This online seminar, held on May 30th, 2024, explored the critical role of waste pickers in Barcelona’s recycling ecosystem. We tend to think that informal recycling is a Global South phenomenon, while it is a worldwide one. In the seminar, it was shown that thousands of waste pickers work daily in Barcelona (Spain) and have close relationships with households. This event was based on findings from the WASTECARE research project, funded by the municipality of Barcelona.
Presenters: Daniele Vico, dr Julian Porras, dr Federico Demaria (University of Barcelona, Faculty of Economics and Business)
Discussant: dr. Susana Narotzky (University of Barcelona, Department of Social Anthropology).
More information and dissemination materials available here: Wastecare dissemination materials (https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1e-8ZLvIiqx-sZObhuCU6iRW4T4zFgz03?usp=sharing)
Speakers:
Julián Porras Bulla is a postdoctoral researcher at the School of Economics at the University of Barcelona. For WASTECARE, he was in charge of the methodological design and coordinated the fieldwork. He has carried out extensive fieldwork with different communities of waste pickers in Colombia and Barcelona. His research fields are the sociology of work, economic sociology, and urban studies. He is the co-author of “Policing the stigma in our waste: what we know about informal waste pickers in the global north.”
Daniele Vico is a PhD student at the School of Economics at the University of Barcelona. He works in the fields of ecological economics and political ecology. His research focuses on urban waste management and informal recycling practices in cities in Europe and the Global South from a socio-metabolic perspective. For WASTECARE, he was in charge of conducting interviews and surveys with informal recyclers. Before joining the UB, he worked as a project manager for the International Labor Organization (ILO), focusing on unions, labour protection, just transition, social and solidarity economy.
Samuel Le Coeur is an activist for the rights of biffins (waste pickers) since 2008, and founded the AMELIOR (Association des Marchés d’Economies Locales et Individuelles Organisés de la Récupération) association in Montreuil (Fance) in 2012. He is member of the Excutive Council of the International Alliance of Waste Pickers.
Federico Demaria is an Associate Professor in ecological economics and political ecology at the the School of Economics at the University of Barcelona. He was the project Principal Investigator (PI) for WASTECARE. His main research interest is understanding the interactions between society, environment, and economy. In particular, his research aims to inform theory on how these interactions are shaped, politicized, and contested. His latest book is The political ecology of informal waste recyclers in India (Oxford University Press, 2023).
Susana Narotzky is a Full Professor of social anthropology at the University of Barcelona. She was the mentor for WASTECARE. She received her PhD from the University of Barcelona, and the New School in New York. She was awarded the “Ramón Menéndez Pidal” National Humanities Research Prize by the Ministry of Science and Innovation in 2020. She was PI of the project “Grassroots Economics: Meaning, Project and Practice in the Pursuit of Livelihood” [GRECO; 2013-2019], funded by the European Research Council (ERC) to study austerity policies among the working classes of southern Europe. She draws inspiration from theories of political economy, feminist economics, and studies on value regimes.
hi everybody ER we are about to start this seminar on weight speakers in h Barcelona we are still ad meeting a few people but I think I will start introducing the seminar I’m federo de Maria and I am a professor of ecological economics at the University of uh Barcelona and today we are presenting the results of a research project that has been ongoing now for uh almost three years which is called waste cares and in particular it is uh a project on waste piers in Barcelona when people think of waste piing or informal recycling they tend to think that is a global South uh phenomenon of people roaming around in the streets and collecting plastic or paper for then reselling it what we will argue today in the seminar of today is that waste pecking is a phenomenon also in the global North for instance in South Korea are retired people that do not have enough out of their retirements to cover in their basic needs and therefore dedicate themselves to waste peing this if anybody travels to Europe will see that there are waste peers also in Europe in in Barcelona in particular as you can see from the pictures waste peers collect Metals uh and then separate them and then transport and sell them to make a living they always they also collect Reus reusable objects like books or clothes or uh shoes uh I tend to think in general that wherever inequality exists there are way speakers because I think it is quite strong to think that there are people that are living out of the waste of somebody else but it is a phenomenon that exists it is important and we should understand it better uh quite often in Europe we are discussing about the circular economy the fact that our economic system is very unsustainable and we should be recycling more but we never discuss about the political dimension of the circular economy for instance are we ready to accept slaves to improve the recycling uh rates the seminar of today will be divided so to say into two parts the first part will present the results uh of 100 interviews that we did with W speakers in the streets of uh Barcelona what we will show is that they’re very important for the sustainability of the city we claim that they collect about 100,000 tons per year which as you can imagine is a lot of materials yet they earn very little about 20 euro per day which means per month less than half of the minimum salary and this means that they cannot cover their needs for instance half of them are homeless and then we will go into the details of their relationship with the households because despite the fact that authorities tend to uh ignore way peers households do interact with them and the interesting fact is that houses in Barcelona 70% of them as we will explain recycled paper plastic paper and organic material but they have problem dealing with the other type of waste such as Electronics or furniture or oil and here is where the waist Pickers come into the picture and what we will show is that there are direct interaction between households and uh wayist speakers and that households in Barcelona generally speaking have a very positive perception of the work that the way speakers are doing they understand it is very hard work but it is a very important one for the city H for the time being I’ll ask you to mute your microphone if you have any question or comment you are welcome to share them in the chat at any point we will s start with the presentation of the results but before that we’re going to give sort of international flavor to this seminar so we have here in the room Samuel leur Samuel is the founder and director of amor which is a FRS Association of way speakers and Street talkers based in Paris and marel they are a union of about a thousand workers and interestingly Sam is also a member of the executive committee of the International Alliance of way speakers which is a union uh of about half a million way speakers around the world in more than 40 countries so Samuel please thank you for being with us and U you have the war okay hello to H are you listening me all right yes very well some thank you so hello to those I don’t know congratulation to be part of the knowledge about West Piers life hello Julia Alexandro our colleagues from Italy and there is maybe also L from Turkey we are part of the European continent represented inside the International Alliance of w peers uh the International Alliance of w Pier just began his own Democratic process of representation we come back from benos a few weeks ago and we have now a president vice president Treasurer and the member of commit and also more than 81 organization from 31 country maybe I make some mistake so we try to represent the 23 millions or more of voice speakers who take part in the the channel of um material um and who provide 60% of the material who are recycling by industry in the world so if we if we want to reduce our waste and make more Recycling and reuse of course we must we must consider us as essential workers so our history is a very whole history you know it’s more older than a political party and from the from then that the police it means that West peers in France are recognized since 8th Century there is no industry Revolution without our um participation and uh nowadays we are in possibility of disapparition maybe we disappear if we do not have access to flee market to sell what we can take from the street so in Italy there is a most few thousand of West Piers like in France maybe 10,000 or 15,000 in all big city where there is waste where there is inequalities and where there is no right for this category of workers so first we considered as workers uh and of course we consider as workers we must be protected as a human being and human dignity so that’s the first goal to be considered to be paid for our jobs um in France we organized W Piers Street selling market and we organize also as a structure Central structure the collection and the recycling of maybe 150 tons a month um textile Etc so uh the fact is that if there is no right to work there is no possibility uh for our society to to engage a real process of recycling so that’s why we are all together uh to defend our rights as workers so uh we are very interesting uh to know other organization of for speakers in Europe Julia alandro petro and other from Europe um we must find new organization so if you have any uh knowledge about organization in Spain we will be very happy to meet them and to exchange about our common goals um if you have any question uh don’t hesitate um I don’t know what to tell you more than you can trust W speakers to provide a good public service to the city and to the citizen also we defend popular economy we consider that anyone in our ground must have access to decent work and uh to transit to make a transition uh from informal economy inal is not a real good name for me for us because with working we we respond we give an answer to our uh normal way of life in Earth which mean to have a to have money to pay the rent and to have money to eat so if we cannot eat we cannot sleep we are not uh we are not human being you know so we we need to find cities and public policies who accept our role and to give us the fair price for our participation we are do we are not we for us we are not slave we are workers who are not recognized and it’s a very old story about uh workers who need to have access to their rights we have a lot of Revolution we have a lot of progress uh since Century that people can have access to rights to their rights of working and right of human being so we are not slave but we are com confed we are under pressure to not be included we are already include naturally because we work and we know people who give us things and we know people who buy us things we know also that for for example in our region uh 50% of the tonage of metal uh is from the ends of the West Piers so we are considered as dissimulated worker of the Public Waste Management uh and private uh sector who who sometimes benefit of the public service delegation uh buy us material as private sector also so there is this very unfair situation we must stop to begin to have rights for West Piers so I hope in Barcelona in Spain uh and in the future in all Europe we can have access to to public policies we can be inside the strategy of a road map to reduce the waste uh like this we can be part of the society we are already include but officially we are excluded workers we are excluded by the police who come from the politics and uh we need to find place to work uh as any Enterprise Collective Enterprise if you have any question um will be happy to try to answer thank you Samuel I think that intervention was very important we we share the same Spirit of this call for for recognition and for the rights of way speakers this is it was the motivation at the core of the study that we started uh three years ago so I think sharing your experience was very important and of course we will be in touch because the fight is long and it is nice uh being together so thanks a lot Samuel for being here with us and uh now I want to give so next I’ll there will be the intervention of Danielo and recyclers then next julan poras on households Chia Samuel and then last Susan narki who is a professor of anthropology in our University will act as a discussion Danielo is um has been trained in development studies and he was a former project manager at the international labor organization and right now he’s doing his PhD on waist piers in Barcelona so please tell us about who the waist piers are and how they do they work in Barcelona thank you thank you federo for the introduction and uh for giving me the floor and thank you Samuel for your your introduction um so my brief presentation today will uh Focus mainly on uh uh describing uh or providing some data on informal recyclers or W peers in the city of Barcelona according to the data that we uh collected in our project first of all allow me to introduce um let’s say the main actor of uh or one of the main actors of of our research which is in fact informa recyclers in uh in Barcelona informa recyclers are commonly called chatos which comes from the Spanish word chatara which means scrap metal uh and uh nowadays uh informal resers in Barcelona are workers who operate in the informal economy and I apologize to Samuel for using this term that in our case means mainly workers who are not recognized by the formal economy uh and uh uh mainly they collect transport sort and sell scrap metal uh in the city um in our research uh we argue that informal recyclers substantially contribute to the recycling of metals uh in Barcelona uh however um we have observed that they uh face a situation of heavy marginalization which unfolds along three axes uh legal marginalization economic marginalization and labor market marginalization the un uh interplay of these three axis creates uh a situation that we call of structural informality in which uh informal recyclers in the city are trapped and in the next slides uh I will present some more detailed uh data uh to show why we are making this claim we are making this case uh our findings uh just as an introduction are based on a survey uh that we collected on a sample of around 100 informal recyclers uh a survey that then we complemented with data from observations and uh uh from inters what you’re seeing here is the profile of Barcelona’s inform recyclers according to our data we observed that they are mainly U mostly men uh who are young in fact 63% of them is below 40 years of age uh they have a migrant background in particular uh 75% is from Africa mainly from Sagal but there is also uh a noticeable share of people coming from Romania and belonging to the Roma Community they are of recent migration in Spain uh almost 60% of then uh arrived in Spain uh two years ago or less um and uh a great majority of them almost 80% of them is undocumented they do not have the ni which is the document that foreigners need uh to to be in Spain let’s say is regular migrants what you you can see in this slide is a simplified uh explanation of the work of informa recyclers in the city um as you can see uh they collect uh scrap metal mainly from waste containers uh and among them uh in a big majority of the cases from the gray containers which are the containers of unsorted waste but they also collect it from uh uh the streets more generally and from construction sites and uh after that they sell uh the metal to Brokers uh which uh in Barcelona Catalonia are called chatas uh which are somehow the node between the informal economy and the formal economy between the recyclers and the recycling industry and the brokers in turn sell the materials to the recycling industry and our estimate in this study is that there are more than 3,000 recyclers in Barcelona uh what you can see here in this graph uh this graph shows uh the main types of materials that they collect uh we are talking about iron uh aluminium cables that they collect for the copper that is inside then there is a category called chatara or metal mix and then uh other types uh the prices of uh the materials the metallic materials are quite low uh they range from 0.19 per kilo in the case of AO to 56 per kilo uh in the case of clean copper which is quite rare to find actually one thing one of the most important thing that we ask to inform our recyclers uh is uh how much they work per day and what is their average income uh what you can see here is that uh they we found out that on average they work around 10 hours a day and almost six days per week which results results in a working week of 60 hours which is um much more more than the uh 40 hours working week which is the full full-time employment according to Spanish labor legislation um in terms of income uh we have found out that on average uh they earn uh around2 EUR per day as federo was saying uh which effectively means uh around €2 per hour which uh per month means uh less than 500 uh Euros which is less than half than the minimum wage in Spain so this very low wage and High um and long working time results in situation of struggle and precarity and uh therefore we observed Survivor strategies uh such as that of homelessness almost half of our sample is homeless uh or in the case of squatting uh in the 6 in 6% of the cases the reminder leaves in uh flats that are rented out sometimes collectively another important information that we asked in former recyclers uh is that of the quantities uh we basically asked them to try to estimate how much waste they collect every day uh and we found out that on average uh one inform cycle in Barcelona collects around 120 kilg of scrap metal per day day um so if we assume that they are working around five or six days per week throughout the years throughout the year this means that one individual collector uh collects uh around 36 tons of waste in a year then if we multiply this data for the estimated number of 3,200 workers that we try to estimate uh we are talking about around 115 thousand tons of metals handled every year by informal recyclers alone uh in the city of Barcelona which is a quite taring number in terms of working conditions uh what we observe is that first of all uh quite obviously uh operating informally uh and uh being undocumented uh they uh do not have a contract uh this uh practically means that they lack any any kind of basic social protection and uh labor rights um we also uh didn’t manage to detect any uh any visible tra of collective organizing uh so these workers usually work alone uh and this means that they have very low or no bargaining power uh over the price prices of the waste that they sell in the waste value chain uh we also observed that they usually uh work without safety gear or with very poor safety gear so they face health and safety risk on the job and when we asked them uh whether they uh could rely on other jobs uh 84% of them told us that they uh could not and when we asked them why most of them told us that basically being undocumented prevents them from being able to join uh the formal labor market finally um another thing that we asked uh was um to tell us about interactions that they have with the urban environment and with some key stakeholder in the urban environment of the city and what we found out we we found out is actually that uh they have quite some connection and interactions with uh different uh Act first of all households we have noticed that almost 60% of them told us that uh they have interaction with households with Barcelona citizens um and almost 50% of uh them told us that they have interaction with workers from construction sites uh most of uh these interactions are nonc conflictive in fact they are quite cooperative and they revolve around uh the retrieval of Med Metals for sale um we even know some recyclers told us that they have a direct contact a mobile uh contact with the households or with construction workers that call them when they have to get rid of some materials um the the interactions with Waste Management workers uh and with law enforcement on the other hand uh are not so frequent 27% is the in the case of was Management workers and 25% in the case of police in these cases as well we try to investigate the quality of the interaction and most of them told us that uh these interaction were not conflictive um and uh especially in the case of police almost no no recycler in our sample told us that they were stopped because of the activity they that they were doing so for some reason the the the picture that we could that we can draw is that draw is that uh informal recycling seem to be Toler tolerated by the authorities so in conclusion uh to close my presentation uh I want to go back to our claim um we we argue that in foral recyclers in fact provide a material contribution to the recycling of metals of the city uh yet they are trapped in a condition of structural informality uh that it that it’s characterized by uh difficulty to regularize their migration status uh by the difficulty to find other jobs uh by basically an inexistent labor protection and by very low and also fluctuating income this means that they are uh heavily socio economically marginalized despite uh the contribution that they provide however they are not so invisible as perhaps some of the uh mainstream narratives uh tell uh on the in fact they have quite interesting Cooperative relations with some stakeholders of the city in particular with households and with other workers and with this I um I can uh finish my presentation and I leave the floor to uh Julian for the second part of this seminar thank you very much thanks a lot danela that was a great short summary of our results on the way speakers in Barcelona we hope it brings some light uh on the phenomenon and now we have Julian poras who is a sociologist with the PhD from this University who has specialized in informal workers in Barcelona has done research on this topic for for some years now and he will be discussing how the way Piers relate uh to households in Barcelona julan please you have the floor thank you thank you federo and thank you Danielle well we have seen that informal recycler are embedded in a huge network of actors and we were very interested in in the in an specific relationship with the households because we thought that were one of the most important actors and this is why one of our goals was exploring this H relationship and ER and to do that we will we will we we we conduct a different uh methods noer observations like a kind of rography in different neighborhoods H interviews deep interviews in a kind of home visit tours we apply also a 100 surveys in different neighborhoods upper class middle class lower class in in a kind of with open questions a kind of survey pilot Sur that allow us to build a solid Sur that we apply to 300 to online uh surveys to inhabitants of Barcelona from 80 to 7 25 years old that we that will be representative by gender and groups of age um sorry I don’t know what happened here is it okay um one of the first question was who man wish because we were concerned about the idea of H who do that no and who maybe can connect with them and uh as we can see managing ways at at home is a is a chair activity maybe is is is is doing by by GRS no the maybe parents the couple also all the family when when the children grow up no but when was in church in a for someone in a specific it it is consistent with the results that we can see in in L literature or in other statistics about reproductive labor no here in this case women h are in Charing 33% in front of 27% of men when we ask about what the households do no and the majority of them they recycle 70% always 27% occasionally 4% uh a very little little group of population they don’t recycle and seems that they don’t have so much problem with this five portion that we have in waste management system in Barcelona no a packaging glass paper and um organic or or or rest no but one of the interesting results is this only n Only per of the household separate other materials since that we don’t have problems with this five containers or or the or the materials with of these five containers but we have problems with all these other ones no like oil batteries H electronic devices Maybe wway buyways and it is consistent with the other uh question no when we ask about the effort H the majority of the of the household says that for to ordinary ways they don’t have they have little or not or not effort but on other hand when we ask about other ways no like like what what I was explaining no oil batteries electronic devices they they they consider that it was a considerable effort 63% of the households and sorry and when we try to connect this with challenges no what are the biggest challenge in waste management at home we have like a two main uh two different types of of challenge one related with the storage space and another related with weight or distance it is clear when we when we try to understand that we live in very narrow very small apartments and also we produce a lot of waste no it seems that is not is not ex strange no uh other other percentage of population they have problems 22% with knowledge or understanding and already one 40 50% more or less family or behavioral problems no this typical discussion where we put the pets poop no or maybe the diapers no and we can recognize that we have a lot of problems with waste no it’s a a one of of the one of the one of the problems and mainly connected as we say no with the space with weight with the distance and then we have problems to digest our our waste and and when I visit h Homes uh I this is a picture from uh one of the homes uh uh the one of the inter intervie interviewers she told me look this is the Panic Room well I saw a lot of panic rooms or maybe not rooms but Corners a lot of panic Corners in in Barcelona and when we saw this or or when we see this kind of uh pictures we can realize that maybe we are not we we we we cannot face the management of this kind of materials in the for in in the in an individual manner no h maybe we we we recognize that we need help no mainly from other members from the family but also from outside look this data 59% of the househ have got help from Neighbors relatives or friends and of course we will see that other actors too see that manage waste management is not an individual or autonomous or an independent activity as we used to think look this other picture this is a typical narrow stairs in Barcelona in our in our buildings maybe it it is also connected with with our main challenges no weight h space H distance and of course infra infrastructure and when we try to think in a in a no in a in a comprehensive way H we can connect with this with this quote H it was a female interview and she was a domestic worker around 40 years old and she told me my boss a young businessman she described it like this uh and I can I and I cannot take a h cannot take sorry but I can see properly and I cannot take a piece of furniture uh out onto the street he lives on the fifth floor and he asked me if I knew anyone who could help us it’s interesting that someone young with resources to to to know to to to to to to to pay someone to deal with with her waste with his waste and cannot be totally autonomous no cannot be totally independent in in terms of dealing with his waste when we ask about the the relationships uh we found one of the most important results that we have it’s not uh when we ask have you seen recyclers in your neighborhood 83% of the population of the households say yes plus 5% that they say that they were not sure it let us think this idea of invisibility sometimes we used to think Media or government used to think this kind of workers as a as a marginalized or excluded groups but not seems that they are quite visible and they are part of this this this or at least the all the household recognize them maybe what is invisible are the the social relation of this occupation or the social relation that we have around waste management or also the occupation that could be they are not recognized by Media or by government it’s a it’s an issue that we have to to to to research more uh when we ask the relation H 33% have a direct interaction with with informal recyclist H give the objects for example and materials or talk to them or give them food or have their phone number and call them uh asking a favor no uh but seem that is not the only H interaction look this data 64% intentionally live materials or objects next to or over the containers and for them 66% say that they are thinking mainly about recyclers see that they establish another way of interaction Susan narki give us a a clue concept no a key concept she she she call it I guess invisible no interaction well she will tell us a bit more later uh we we we we call it invisible interactions no and I remember when I interview some of the on the street in Barcelona H some of them they say well I left the toaster on the street and then I walk around 5 minutes at come back no and I I I check it well they live materials but they also they are sending messages in somehow no material messages we can say that they establish different types of interaction um what the households leave well clothes Furnitures or bony items choose metal kitchen items electric or electronic objects books toys well mainly objects uh than uh informal recyclers reintroduce or or reuse but also those objects are are a source of of of materials that informal recyclers they sell when we ask about reasons why there are more or less three big reasons one more connected with green or eological conscious or something like that and are connected with more with avoid ways and allowed someone uh to benefit from the objects that they left or because can be reused I remember a couple that I that I interview and they told me uh our son bought us a huge TV flat TV and we didn’t know what to do with the old one and and they face with this problem no they know that they have a an object with value with use value and they can H deal in a in a waste management system of Barcelona they tie the higher they attach the remote control and they put a label it works and put it next to the container and somehow they they ask for a new or a different manner to to deal with these kind of objects with use value other reason is help the the the informal recyclers no is make recyclers work easier almost 40% of the population says why they leave the objects next to next to the containers or over and it it shows that this interaction is not only in One Direction it’s not only households asking H that someone take their their objects also the house the the households and they expand the care of their help outside their homes no for example look this this quote I leave it in a back in and they mention and they were talking about clothes washed and IR see that we don’t we don’t treat our ways in that manner it’s a particular ways no it’s a it’s a also it’s a way of of of of treat other ones no the other uh reason why is is a more individualistic one we can we can say because it’s easier for them no 28% [Music] um H we can say that the household they have a positive perception for the wor for the formal recyclers they don’t have alternative they think it’s a hard work they don’t earn enough for a desent living they contribute to sustainability they help significantly in recycling and when we think how could the relationship between recyclers and households be exed ER we ask them no we we we we ask them the different possibilities and we ask if they will be ready to collaborate for example calling a cooperative for recyclers and 76% they they they agree and a little bit a little less about the idea of downloading an app not to keep in touch 54% and uh we ask about order possible intervention or or policies the idea of new a new container for Metals 71% they agree uh uniforce or protective materials as gloves or glasses or for ra cyclers they say 70% they were agree as well that the informal recycles were hired by city council 60% or symbolic recognition or regularizing their in migration migration status uh we can conclude that we have to reink the values that uh are on the foundation of waste management system values of capacity autonomy Independence or dependence how depend who we interpretate we claim for for for for focus on the idea of interdependence no we are in interdependent we recognized years or we have been recognizing that interdependence inside home is is is is is is is is is part of our Lives maybe we are also interdependent in our Waste Management no in terms of space weight and management of objects with use of value and also materials this is what we why we claim no for this waist care perspective that give us no a clues or lens that put it to highlight know the this extrange relations that we have with way and help us know to face this increasingly inequal capitalism that increasingly mix materials and devaluate objects so fast excellent thank you for your attention please please go ahead sorry I didn’t want to cut you jul thanks uh julan um for sharing with us the results on the households of course I wanted to say that uh it is not the only the three of us who did this project there were many collaborators you see them uh list here maybe there are too many for me to read them uh out but but you can have a look we got funding for this project uh which is called waste care from the city council of Barcelona from a nice program they have on a funding project of uh young uh researchers applied to the needs of of the city of course we are very thankful to the interviews and the surveys respondents in particular way speakers because we were bothering them when they were uh working it was not easy we must say also talking to them because since they are in a situation of social vulnerability they are often very much afraid of of talking to other people H we will be continuing um on this project with the on this issue researching on this issue with the new project which is called circular Grassroots Innovation for sustainable and inclusive Urban transition which is led by Maria Jose sapat at the University of gotenburg which is a comparison of Grassroots initiatives in the circular economy between Amsterdam gotenburg Barcelona and Nan so if you’re interested in this topic do not hesitate to to contact us and now I would like to give the word to Susanna nari uh who will um make a comment on our research she was uh our Mentor for the project we had a chance some weeks ago to share some preliminary Arts she gave us comments which we thought were so relevant that we may be worth sharing also with you Susanna uh um is a very prestigious scholar she got into uh 2020 the national Humanity research prize by the ministry of Science and innovation in Spain and uh some 10 years ago she was the principal investigator of the project Grassroots economics meaning project and prait in the pure Street of the livelihood which aimed to study austerity policies among the working classes of southern Europe so her perspective is was very interesting for us and I have done doubt you will find it interesting thank you fana for taking the time uh for being here with us today thank you thank you federo thank you Julian and Danel for having you know uh really taken taken this this particular issue at heart and uh having developed this uh research for uh during a few years um I’m I I don’t want to take much time because I I really think that what’s import important is the um you know the feedback from our uh uh other colleagues that are here um uh listening to the presentation I I just I’m going to to um say a few things and uh some of them um come from um uh our comments that really are based on my own ethnographic and anthropological uh kind of perspective on uh on method if you want no on on on but I think it they could be maybe helpful to go forward maybe in this uh project that you are now um this this uh International comparative uh uh project so first of all I think that uh what’s really very interesting uh in in your uh project is this this issue of uh articulating the uh wayte peing uh work with households so uh and also you know this issue of care uh I will come back to the care issue because I think uh um I think it could be developed a little bit more I mean in in subsequent uh uh Works uh and I also think uh what’s very very important is something that uh federo said a while ago which is this political dimension of uh the circular economy so everybody’s speaking about this circularity and circular economies and so on and so forth but then H there is not so much work on how these really in on the ground Works um and uh I I find that this this aspect of looking at these uh informal so to speak recyclers uh is very important some I mean I I know that uh there has been um quite a lot of research done on informal recycling uh in Latin America and in other you know places like India and uh southeast Asia Etc but it’s true I think that in Europe uh and probably uh North America there aren’t so many uh Works um looking at this so um I think that your research uh shows basically three important issues first that these recyclers these informal recyclers uh are doing an essential work uh for Society for this circular economy uh objective uh and so uh they are uh really very important for this uh um let’s say objective of sustainability um and also uh and here I I I think that you could expand uh more uh probably because this is related to the care aspect um I think that these these um the work they do uh is also has to be understood as a as um as a way uh that these recyclers have to survive to find to access resources that make their lives possible in uh in these kind migration diaspora where they are um you know living uh so um I think that this in in this sense it would be interesting to know more about um how they redistribute these resources that they access you know the the the money so to speak the income that they get that they uh get through these recycling jobs um how do they distribute this income do they use it all uh for their own Survival do they uh send remittances of some kind do they you know uh uh help other uh migrants uh in uh Barcelona or elsewhere in Europe Etc so this caring aspect of the uh recyclers themselves no um the second issue which I think is is very important uh and you know we knew about it but you really present some data uh is that this is a uh a very uh a hyper exploitative uh work that they do uh it’s not regulated and it’s in a gray zone of recognition because I think that uh Samuel uh said something which is very important which is these these par do where they are simultane simultaneously included and excluded so the their work is obviously visible it’s tolerated by the um municipality by the police uh Etc by the neighbors uh and the citizens but at the same time it’s unrecognized uh it’s unprotected and uh it’s you know subject to uh all sorts of uh arbitrariness uh in the way that um you know the the uh policy makers deal with uh these workers uh so I think that that’s a very very important uh point and um and finally uh what I think is very interesting but I I would like more information about uh is this interaction with households uh I kind of feel that you know it needs more qualitative if I might say so um research here uh anyway I I will I will go more into it uh right now um something which I think this work does uh and I I think this is one of its main um assets and I also think this was probably the main objective when you you know you you propose this uh research was the um aim uh to uh both um uh get some recognition for this work so public recognition so just saying well there is all this amount of res cycling that is being done by these people who are there and we all know they are there but you don’t really recognize them uh uh formally no uh uh but also uh the fact which is also something that you kind of address which is redistribution um which relates to exploitation so uh they are doing this uh work and they don’t get uh you know uh rewarded for it in the proper way that would be you know uh um less exploitive um so in fact you are dealing with redistribution and recognition which are these two aspects that Nancy Fraser for example highlights in in her work and I think it’s very clear um here so your objective in a way I think is uh to have policy makers uh kind of uh uh understand that they they have to act uh and act in a positive way for the recyclers but uh this would be also positive for society in a more uh you know General General way so uh you know to summarize what I think this is a very important uh work and uh I think it it underlines a a reality that has to be taken into account and acted upon by you know the uh uh powers that be you know municipal or uh um you know Regional or at the state level or uh or uh you know European uh level or whatever so um here are some of the comments or questions that I have that um This research doesn’t seem to answer fully and I would you know I just I’m I’m wondering if you know more about it and I I also uh think that this might be you know my own perspective this ethnographic kind of uh perspective um versus the survey kind of perspective no so first uh about the uh differences between the waist Piers so you are speaking about the way speakers in a very general way so these there is the African way speakers the Roma Way speakers and other uh um nationalities so to speak uh but uh to me what I have been observing and I’ve been observing the waste priers for a long time without doing research but just you know observing and photographing um the way that subsaharian uh waste peers uh operate in the street uh when they do their work is very different from the way the Roma waste peers operate so in what I’ve seen and I might be wrong but I think this requires more research really um I think that whereas the uh subsaharian way speakers are more uh indiv work individually and you you know they don’t relate much to each other they sometimes they speak with each other but it’s very rare uh the Roma waste peers seem to operate in a kind of network of you know relations um and I think the I I think these differences are important because um they probably are important in in terms of redistribution redistribution of uh work and of income so you know we and and so in fact of care uh so we need to know this resource which is the informal work of wa waste peers which in the end is a resource for them to you know find some um living livelihood um resources um you know they have access to it in different ways so that’s one thing the other thing uh is that I think you should um look more into the Brokers so these these Brokers are really a a very central part of this recycling informal recycling uh uh system and and you show you you you know in your very one of your very first slides it’s very clear the Brokers are there there and I think uh looking more into the Brokers is important because um it relates to price and to prices and to uh uh how um how prices are um are uh arrived at you know so for example if we have a very few number of Brokers we would have a monopsony which would mean or an olop which would mean that the people who are selling the sellers the waste peers do not have a lot of uh you know room to go to the to the other uh broker uh if there are many Brokers there is more leeway so you can um haggle more with the prices uh and I think that’s important because making it’s not only about Collective organ organizing which is what you say they are not collectively organized so they cannot you know uh uh pressure the Brokers but it’s also about the market the situation of the market and the situation of the market is not only about the prices of the metals you know and the you know whatever the market uh uh of U uh futures or whatever but it’s also about about the com you know the the um competition in the market you know how how much competition is there between buyers no so I think that’s something you you really need to uh look into because it relates to something that Samuel also uh said which is the free market are they really uh operating in a free market or not or is it a monopoly or an oop you know a monop monopsony or oligopsony and I think that’s important to you know get into um into that uh then the uh another thing is um relates to uh these um you you kind of say in a few uh in a few uh places that um they um you know they cannot work they cannot find other jobs because they don’t have the N you know they are not regularized um so I have two issues with that first one there is another kind of level of regularization for irregular migrants which is the padron they can be andronados without being regular with others no without having the the official n uh and the padron gives them access to health General Health so it’s important to have the padron even if you don’t have the ni um the other thing is about job you jobs there is a lot of you know job jobs for informal uh migrants in agriculture in uh you know petty petty selling Petty Commerce Etc so even if they are not regularized and they don’t have uh you know access to a formal official job they could be hopping in between different kinds of informal jobs so if they don’t do it we should try to understand why maybe because even if this is very badly paid maybe it’s a better option or not maybe you know uh whatever or maybe they do hop from one uh informal job to another so that’s something we need to you know kind of know because I think that all these um non uh regular ized uh jobs are kind of related to each other we have a an an ecosystem of informality which is very Central to the way uh actually present day capitalism works everywhere in you know uh uh in uh in the um in in the in the European uh and uh Western count countes as as well as elsewhere so anyway that’s uh something else and finally uh in relation to uh the households I have two two issues the fir or three maybe the first one is um I would like to have a break a a a breakup uh of neighborhoods because I think different neighborhoods have different relations with the waste be I think there is uh um you know the relationship with waste Pickers has lots to do with class for example no workingclass neighborhoods versus uh you know very Bourgeois whatever neighborhoods and they they relate difference and and we don’t see that in your um you know presentation but maybe you I mean Julian said he had an idea uh about these differences the second thing is is um that uh I think we need to uh differentiate and I I don’t know to what you know in what measure you can do that with the kind of uh um the kind of evidence that you have uh the discourse of households and of people in households and the practices so one thing is what people say they do what they think uh in a a particular moment you say the H um people think something or other you know well I I I don’t know what I mean we all say things and we do different things so I think that’s important to kind of uh understand the difference and follow up with the practices really uh and finally something that surprised me uh but you probably might have the the uh information is that uh you uh you have a list of what people of what households leave so what what they live in the containers or you know in the street whatever and the uh uh primary things they leave is clothes shoes furniture and then some you know kitchen wees and so on fine you know I I I think this is perfectly what it the reality of it but then your waste piers are basically metal waste Pickers so there is something that doesn’t you know connect so so when the households are saying oh yes we think about the way peers and we leave the things here maybe they are thinking about other way peers which are not the ones you have been looking at so I think there you are you have a an issue that you need to kind of address um and anyway I I think this is a great project but I really think you need to you know uh keep on going and looking at it maybe from a more kind of graphic perspective thank you thank you that’s fantastic Susanna that’s why we invite you H to discuss and challenge us that’s that’s great really the good news is also that the the project officially ends uh in a month but then we will continue three more years at least uh researching on this so there is time to uh fill up the gaps um we’ve been taking uh notes of your question so we will address I don’t know if of them but some of this in turn I will go first then Danel and then uh Julian so first I want so they’re not in order the way in which I’m uh we are addressing the questions but uh first is about the way speakers and then we will do the households so on relation to the issue of how is the income from way speaking redistributed it’s a good question what we wanted to do next is to interview way speakers on how they spend their money but we we know that on average they earn about 500 EUR per month and as far as we understand now there is no much money left for remittances because if they rent a room this cost to them about 100 or2 200 EUR per month and then you have food and then maybe you have a little bit of tobacco or marijuana or uh alcohol and then some other expenses so your money is basically gone uh it’s also true that you raised before an issue which I think is important that there are we should differentiate among way speakers no not all way speakers are the same we are talking here about averages for Simplicity but there are people that have for instance more experience or they are physically more able or they have more contacts or they spend more time on way speakings and therefore they’re able to make more money so in this case I think there are remittances indeed um here and I’m not surprised the questions come from you because you’ve been working on on values regime there is a a question and here I’m addressing the issue of Brokers related to the value chain no in the sense that what we would need to do but it’s not so easy is to get the prices of this material at different stages of the value chain when the wayte Picker sells it when then the broker send it to more specialized Brokers because the one who buy from W Piers buy all the metals but then this broker sells to another more specialized Brokers which buys for instance only iron or only a certain type of metal and then this sells it to the recycling industry it would be great to have these prices to see what is the value chain and whether uh way to see or prove that way piers are actually exploited within this value chain this data we have not been able to to obtain yet at least uh but of course it would be uh quite relevant um the issue of the Brokers is is is quite interesting in fact Julian has been demonstrating that there are Brokers or chatalas all around Barcelona they follow when you look at the map of Barcelona sort of horizontal line and this is because of an issue that claudo katano was Raising in the chat which is the fact that was peers with a cart full of 100 kilos of metals they cannot travel very far so they need to find the broker which is rather close and this of course influences price determination there are other determinants of the prices and one is for instance whether you have papers or not whether you have an identification number or not the and this is because uh officially for selling the materials you should be able to identify yourself to prove that this material is not be stolen so if you are an undocumented uh migrant then you don’t have this paper so you have to sell to another intermediary another broker which will pay you less because you don’t have the documents um so this issue of the value chain and the how prices are determined in this market it’s it’s a very relevant one and the one in which we still need to to work more on of course there are also the international fluctuation on prices and what happens in the international market does affect what happens uh in uh Barcelona and last before giving the word on Danelle for the issue of uh exclusion or inclusion I wanted to comment on this idea you had that why don’t why don’t they jump from one informal work to the other well we don’t know exactly uh we said that for 84% of them way speaking is the main occupation and then the other jobs that they mention are the one that you mention working in the informal sector but in construction in agriculture cleaning uh painting moving materials or stuff like that my guess would be something that you raised already that they they make less money in that sector than in this one there is also an issue I think which is related Rel to networks and the fact that those who are in way speakers are recent migrants so they’ve been in Barcelona for two years or less and according to what they were telling us it takes about a week to train yourself into waste picking and you have no investment to make you can start straight away so probably my guess would be that the barrier for entering into way peing is not too high so this is why they end up there and still what they make compared to other informal works uh is not too bad of course we could say much more on this but I want to leave the give the word to uh danela to address the issue of inclusion or exclusion and maybe if you want also the issue of the differentiation of way speakers for instance the differences between subsaharian and roma uh and then maybe julang after can address a little bit more the questions on households Dan uh thank you federo for the floor and thank you Susanna for the very sharp observations and questions um I I think they were all very interesting um I would like to to react in particular to uh your reflection on um this gray zone of uh between recognition and not recognition and exploitation also maybe um building on Fraser that you mentioned um the picture that you are uh uh that you’re suggesting is is quite fitting in fact uh what we what we realize in our in our observation is that um they are not so invisible as they appear no they have relations with uh with other actors in the city uh which are either of cooperation or uh or or of acceptance because even in the cases of police we we really initially we really wanted to observe whether there were conflicts with the law enforcement uh and uh surprisingly we notice that in most cases if there is uh any interaction this is not uh very conflicted there is in fact some uh tolerance for what they’re doing um Nancy Fraser uh when she describes capitalist economy today uh explains how um basically entire groups of workers or entire uh jobs are moved in between the formal capitalist economy and the inform economy according to what is more profitable no um for for the so-called capital accumulation um and I think what we are observing here in the case of way peing can be framed in this term uh in these terms uh because on one hand uh the fact that they are tolerated shows that uh this is um a service that is required by the economy because uh this the materials that you collect are necessary for the economy to to function but at the same time What It Seems from the low prices uh in the value chain is that uh this um this service is would not be profitable enough to be uh to to create a uh a job in the formal economy and so what we end up is a situation in which we have workers that are doing a useful service but that can be can do it only if somehow they are exploited um and the Nancy Fraser also suggests how uh in in our economies this happens through legal um to Legal Frameworks to legal in institutional framework so this is also why we wanted to stress the fact that they are uh legally marginalized uh and uh yeah legally marginalized basically because what we noticed is that there is this interaction between labor low uh and the migration law that is what keeps them uh from prevents them from being uh legal migrants which might be uh somehow functional uh to to profit profitability of this business um and then I also wanted to to to address your your Reflections on the differences between among way speakers um I want to first of all start by saying that uh when we OB oberved our sample and we also observed where we collected the the surveys uh we have noticed that uh we ended up um collecting them uh very often close to the chatar areas close to the Brokers uh this means that we have uh uh reflected on the possibility that we uh underestimated the presence of uh way speakers belonging to the Roma Community because as you also suggested they might not be um operating close to the chatar areas but in more uh uh structured uh and more hidden uh waste collection and separation uh context at the same time though I would like to to to say very briefly that I’m not completely sure that um the work of subaran uh recyclers is more individual uh in the sense that probably on an agregate level it is because Roma recyclers are very very well organized but we started to notice that especially among recyclers coming from Sagal uh there are some uh some Cooperative Dynamics uh based on probably National or ethnic belonging that are are interesting there are a few chatara or informal collection centers as the one that federo suggested before uh which are uh let’s say um collect mainly uh resources and work coming from from sagales way speakers which is also something that might be interesting in terms of remittances which federo suggested earlier but it’s something that we haven’t investigated in detail and very quickly maybe fed will also address the question on squatting um that was in the chat someone was asking the dist to draw the distinction between homelessness and squatting this is an interesting question and with don’t have a very very precise uh answer in the sense that in Barcelona there are uh flats that are squatted so there are let’s say there are four walls and a roof that is being squatted illegally so uh this is what we counted as squatting uh but then there are also other uh public spaces uh for example Gardens or uh uh spaces in which buildings uh have been demolished in which uh people build some sort of shelters we tend uh we tended to address this or to call this homeless uh but of course it’s it’s a fine line uh and we also relied a lot on what they were telling us so if they were telling us I’m sleeping in the street we can uh tendentially we mark them as homeless great thanks a lot Danielle so more maybe related on the question of of the households we have a sort of internal separation of Labor as you can see julan maybe you want to address uh the questions and then soon we can uh give the possibility also to people to switch on their microphone and and make their comments and questions please well also we have a lot of question on the on the on the chat well yeah Susanna thank you and you address a lot of a lot of good points interesting point that we have we we try to research but we don’t have the enough time this is a a chore know project one one year and a half and we conduct a lot of ethnographical field workk no we we Al also we train ourself no to to our G to detect the differences the different types of we speakers as you say there are a lot of different different types of we speakers but I don’t I’m not quite sure that they are so specialized well they are specialized but not so much actually those who pick a scrub metal also pick object we were quite surprised that for example they complete some of the earnings with for example picking shoes on a pair of shoes or maybe some clothes or or something like that of course there are some of them that they are very specialized in a specific objects no they go like with small cars or small shopping cars no and and and they and they they are more specialized and of course also they they they they are they have different uh social organization between different groups no and we have in in in this Chad different Experts of of this of of these collectives no Macio Chas I guess is inside of the room Michael renon that they have that they did they have done their their thesis the PHD thesis about these organizations also Carlo de clo that is here also have research about about this organization that they are very particular and of course are uh wider than than the specific activity no the the the recyclers activity but also in the case of of of of households we need well if the case of recyclers is difficult the the the way to catch the the households is is is more no is is is even quite impossible to detect everything and this is why we try to do it in this H this both um with this both approach you know like uh doing this I didn’t explain well but we did a deep interviews in inside of homes and we walk around the home and we took P picture that were that I was showing and yeah but we need more we we of course we we we we put attention on the social class aspect and and in make and and it l us recognize other actors for example the Dorman no or the genitor no I don’t know the the proper name in in in English and and in upper class neighborhoods the genitor is is is another broker no they allow us enter to the building for example and they pointed out for the for the informal for the recyclers look take this or or or please or they have their phone numbers but also the the the domestic workers the domestic workers seems that are the the first filter of this process of of dealing with waste no and of course this is it is highly related with with with with with social class and and other question and and well and there are more more actors and and also the idea of the boundaries no who opened the door and until which door the the reciters enter see that this there is more fluid relation that we used to think no we us to think that we are autonomous we deal our ways in in autonomous manner but in some some households they left they allow the the the the recyclers enter and take out the the objects ER of course we we know that the the household says one thing and they act in the other one actually the the rates of of of of of recycling are like less than 40% and 70% of the household they say that they separate like a quite well no of course there is a distance between the practice and and and the and the and what the what the what the what the household says but what what is interesting is H how we deal with this not this this this distinction between we do by ourself or we care or we care the our objects I guess that the the most important part are are in that size and also when when when you say that um that seems that they are not the same is not the same phenomenon and I want to to to CL well to to to to to highlight that the what the was what the recyclers does or what what they do the recyclers is not only pick no they they select no they have a a knowledge to understand different materials and they pick they select but also they they transform and somehow it’s like a they digest a lot of materials and and and and in some moments households no like they left objects but for for for for recyclers are materials no but this is why the the the discourse has a distance and yeah we have to to to to find a way to expl in a better manner no to to to to to think that is not that that there are not different phenomenons I was reading some questions on the on the on the on the chat one was about the stimation we done the estimation trying to cut to to we we we use different maners no one of them this the easiest one was taking the list of the of the of the formal ER I don’t know what is the name of the formal chobs were the inform where the recyclers sell materials and then we walk through the city and and saw the informal ones and then we H we we saw the informal settlements were also some uh recyclers H save materials no or or sell materials no and we we estimate that more or less there are around 30 and if in a conservative manner in a conservative estimation if H we can say that more or less sell materials around 100 per per one of these chops with different types of shop because there are different types of of of of Brokers too and and also we we use the estimation that um Michael renon and jph plas have done in in Grano and with this estimation we estimate also we we compare and and also it help us to to give this this this this number fed and Danel you can also if you have more I I read other ones but please interrupt me whenever you want I read ask if nowadays West speaker recyclers pick cardboard H not in in Barcelona or not at least what we have H what we have seen and years ago yeah they pick but right now we haven’t we we haven’t seen recyclers that pick carbon H I guess that Julian would ask if we know how many electronic devices no the the informal recyclers pick can I can I please a little bit the question because there might be you what very interesting that you said like I guess um 70% of something of households like was stressing that the use value they wanted to give it to recycle because of the use value but then on the other hand it’s seems like chatos are all like dismantling everything so it’s recycling is not exactly reusing so I was wondering is or even if there is some of some connections of recyclers to repair workshops or if they even might send some mobile phones overseas I don’t know if have if you have data on this kind of more like on devices that could be even like lucrative we selling them not only dis dismantling of of course like a like a washing machine or something apart from being very toxic is more like lactive dismantling than reselling but device like mobile phones and um and um other like tablets and um computers could be like um um shipped away or or or rep or repaired no there is a an uh a training or or at least or a knowledge that the the the the recycler has is detecting what has value in itself for sure they don’t they don’t take a a phone and they broke it to try to to to to extract the materials because they don’t have the the the the the know the the the way to do it but for example they they they take for example Copper from some electric appliances no or or in some moments they they can separate metallic Parts metal parts from a lamp no this is what they do and in this digestion this this gaze or this train gaze allow us to to allow them to to to pick for example some mobile phones and carry on next to this chobs and there are other communities that they buy for example mobile phones or shoes or clothes I mean it’s more a kind of ecosystem no and if you go through raal there are a lot of shops and you can see that some recyclers stop in front of this shops and they sell for example I don’t know maybe a laptop an old laptop and or maybe an H but the problem is that it’s it’s quite difficult to estimate the quantity of this diversity of material because we are in with we facing other problem in in capitalism we mix materials a lot and we have an a huge variety of this is why ER the West management system they have five containers and they try to solve everything by five containers no it’s it’s like a quite uh but I’m sorry Danielle FICO no I think it it’s a it was good um now maybe we could uh open the floor for for questions I think just to touch on this point of recycling or reuse no I think me as most of us when we approached the issue we were thinking that there ity was mainly or exclusively about Recycling metals and then we found out no there is much more about reuse than what we actually F so what is new in the new research project in which we are involved is exactly to look into this and I think Samuel also rised the issue at the beginning because he mentioned flea markets flea in the sense of second end uh markets I lived in Paris 20 years ago and I remember very well already at the time there were especially Chinese uh people uh collecting waste picking around and then having these markets and this exist also in Barcelona in raal uh in Glorias and in many other places um so so this is something we should explore further and in the room I think there is also Blanca cayen who has been working a lot about uh repairing for example in in Barcelona so do way speakers also repair I don’t know exactly to tell you the truth we don’t know so this is is something we should explore next uh because it’s quite uh interesting I think there is uh you can raise your uh hand if you want to ask a question I think there was Elia Sosi who wanted to wrise a question so so you can go ahead please hello everybody my my name is IIA I teach circular economy at the University of pompo fabra at the master courses of sustainability management uh I would uh Daniel introduce this this topic as uh wherever there’s a quality you will find the the the pickers I rly disagree with that because it’s not about quality it’s about the the economic Market point and simple uh however this was a very nice discussion on something that I don’t know anything about so the social aspects of of uh circular economy for me it’s a big unknown I consider the the wte piers as a valuable me members of the of the society and uh I I wonder you many times actually you you mentioned the the waste management system uh let’s speak about first about the economic aspects of the waste management system so generally speaking what the the the W piers are are doing is actually taking the valuable stuff from the great container and the bulk uh especially metals from the from the the from the bulk uh uh waste and they are taking it to to recycles I’m not saying this is super nice but uh however did you balance that with the with the prices that that we we are paying actually as a member as a citizens of Barcelona let me give you some some some numbers uh the the numbers of the waste management which actually is is uh is uh charging us every second month uh it increased from 4710 per ton to 71.6 per ton for for treatment of the waste n as well Tera is charging us 23.6 in 2022 and 35.8 Euros per ton for incineration of the of the waste which actually ends up over there so my question is concerning economics if if we are taking out the most valuable part and everything else is actually paid paid by the by by the citizens I’m not saying that we are not supposed to I’m not saying that we’re not supposed to support but do you see kind of business model in here how we can include actually the way speakers in the in the normal economy because instead of being Tera we can actually try to legalize I would say their business of picking so that that will be my question in terms of economics so because the waste management system is being balanced in between value the costs for treating of the waste and the valuables and the valuables are gone after the waste Piers here I think that there is opportunity to to I would say legalize their their business and second point is have you ever tried actually to balance the education of the waste Pickers because I was so sorry on my on my on my on my expression but I was scared shitless to leave my my refrigerator when I bought a new one on the street on Thursdays in hosta Frank actually the bulk waste goes on Thursdays refrigerator has a compressor it has a lot of a lot of copper and I know that they will dismantle it it’s not about a mess of waste it’s about actually the environmental impacts of the of the materials that they pick so all the refrigerator refrigerators which are inside the the the fridge they’re causing a lot of of they’re inside they’re having a lot of greenhouse gases which are actually even if they recycle 100 kilos of copper it’s a balance in terms of of environmental impacts so what I see with with the w Pickers is actually u in between the house colds and the green dots let’s not forget it’s not the five containers that that we are having we having the the the pun in in Barcelona however in between the households and the point point where there’s no communication and here I see a some kind of a business model where the pickers can can actually can actually do a very good and environmental service without them damaging the the environmental thanks no thank you IIA I’m happy to take these questions if kulang and Danielle allow and then I’ll give a word to Samuel which I think is with us and wants to intervene which would be great um so the the the reason why uh the amount of money that every citizen Pace goes up is mainly related to um European legislation and to the directives uh this is because the price the is a sort of price incentive so the price of sending waste to the Landfield or to the incinerator has been increasing because uh they want to create sort of marketing incentives for the municipality to increase recycling rate but here there is a problem is my opinion structurally that the selective the the process of of uh collecting uh waste in a selective manner uh that is applied in Barcelona reaches a certain limit if you want to increase the recycling rates you need to go to the door to-door uh system which of course we know uh has been tried in Barcelona and then uh well I think it became a political issue and then it got stuck so to say um here there is the question that the way speakers very clearly do not uh disturb so to say recycling systems no because they do not enter or they do not take anything basically from the containers of glass organic material uh packaging and paper they focus on the gray container the gray container in Barcelona it goes to a plant or more than one plant where they do some sort of mechanical separation and then it goes to the incinerator so in this mechanical process some of the metals are removed but all of the metals are being removed first it goes to to the to the magnetic separator then it goes to to uh separator for for diam magnetics aluminium so that’s valuable materials that means that it will decrease the price what every it’s not what we are paying it’s actually what the city is paying the companies which are treating the waste and I here I I see the actually the business model where they can be legalized they the the the the the the business if I can say of the of the wi speakers can be legalized instead of paying tersa we can actually pay them yeah yeah I I don’t doubt that that’s that’s a possibility but of course uh Spain is one of the countries in the world where uh Waste Management has been privatized the most um so the different fracture are under control of different uh corporation which I can tell you are not so ready uh to share their profits with way speakers no because it’s it’s a power dynamics so this already emerged more than 10 years ago in which there were attempts by this Corporation to actually remove the way speakers from the scene exactly because of what you are saying no so but anyway this is a long debate but but I agree with you we we could explore and this was also one of the motivation of our uh study to explore option for to say for legalizing the business of course out of the profits that they get right now it is not possible to legalize because is too expensive because they get two EUR per hour two per hour you can obviously don’t pay a salary because uh instead of earning 20 EUR per day you should earn about 20 EUR per hour in order to get a minimum salary of about ,200 which is what is there right now in Spain an option that we explored in the past uh is that there is a a company a startup in the Netherlands which developed an app for an application for the mobile in which you the house the house of level you could actually say what materials you have for recycling or for disposing and then the app automatically creates a sort of a circuit for a way peers to come home and collect it at the time availability that you gave so this is something that is in our rather in the Netherland is done not at the way speakers level but it’s a business actually of a company and we have discussed uh the option of sort of implementing a pilot project in Barcelona but first we needed to know a little bit more that would be an opportunity but as I argue I I brought a psdt on W piers in Barcelona which I recently also published as a book there I argue that if we recognize that way piers are giving an environmental service to society then we should compensate them for that we as a society and therefore probably through public authorities so if the municipality is paying these private companies who manage the other fractions of waste per ton then I think we should paying waste peers also per ton at least the same amount that we are praying to private companies that could potentially make the business a little bit more viable of course we have to do a little bit more calculations and so on in the past in Barcelona sorry I don’t want to take too much time but there was an experiment of a Cooperative supported by the municipality which is which was called alen cop which lasted for two or three years promoted by the uh Trias when chavas was the alcal of Barcelona which didn’t last too long we could discuss why there are documents online which you can find of why this project fail but I think there are opportunities and possibility uh not essentially for regularizing these people some of the people of the way speakers actually enjoy the autonomy that they have but to actually improve their working and living condition which I think we would all uh agree I see uh Samuel still with the is uh and end up so I’m very much in favor of giving him the word because it was very interesting what you shared with us before Samuel yeah thanks uh for [Music] your for the opportunity of asking a question first as you know as a member of the theal we are very interested to all knowledge uh all studies about Spanish wers work and uh goal and uh also if you can share we have also a lot from Friends uh can share to you uh we are as you know an association of white speakers in France born 12 years ago and we developed a lot of solution can can can appear as same for European country or for Barcelona or Spanish I like to ask you if there’s some W speakers uh from Bara from B who are here today who can speak with their own voice or if it’s possible and if it’s possible to meet one day in Barcelona or in France our colleagues from Sagal because we have a lot of salies in our St and a lot of Romania people and we like to to make some exchange knowledge experiments and daytoday life between Barona and France and also I think uh and maybe tury turkey to entertain our Corporation because um the voice of the way speakers must be and so that’s my question can you share stud and can we share in the future time Barcelona in France or in Italy or you know where we can meet your way speakers uh that and of course if there is people who know some organization of speaker in Spain in Barcelona Association Collective assciation or cooperative very useful there is not to help gr one because without an official um official um statue the we speakers cannot be include and they are exclude because they have not official Association or representation so I would like to know if you think that it’s possible to organize work girl meeting through the the study you make through the International Alliance or through the European European or to our association friend so thanks for everything was very very useful to see that the the ideas and the reality are the same very urgent now politically jally enally economically culturally and professionally to organize World Europe generation thanks thanks excellent thanks thanks a lot Samuel thanks for being here today you shared earlier that uh you had the family member at the hospital this is why you have been driving around but thanks anyway for making the effort to be here Daniel maybe you want to address what Samuel ask sure well thank you very much first of all Samuel for your presence here today and uh um your proposals for for connection and development of uh of a collective reflection I think is is very interesting and definitely worth pursuing um it would be great of course if uh uh some recyclers from Barcelona could um could uh voice um personally today I’m not sure we have any any worker with us today uh I would be happy to be to be wrong so I if if there is any please raise your hands if you feel comfortable with that um in any case uh we we have contact with uh with workers um mainly with individual workers because as we were mentioning earlier um we we haven’t managed to create connections or to identify um representatives of uh or or organizations that can that that we could uh talk with uh collectively um but we will definitely be happy to uh to to explore the possibility of a connection with our contacts and to organize some moments of sharing together uh in Barcelona or or in France and uh who knows maybe this will actually lead to the creation of uh Collective actors that can support uh or give voice uh to to recyclers here in the city I don’t know if Julian or federo want to add something to this well no we we are sorry we are we have or we want to develop a a wider perspective no we understand that this is a a phenomenon that is not connected with a or or is not an strange phenomenon it’s transversal no seems Urban capitalist phenomenon and of course is is is is connected with with uh migration the flows of M migration and and and and all so this is why could be interesting know to to to to to make this dialoges uh but also and well years ago they had been organization M mainly around problems connected with housing no I I saw some questions from Carlo Clos asking for the difference between between informal settlements and and how homeless well one of the question that we Haven that that we haven’t researched in a deeply manner is this connection between the activity and the house problem in Barcelona no because there is a kind of there is a kind of strange situation for for saving material you need a space in a space in a very expensive city no and where we save materials well this is a question that we have to to solve H that is connect and this is why also some chops where the where the recyclers sell materials are more connected with this with with this idea of informal settlements or um or or squatting ER well and and all this organization that happened years ago right now they seems that they are not active we we have to to to to check constantly because appear and disappear the problem is that as the those those phenomenons are connected with housing they are not actually claiming for for being or representing their their work no this is one I think one of the the the the issues here but we are open we and we are in in our next uh in our current project our grassroot we want to focus on on what are the organization behind what are the the social the social relations uh uh attached to the these occupations I guess that we have discuss a lot of topics no yes have took notes about a lot of ideas and and and suggestions ah by the way uh sorry I don’t know I don’t Lea Le you have to read the paper wrot by Michael renon and jph esplugas because they explain very well not only the price of the of the materials are important also all the logistics and they research how and how when the the of the carbo fell down no and the recyclers stopped to collect it the the the the city council of gr they have to spend thousands of of Euros trying to solve this this this empty solution no and can you can can you put a a do link on the on the chat please because social aspects are kind of completely new for me yeah yeah yeah I sh I will share and or also if Michael Ron cure it could be nice but it’s it’s a very good example of of how understand the phenomenon in a more complex way from my side this so I think we have been here for about uh two hours I don’t know if Susanna wanted to react sorry I forgot to give you the chance to react to our reaction so if there is any final comment you want to make are most welcome if there is anybody else in the room who has uh pressing questions or comment then you are of course welcome to to raise it now or be silent forever because after two hours I think we could be coming to a to an end um we have very much enjoyed being with you yes Julia yes please you go uh sorry I cannot find the bottom to rise uh my hand um that’s fine I saw you in the camera I’m part um of uh an organization from Palermo in the south of Italy who is trying to um formalize the the activity of secondhand Market in the city center and I’m part of the International Alliance of wte speakers as Samuel we met together in buenosaires hi Samuel how are you H just a few words because uh the discussion in the Congress was about how to involve the secondhand activities that in Italy for example are apart from the waste management in the municipality uh management H but at the same time our informal activities and are made by people who are out of the formal working system really poor people who uh need to find an income and they invented like in our case 20 years ago uh more than 20 years ago uh the possibility to survive and to save money so it’s important because we are trying to focus out how to make pressure to the municipality and to be h a how to figure out together from bottom up how to improve the prevention policies especially in a city where the selective collection it’s really low uh and they want to they want to an incinerator so even if those people don’t don’t uh uh wa don’t pick wastes it’s important to close the the circle and to include the second hand and the ReUse uh field uh as a possibility to um struggle against incineration policies thank you no you are most welcome Julia you didn’t invite us to palmo but of course as we would be happy to go to Paris and Marseilles we would also be very happy to go to to palmo as you guess as you can guess Danielle and myself are Italians and Julian is not Italian but he has been learning Italian and doesn’t mind gelato and pizza um so your your uh your contribution is very welcome is what we said before we are also learning this or we want to learn more so to say on this dimension of secondhand markets or flea markets in Barcelona and how we speakers are involved I think with Blanca cayen who is in the room we will be exploring this uh more so learning about experiences herw is um important we have learned a lot uh from the International Alliance of way speakers with Daniela we have a forcoming book analyzing uh 70 conflicts inv involving waste peers in the global South uh which is something we have been working on already in the last year so we are interested not only about W piers in Barcelona but also in other places in Europe and um in the world I think it has been super nice being here today we don’t think that this is the end of anything it is the beginning of something or it is the continuation of social struggle for emancipation uh just one more episode of it of which we made a very humble uh contribution of course we would have loved to have way speakers here from Barcelona speaking with their own voice but as you can imagine is not so simple given that uh social situation but we will be working on it um you can follow up we have your email so we can tell you when we will have Publications or this or any new results which will be coming in the next month we welcome all the comments and the questions that you gave us starting from Susanna but from from all of you and of course do not hesitate to contact us if you want to follow up on these topics which on which we are very much uh motivated and we look forward uh to keep working together uh what else can I say thank you very much and uh have a wonderful day thanks a lot
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