Switching Managua on! Connecting informal settlements to the formal city through household waste collection

Abstract

This paper explores the organizing of household solid waste management collection and disposal practices in informal settlements. It is based on a case study of an NGO project that supports Manos Unidas (Joined Hands), an informal waste picker cooperative in Managua, Nicaragua. Using horse carts, these waste pickers collect household solid waste from informal settlements where there was no previous regular, official waste collection. Unlike many development projects, which try to control people's agency, the support examined here focused on the residents of illegal neighbourhoods and the waste pickers, who themselves became city constructors and co-producers of basic services such as household waste collection rather than service recipients of aid programmes or municipal governments. By slightly changing the actions of the actors already involved in informal waste handling in the informal settlements, the project succeeded in transforming an agent of pollution into the solution to several interconnected problems, namely illegal dumping by the cart-men and residents, the cart-men's low and irregular incomes and the lack of household waste collection services.

From Waste to Resource: The Trade in Wastes and Global Recycling Economies

“…Positive accounts frame waste-picker co-ops as both a poverty-reduction strategy and a waste management strategy; they relate this to arguments of social justice, and they tend toward a celebratory account of the creative cultural politics afforded by working with waste [99, 100,101]. More critical accounts go back to the insights of Mary Douglas with respect to dirt and social order [54] to highlight the ambiguities between waste work and development [102,103].…”

Post/neo/liberalism in relational perspective

“…Lugones, 2003;Taylor and Vintges 2004), and research on the imbrication of formal and informal dynamics (Meehan, 2013;Zapata Campos & Zapata, 2013), changes in subjectivities and the construction of localized, alternative regimes of material practices 'count,' and moreover contribute to modifications of thought and practice in everyday life in civil society (Mora, 2007;Swanger, 2007;Zapata Campos & Zapata, 2013 persist as neoliberal amid liberal, postneoliberal, as well as socialist discourses.…”

“…The absence of regular municipal waste services in these neighborhoods pressures residents to collect waste themselves and dump it illegally in roadsides and storm canals; accumulation of trash in these informal dumping grounds and resultant blockage cause flooding and establish a breeding ground for disease (Rogers, 2013;Zapata Campos & Zapata, 2013). Similar to gentrification dynamics, Vivir Bonito aims at cleaning up the physical environment, with, however, little attention to those who live in the targeted neighborhoods.…”

Unexpected translations in urban policy mobility. The case of the Acahualinca development programme in Managua, Nicaragua

“…Policy translators, translations, and relational sites The Acahualinca Programme was put into practice via chains and circuits of translations enacted by a myriad of policy translators, such as local NGOs operating at La Chureca and Acahualinca, grassroots organizations, community leaders, trade unions, and individual residents (Czarniawska, 2002;McCann & Ward, 2012;Zapata Campos & Zapata, 2013).…”