Waste Pickers and Their Practices of Insurgency and Environmental Stewardship

• Author: Angela Martins Baeder,Jutta Gutberlet,Santiago Sorroche,María José Zapata Campos,Patrik Zapata
• Published date: 01 December 2021
• Date: 01 December 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/10704965211055328
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

The Journal of Environment &

Development

2021, Vol. 30(4) 369–394

© The Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/10704965211055328

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Waste Pickers and Their

Practices of Insurgency and

Environmental

Stewardship

Jutta Gutberlet

1

, Santiago Sorroche

2

,

Angela Martins Baeder

3

, Patrik Zapata

4

,

and Mar´

ıa Jos ´

e Zapata Campos

5

Abstract

Informed by different grassroots learning and educational practices engaged in waste

management, and drawing from the concepts of insurgent citizenship and environ-

mental stewardship, we examine the role of waste picker organizations and movements

in creating new pathways towards more sustainable environmental waste governance.

Two case studies (Argentina and Brazil) demonstrate how waste pickers inform and

educate the general public and raise the awareness of socio-environmental questions

related to waste management. Different educational practices are used as strate gies to

confront citizens with their waste: to see waste as a consumption problem, resource,

and income source. Our paper draws on grassroots learning (social movement learni ng

and insurgent learning) and education (stewardship) aimed at the transformation of

waste practices. We argue that waste pickers play an important role in knowledge

production promoting recycling, in landf‌illing less and recovering more resources. We

conclude that waste pickers act as insurgent citizens and also are environmental

stewards.

1

Department of Geography, University of Victoria (UVic), Victoria, BC, Canada

2

Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cient´

ıf‌icas y T´

ecnicas (CONICET), Centro de Innovación de los

Trabajadores, Universidad Metropolitana para la Educación y el Trabajo, Sarmiento, Buenos Aires, Argentina

3

Emeritus Faculty at the Department of Biology, University Foundation Santo Andr´

e (FSA), Santo Andr´

e, Sao

Paulo, Brazil

4

School of Public Administration, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

5

School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

Corresponding Author:

Jutta Gutberlet, Department of Geography, University of Victoria (UVic), PO BOX 3060 STN CSC, Victoria,

BC V8W 3R4, Canada.

Email: gutber@uvic.ca

Keywords

sustainability, waste, waste pickers, insurgency, environmental stewardship

Introduction

Solid waste is a signif‌icant urban problem, receiving increasing attention by the public

and government. In many cities in the global South, municipal waste is still primarily

landf‌illed or dumped. Often, peripheral neighborhoods do not have regular garbage

collection and the locals dump or burn their waste, if it is not collected by informal or

small-scale waste entrepreneurs and waste pickers (Gutberlet et al., 2016,2017). Most

cities in Brazil and Argentina do not yet have a widely installed off‌icial recycling

program in place. Only recently, some municipalities in Brazil have established

contracts with waste picker cooperatives, responsible for selective waste collection

which sometimes provides them with opportunities to engage in educating households

about recycling. In Argentina, waste picker cooperatives engage in environmental

education activities to improve formal selective waste collection, yet with very little

recognition by the local government. Gille (2013) argues that all these developments

reveal an emerging resource recovery waste regime, linked to policy shifts that promote

resource recovery over disposal in landf‌ills. No signif‌icant policy changes and im-

plementations, however, have been materialized in terms of avoiding waste generation

or even reducing the generation of materials that are not recyclable and will become

waste once discarded. Ideas of consumerism, capitalism, economic growth, and global

market primacy continue def‌ining the socio-material relations of production, con-

sumption, and waste (Corvellec, 2016).

Grassroots initiatives in the global South are challenging the current waste regime by

rising socio-environmental concerns in waste management (Zapata & Zapata Campos,

2018). Recycling is not the solution to the waste problem, but it is rather a myth or

a societal trap, that to some extent further reiterates the status quo of wasteful con-

sumption and indiscriminate discard with no decreasing effect on the total waste

production (Hird et al., 2014;Lepawsky, 2018;MacBride, 2012). Beyond regulations,

education can play a signif‌icant role in shifting habits, lifestyles and in promoting

policies towards more sustainable behaviors, processes, and practices (Asmawati et al.,

2012;Boyes & Stanisstreet, 2012). In this paper, we argue that waste pickers can fulf‌ill

the task of building environmental awareness among the public for recycling. The

educational processes we discuss build on the social learning of waste pickers, who

have engaged with other waste pickers in promoting popular learning on waste pre-

vention and resource recovery in the wider community. Wenger introduces commu-

nities of practice as a social learning system. “Arising out of learning, it exhibits many

characteristics of systems more generally: emergent structure, complex relationships,

self-organization, dynamic boundaries, ongoing negotiation of identity and cultural

meaning, to mention a few”(Wenger, 2010,p.179–180).Comm unities of practice are

part of larger social systems involving many other actors and communities, institutions,

movements, projects, or different forms of associations. However, the social learning

370 The Journal of Environment & Development 30(4)