Here, There, and Everywhere

Today is our second ‘day off’ and a welcome relief from the grueling 14-hour days we’ve maintained since arriving in BsAs three weeks ago. Like our previous trips in 2007 and 2008 we spend a lot of time on trains and buses, and a typical day begins early with one of us studying the Guia to figure out the best route to take to our first destination, and sometimes our second destination, which, if we’re lucky, is not on an opposite end of the map. Mind you, this is not the small Guia that easily rolls up into a back pocket and shows the hundreds of bus routes in the Capital Federal … this is the large wire-bound Guia, the regional guide that includes Gran BsAs and its 23 surrounding barrios. When we resort to this one we know we have a very long journey ahead of us.

Yesterday we were lucky (and relieved) when Mercedes Ceciaga telephoned and suggested we share a remis out to Creando Conciencia in Tigre, which is in the upper right hand corner of the map, about as far away as we could go, and the route to which was already testing our navigational skills. Our rendezvous point was ‘only’ going to take about 45 minutes to reach, before the 1 hour-long non-licensed cab ride. This would be our first trip to Creando, an urban recycling cooperative that is likely going to participate in the second phase of our project after the pilot with Abuella Naturaleza and Nueva Mente finishes in June 2011. The cooperative, with 30 members, has passed through several of its own ‘development’ phases, but appears to be quite stable now after weaning itself from the group that first started it several years ago. It’s members work by collecting recyclables from several of the many cerrado or gated communities that have sprung up along the routes heading northwest of the city center toward Tigre in an area called Nordelta. These communities are enormous and, from the exterior, have little in common with Breezy Point in Queens or Hilton Head’s gates. They appear to be fortressed more than gated, with small buffers of grass or broken stone between the first layer of concrete walls and the razor wired ones, which separate these communities from the rest of Argentina – an occasional guard tower ensuring that separation remains in tact. Access is strictly controlled and, for the most part, they are pretty self sufficient – having replaced many municipal services with their own private ones. If ever there was an ‘us and them’ environment this is it and, sadly, it’s an example of one strain of Argentinean life and thinking that flies in the face of the other, opposite strain – the solidarity networks, which so many of the cooperatives we’ve worked with try very hard to nurture and expand. In a complex relationship involving CEAMSE, the all-powerful Confederación General del Trabajo de la República Argentina, or CGT Trade Union, the municipality of Tigre, and the various communities of the Nordelta, Creando Conciencia members go door-to-door to collect the separated ‘dry’ waste from the gated residents. We had a preliminary face-to-face meeting with Mercedes earlier in the week, which was full of cautionary tales of the now-to-familiar imbroglios that surround waste and recycling in Argentina, and which always jeopardize the security and autonomy of cooperatives like Creando. It was a reminder, as if we needed reminding, of why we were here and what we were attempting to do. This was our first opportunity to meet the cooperative as a group.

But the conclusion of that meeting didn’t signal the end of our day. We left Creando to visit a newly opened market in San Fernando, Sabe la Tierra (http://www.sabelatierra.com/) – another bus and train ride away. This was a continuation of our market quest, and a follow-up to a lead that Sebastian Carenzo, our Reciclando Suenos contact, gave us the week before. The market, which has only been open 1 week, sells ‘sustainable’ designs and agricultural products, and we thought it might be an appropriate venue for some of the composite products the cooperatives would make with the hotpress.

Their ‘motto’ (loosely translated as ‘consume less, recycle, reuse, upcycle’) nicely aligned with the environmental goals of Waste for Life, and it only took a couple of minutes of conversation and a look at our prototype wallets for the market director to agree to allow us to set up a booth when we were ready. We’ve been getting pretty much the same reaction from everyone – ‘ready when you are’ – but there’s always (and it’s unanimous) the talk of market strategy, of Telling the Story, which needs to be the subject of a subsequent post. In the meantime, though, without too many hiccups, we’re plowing ahead.