Talking trash: informal "cooperatives" dominate Mexico City's waste management system. (Spotlight).

At first sight, one might be tempted to say that Mexico City's waste management system is unorganized. It's not uncommon to see piles of garbage bags rotting on street corners or plastic bottles and wrappers littering the sidewalk. Given the size of the population, generally lacking in conservation culture and ecological awareness, waste management in Mexico City is complicated. Combined with the weight of past corruption and cronyism, it is impressive that the system runs as well as it does.

Now the city is faced with new concerns as it closes one of its two main landfills, while the only remaining one is approaching its limit. The issue is not to be taken lightly, considering that Mexico City generates more than 11,000 tons of trash per day. In its choice of a new site or method to dispose of garbage, the Mexico City government has to balance community interests with economic concerns and pressure from powerful garbage sifters' organizations, which represent the people who live at the dump and survive by combing through the garbage looking for salvageable goods.

Mexico City's waste management problem begins at the point where garbage is created. According to the General Department of Urban Services (DGSU), Mexico City generates 11,850 tons of garbage per day, 34% of it recyclable. Individuals rarely sort out their own recyclable trash, so all household garbage goes to the garbage trucks en masse.

TRASHY DESTINATIONS

When trash is collected from households or businesses, or swept up from the street, useful items and recyclable materials are salvaged by the garbage collectors themselves. Guillermo Ramirez, a street sweeper in Mexico City's Roma Sur neighborhood, explained to BUSINESS MEXICO: "We get a wage from the city, on average between $80 and $90 pesos a day, apart from the tips for collecting from homes. Anything made of plastic, glass, paper and things that can be reused goes to the truck. (The men who work on the trucks) sort it out and sell it."

Apart from the driver, the men who work on the garbage trucks receive no pay other than what they earn from reselling recyclable goods and reusable items.

What is not immediately salvageable is taken to transfer stations. Though managed by the governments of the city's delegations, only 12 of Mexico City's 16 delegations have transfer stations, and one, Iztapalapa (where the Santa Catarina dump is located), has two. This step is intended to shorten the distance traveled by the garbage trucks, in order to extend their lives and reduce fuel costs. Without being separated or sorted further, the trash is then sent on 20-ton trailers to the city's only operating landfill.

The landfill is known as the Bordo Poniente (Eastern Side) and is located by the highway to Puebla outside the city's eastern perimeter. As recently as last year, the Santa Catarina landfill, located near the working-class neighborhood of Iztapalapa, also received garbage, but since then has been closed by city authorities. It has not received garbage since then, and DGSU General Director Francisco Gonzalez Gomez told BUSINESS MEXICO that the city's Secretariat of Works and Services--of which the DGSU forms a part--hopes to finish sealing it and turn it into a park sometime next year. A separation plant there is still in operation.

Just how much money is involved in informal organized recycling operations at the Bordo Poniente landfill is difficult to verify because of a lack of government regulation and the trash sifters' association's secrecy. BUSINESS MEXICO was warned by Garbage Sifters' Front boss Pablo Tellez in no uncertain terms not to send a photographer to visit the dump.

According to Tellez, the separation plant at the Bordo Poniente landfill, run by the Garbage Sifters Front, is small time.

"Don't think it's a big business, because it's nothing like that," he told BUSINESS MEXICO. "The people who work in the plants don't receive a wage. They earn a living from what they separate. We don't have any average figures about how much."

Still, the history of Mexico City's landfills is marked by dirty profits, with pepenadores' organizations run as "co-operatives," while its members live in poverty and its leaders grow stinking rich.

DUMPSTER DIVING 

The pepenadores, or people who live and work at the dump, were organized and brought under the control of the local Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) government in much the same fashion as other squatter communities in Mexico City. Until the early 1960s, they were loosely organized into an association that was responsible for selling recyclable goods and materials that were found in the refuse. The head of the city's sanitation department acted as a middleman in this business and made a hefty profit. Around 1965, Rafael Gutierrez Moreno, once a pepenador himself, gained favor with the local sanitation boss and rose to power within the Trash Sifters' Organization. For the next 20 years, Gutierrez, who became known by the media as the "garbage czar," exercised almost complete control over the sorting and business operations at the dump--and the lives of those who lived there--while amassing a fortune by taking most of the sifters' total earning for himself and his closest associates. Gutierrez was also we ll-known for his violent behaviour and was a notorious womanizer who allegedly fathered 180 children over the years.

From the roughly 5,000 tons of trash that is sorted daily, paper, metal, plastic, glass and even food waste is separated and sold for reprocessing--often illegally and with no government oversight. The city government, via the DGSU, is only involved in the purchasing and maintenance of machinery and the selection of the site.

"The dump sites and the plants are owned and maintained by the Federal District, but operated by the sifters," Gonzalez said.

"The city government has nothing to do with the sale of the products that are recycled."

Gutierrez was murdered in 1987 by a pepenador who accused him of raping his wife. Since then, no leader has equaled Gutierrez's power--or infamous reputation. His centralized empire has been divided into three associations of garbage sifters--each representing workers at one of the separation plants and run by members of his family. The government does little to get involved in the business that goes on at these separation plants--or the lives of the 5,000 people who live at the dump.

"If we got involved," said Gonzalez, "there would have to be much stricter regulation. We have no possibility of controlling what they take and where they sell it. No possibility, nor interest."

Cuauhtemoc Gutierrez de la Torre is a PRI deputy as his father Gutierrez Moreno eventually became, while his brother Rafael and his mother Guillermina de la Torre are the heads of trash sifters' associations, attesting to the continued clout of the family. And still the community at the dump remains a world apart from Mexico City, where entrance is strictly regulated and the trash sifters' associations provide the only connection between the pepenadores and the city government.

CLEANING UP

There is a recycling industry in Mexico City that has little to do with the dump. At Recycle, Mexico City's largest paper recycler, only 5% of materials come from the dump. Like other products salvaged from the refuse heaps, "Most of what comes from the landfill is contaminated and not of sufficient quality," said Recycle CEO Maria Luz Herrera.

Dimexa and CFF, Mexico City's largest metal recycling companies, also get their materials primarily from other sources, often going directly to the companies that produce the waste.

"The city is researching improved recycling, but all this is conditional on finding a new landfill site," Gonzalez said.

With economic concerns and the powerful garbage organizations to consider, a broad-based recycling program is probably still in Mexico City's distant future. For now, the city government sees no problem with leaving the dump's operations in the hands of the garbage sifters' "cooperatives"--unregulated and clandestine though they may be.

Legitimate businesspeople--envisioning few immediate financial benefits--for the most part have been lukewarm about recycling efforts. Until a better solution is found, garbage will continue to collect at the dump to be sorted by the pepenadores, and government authorities will continue to ignore the stench.

Traviss Thomas is a Mexico City-based freelance writer.