The journey we started when we entered the day-to-day recycling work in Asunción continues to generate surprises and learning. "Our dream is to get machinery and companies to work with us. In the end, it's not for us; it's for our children, our families," one of the waste pickers tells us. They also dream of a more sustainable and healthy urban life as their service improves recycling in Asunción. 

To continue learning how to work better together, and in pursue of these dreams, the San Francisco Neighborhood Waste Pickers' Association continued the process of participatory mapping and characterization of experiences that we began during the first year of the COVID-19 Pandemic, within the framework of the Asunción Green City of the Americas project. In this blogpost, we dive deeper into a day in their lives to share how their experiences paved the way for a new recycling services pilot project, as well as the other challenges and opportunities  that emerged in the process.

Before heading toward a day of work

The second stage of this participatory mapping began with a series of in-depth conversations with five male and female waste pickers from the San Francisco Neighborhood Waste Pickers’ Association. A complete profile of waste pickers emerged from these conversations as we learned more about the waste picking procedures, their information management needs, the interactions with the community during their daily rounds, and the motivations and expectations that led them to join the Association.

"A recycler is not in the business of making a living from recycling alone."

"Right now, there's nothing because of the pandemic... the [volume of] waste picking dropped [by] a lot."

"Monday... Barrio Jara [neighborhood]. The next day, Molas [avenue]... Another day you go up Brasilia [avenue] and there you start weaving [through the city], entering here and there, wherever the goods come out."

"Sometimes there are problems with families... [others] break the bags, and just you go there afterwards, and the owner of the house comes out and finds the bags that were already broken... "

"[Through the] Association we already got three-wheeled cars. Now we're trying to get a warehouse."

"I'm thinking about [becoming a member of the Association] because I have very little space here [at home], just a small shed."

Extended profile of waste pickers in San Francisco Neighborhood 

The San Francisco neighborhood recycling wasteshed: routes and collection points

Some of the routes commonly taken by waste pickers to make their rounds have already begun to emerge through the interviews. Although some pickers explained that they change their routes daily, we observed geographical patterns of their routes that are shown in the thematic map of the collection sites of the city of Asunción. This map includes, in orange, the neighborhoods traveled by waste pickers who work on foot and, in light blue, the areas traveled with three-wheeled carts. The maximum distances of each mode are presented as circles that have their center at the common starting point: the San Francisco neighborhood in Zeballos Cue. This is the recycling wasteshed of the San Francisco neighborhood.

The recycling wasteshed of the San Francisco neighborhood, with the neighborhoods identified during the interviews.

Qualitative mapping was followed by geospatial mapping, with the voluntary participation of 10 waste pickers. Inspired by the user shadowing technique, we accompanied the 10 recyclers during a full day of activities, accurately recording their routes, collection points, quantity and type of materials recovered, and other relevant data of the collection and recycling dynamics between the recyclers and the community. With a mobile application we generate GPS traces of each route, labeling and characterizing each collection point. At the end of the route, we recorded the weight of the recovered materials by type.  

The recycling wasteshed of the San Francisco neighborhood, combining quantitative mapping.  

Descriptive statistics of the routes 

The road to the future: challenges and opportunities to work better

Some common challenges emerged through this mapping and the subsequent debate in a workshop to socialize the results with the waste pickers association and enrich our conclusions:

• Productivity, the motorcart, and gender inequality: trips with motorized means reach longer distances and, on average, result in higher productivity than walking trips (24.04 kg/hr vs 16.73 kg/hr). The greater distances that waste pickers can reach with their motorcarts offer them more opportunities. Although it also represents new costs, in fuel and maintenance, the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. On the other hand, women in the association do not have the same access to motorized vehicles as men. For the most part, women only access manual carts or sometimes simply bags. Moving towards a more collective and equitable use of motorized carts and having better tools for collecting recyclables by foot represents an opportunity to work better.

• Overlapping routes: short-distance walking routes often overlap with longer-distance routes. Establishing better coordination mechanisms and processes to select routes and territories is another challenge that represents an opportunity to work better.

• The information system challenge: the weighing and sorting of recyclables is done on an individua basis. Information management practices are not yet in place to introduce continuous improvements in the Association's performance. Establishing standardized mechanisms to record and manage relevant information, such as the weight of recyclables recovered, sales made, and market prices, is another opportunity to work better.

• The challenge of advancing cooperation and associativity: although the Association exists formally and has achieved many advances, the work of each collector is, for the most part, carried out independently. From the routes to the accumulation and sale of materials, the work is individual. Progressively adopting more collaborative practices of associated work is another opportunity to work better.

• The challenge of trust and waste separation at source: in the interviews and conversations we held, we heard again stories of distrust and non-appreciation of the service provided by waste pickers by the communities they serve. Moving towards processes and services that increase trust and the adoption of separation practices at source is another opportunity to work better.

Recently, the Association developed new regulations, democratically elected new authorities, completed its first collective commercialization experience, and secured new alliances to move towards better work. 

With the team that facilitated the mapping process, we also initiated a series of trainings and design activities to improve the resources available to the Association, including the experimental prototyping of an information system with computer science students from the Catholic University of Asunción. 

The challenge of building within the informal recycling system trust, meanwhile, is one focus of the pilot pilot project, Mi Barrio Sin Residuos. 

This recycling program connects households with recyclers through a platform and a coordinated differentiated collection service.  Launched by the Ministry of Environment (MADES), the Municipality of Asunción, UNDP and Coca-Cola Paraguay, with collaboration from Moises Bertoni Foundation, IADB 

Lab and Soluciones Ecológicas as the company in charge of implementing the pilot service. The objective is to encourage recycling and unite neighbors with local waste pickers, facilitating waste sorting at home. The lessons learned and the routes mapped during #AccLanPY’s research provided a starting point to define the initial territorial coverage of the pilot.

We are also collaborating with impact evaluation of the pilot, striving to integrate UNDP’s past learning with new evidence to informs the future design of recycling and new policies for inclusive recycling and waste management.

An extended version of all the lessons learned and activities carried out during this process can be downloaded and read in the technical report "Ñañemongeta,
mba'eichapa ikatu ñamba'apo porãve? Let's talk about how to work better." The UNDP team prepared this report with the support of the Exponencial consulting firm, which facilitated the implementation of the participatory mapping. This report is a contribution that we hope will be of great value to Asunción and other Paraguay cities in designing public policies for sustainable waste management that will help us work better.

Lea este blog en español aquí.

*Collaborations:

Camila González Paciello: Master of Arts in History of Global Markets from the University of Glasgow, Barcelona, and Goettingen. Joined the UNDP's Accelerator Lab in Paraguay in October 2020 as temporary support, helping with administrative duties, projects coordination, and translation tasks.