Ian Stewart of Plan International describes how providing the people with a recycling plant of their own transformed their lives. Every year, thousands of rural people come to Barranquilla searching for work. Many are forced to live on the outskirts of the city, where they end up with casual and unreliable work collecting rubbish for recycling plants.
Conditions are grim.
They work at the mercy of plant managers who can control demand and prices paid. Often they barely have enough money to survive. The waste poses a huge health hazard, and with inadequate sanitation, it does not take long for an epidemic to materialise. Young children work with their families in gathering the rubbish and quickly fall prey to sickness and disease. It was the recyclers themselves who saw the need for a plant of their own, and in 1995 they began to work with Plan and the Social Foundation of Barranquilla to work out how to do it.