“Demonstrate the benefits of a new solution to communities and municipal governments.”
“Organize your beneficiaries to develop a rich collective voice.”
Act II — The foundation for national change
Mobilizing the country to secure national policy and legislative change.
This was a very exciting development, but Albina felt overwhelmed by the scale of the problem. How would they be able to solve this problem in Peru’s 1,800 municipalities? Her life would be too short to go to every place and make this happen. Also, even as some recyclers were now better off, 87% of them still lived in extreme poverty. To pursue change, Albina founded a non-profit, Ciudad Saludable, and in 2000 called on the government to develop a national employment law that would protect recyclers. But after four years of lobbying, the government produced just an ineffective technical guide.
In 2007 they tried to get a law passed again. This time instead of just proposing a law behind closed doors they pivoted, organizing a national movement and worked with people seconded from a variety of ministries, meeting several times a week. Also, this time round, they found a powerful lever helping the recyclers to take a seat at the negotiating table. A journalist, for example, helped recyclers express their ideas clearly. They reached a political tipping point when they had a draft law on the table, but also the evidence of ordinances in seventy municipalities. They had proof that Peru’s 190,000 families working in recycling, with more than 500,000 votes, could deliver significant cost savings and environmental benefits. To secure momentum at this critical point, recyclers from across the country organized a Happiness March on the capital. And this time round, they got the breakthrough. In 2009, twenty-three years after Albina began this work, Peru was the first country in the world to pass a law to protect recyclers under employment law protections.
“La Ley del Recyclador” as it is called formally recognizes the work of recyclers as a job category. They could no longer be legally exploited, were guaranteed safe working conditions and fair rates. Peru’s ministry of health began offering recyclers universal access to healthcare and vaccination. An official training scheme, offered free of charge, certifies recyclers and is tailored to the needs of people who suffer extreme poverty, work long hours and cannot read or write.
Act II — Take-aways
“Reframe ‘Travel at the speed of trust’, chose inclusiveness over burning bridges to get a win. This will pay off as you need to return to engage stakeholders in the future.”
“Bring together various authorities or stakeholders, like ministries and business organizations, to develop and implement holistic actions. Note the importance of empowering beneficiaries to advocate for themselves.”
“Share the ability to solve. Let go of ‘your’ solution and pivot when opportunities arise to transition to national or systemic change via e.g. laws and regulations, or simply to allow others to solve the problems their way. This trust is often rewarded, as it gives other players the freedom to take initiative.”
Act III — Securing transformative change
Building bridges and empowering beneficiaries to sustain the transformation.
The adoption of the law was a great success, but the movement soon realized that a law alone would not be enough. Petitioned by recyclers, the government adopted incentives for municipalities to adopt the law. By 2011, it passed a law that municipalities had to separate waste at the source and since 2017 municipalities can only access incentives if they contract with recyclers. Change happened faster as the recyclers themselves, now organized as a group, followed-up on the adoption of the laws in hundreds of municipalities, as well as with the Peruvian government.
As a group, they developed a powerful presence that brought industry leaders to the table to negotiate rates for recycling materials that were sold to other countries.
Following Peru, recyclers gained the same legal protections in Brazil and Ecuador. In 2019, Albina Ruiz became the Deputy Minister of the Environment of Peru to expand on her mission and deliver on her promise of a Clean Peru.
Act II I— Take-aways
“Keep broadening your alliance-building to bring new stakeholders on board that will enable the next levels of change.”
“Don’t be satisfied with a policy change, like a new law, but empower beneficiaries to supervise implementation of new laws policies.”
“Keep using all tools, like devising additional laws, to further institutionalize the change.”
