Los cartoneros
As night falls on Buenos Aires, the city's cartoneros comb the streets collecting the recyclables. Most pull simple two-wheeled carts and walk their route day after day, piling the carts high above their heads and wheeling them to the recycling centers. There they collect for their work, slowly scrounging together a living using the city's waste.
Networks of waste pickers exist the world over. Humans taxed with scavenging a life from other's garbage. In Argentina, it was the economic crisis of the late 1990s and early 2000s that forced many into this work. And though the cartoneros life is not an easy one, this network of collectors is considered by many to be the most advanced of its kind. It stands in stark contrast to other countries where the waste pickers live and work in the dumps.
