El Corre Camino Cooperative

At the crossroads between the general context of pauperisation of the 2000/2001 crisis, especially for the most marginalised sectors, and the increase in the production of consumer goods leading to an increase in waste, the figure of the cartonero emerged. Although cartoning is one of the most evident and visible social injustices of post-crisis 2001 Argentina, it represented an alternative and form of work for groups of informal workers from sectors with low possibilities of inclusion within the formal system, who began to scavenge rubbish bins as a means of subsistence. Cartoning differs from waste collection in that it is an unplanned, unpaid, individual enterprise that earns modest wages. This phenomenon, which has experienced different periods of growth and remission in Buenos Aires since the end of the last century, has become consolidated as a social and environmental management novelty. Its forms of organisation imply different modalities of self-management, leadership, communication, articulations with power and the community.