Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Reshape: The centrality of organized waste pickers in the articulation of new service modalities in Bogotá, Colombia

Waste picking has become a prominent activity in the urban landscape, bridging the gap between shortfalls in service delivery and personal income generation in virtually all cities of the developing world. Overcoming previous stigmatization and work fragmentation through organization and dialogue, waste pickers’ work is increasingly perceived as a valuable contribution to urban waste management. Yet formal and informal linkages with solid waste management have hardly altered the situation of poverty and marginality limiting the opportunities and choices of waste pickers. At the onset of governance structures at the local level, various cities in Latin America including Bogotá are fomenting the inclusion of informal waste pickers into Integrated Solid Waste Management (ISWM) systems through the medium of social economy organizations who are constitutive and representative of the poor. What this paper specifically analyses is whether these organizations help form new mechanisms that help overcome the institutional nature of poverty.