Trash Has Crashed

The NY Times published a December 7th article titled Back at Junk Value, Recyclables Are Piling Up, which confirms what we’ve been learning here. The market for recyclables is drying up, and prices have declined precipitously. We don’t know yet the extent of damage being done to the cartoneros on the street or within the cooperatives, but since they were already living perilously close to the economic edges, the news can only be very, very bad for them. Ironically, this makes our project – which adds value to waste by giving it a market or use value – even more relevant.