More on Cartoneros

I'm putting up another post on Cartoneros just because I got a better picture of one today, one with his cart somewhat loaded up. Cartoneros are the city's freelance recyclers. I wrote a long-ish post about them last week.


This guy is only 16 or 17, so his cart is on the small side, and not too loaded up. Bigger, older guys haul around four, five, six times this much stuff, all on these two wheel carts that require careful balancing.

Last night I went for a midnight bike ride downtown and back, and I saw lots of Cartoneros out.

I read recently that they canceled the tren blanco, the free cartonero train that they used to use to haul their findings out to the suburbs where they hand them in to the recycling companies or the brokers or whoever. Now, it seems that everything has to move by truck. So last night I saw six, seven, eight big ol' trucks being loaded up with these giant sacks full of recyclables. No forklifts here, these guys and women lift these sacks, some of which probably weight a couple hundred pounds. Serious work.

I also saw two of the trucks loaded to the brim with recyclables and also with cartoneros -- fifteen or twenty people perched on top of and between all the bags and piles of cardboard and whatever. People were still scrambling up into the second truck, and they were laughing and yucking it up quite a bit. It actually did look pretty funny, because the load is anything but stable so they were kind of falling around in the back as they jumped up and got settled.

I'm glad they were able to see the humor and enjoy themselves a bit after a hard day and night of work.