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Waste Collection through Community Empowerment and Relationship Building

What I love about Ashoka Fellow and social entrepreneur Albina Ruiz and her Ciudad Saludable (Healthy City) initiative is that she refuses to accept that anyone should live surrounded by garbage, filth and potential disease. Albina has made it her mission to help communities clean up their own neighborhoods in Peru, especially in the poorest areas where people rummage through the trash and try to resell items to support their families. Interestingly, Albina doesn't just work to clean up the trash. She recognized that taking away the trash, while it would improve living conditions, also meant taking away vital income that these communities needed to survive. So, she worked directly with people in the community and gave them jobs going door to door to collect trash. Instead of just taking away the garbage, she gave people access to income and dignified work that bettered their communities and their families. From PBS' "The New Heroes Project":


"Ciudad Saludable develops efficient solid waste management systems that generate employment and contribute to better quality-of-life and cleaner cities.


Ruiz created the organization because government-run garbage collection in Peru had not been effective and illegal dumping was causing environmental deterioration and ground water contamination. The garbage crisis arose partly because municipalities failed to collect the funds necessary to maintain the infrastructure. Because the system wasn't working, people didn't pay their monthly fees, making the garbage problem worse. Ruiz set out to break that cycle.


In addition to taking care of the garbage problem, her micro-enterprise model provides self-employment opportunities to local residents in neighborhoods where unemployment rates are high. The businesses are often run by women who go door to door collecting garbage and fees, and educating people about respecting and protecting their environment. Some women have even built profitable businesses by creating products like organic fertilizer out of the trash they collect.


By generating income for local residents and involving them in the process of improving their neighborhood, Ruiz has succeeded in obtaining pay rates of up to 98 percent. The government collection pay rates sunk as low as 40 percent.


Ruiz's simple idea has become a successful business and community-organizing model that benefits large numbers of people and has worldwide potential."


http://www.pbs.org/opb/thenewheroes/meet/ruiz.html

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