Verified · Jun 20251 min read
● projectActive · national · 1990
Asociación de Recicladores de Bogotá (ARB): inclusive recycling model
Second-level organization that brings together cooperatives of traditional waste pickers in Bogotá. The ARB organizes informal recyclers so they can operate as providers of the public waste recovery service, defending their legal recognition, their remuneration for recovered material and their formal inclusion in the circular economy chain.
illustrative atlas image · Vinicius Vieira ft / PexelsADAsociación de Recicladores de Bogotá (ARB)ANAsociación Nacional de Recicladores (ANR Colombia)NPNohra Padilla
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01 The context
It is a Latin American benchmark for inclusive recycling and got the Constitutional Court to order the District to integrate waste pickers into waste management contracting; in 2013 a public payment system for the recovery activity was established.
02 How it works
method · Legal and policy advocacy for formal inclusion (litigation before the Constitutional Court)method · Cooperative organization of grassroots waste pickersmethod · Formal provision of the public waste recovery service with payment for recovered materialtool · Collection and sorting warehousestool · Registration and certification of waste-picker organizations (RUOR)tool · Selective collection routes
03 What it stands on
Evidence level
Own experience
Grounded in published theory
Documented evidence elsewhere
Independently evaluated here
Peer-reviewed research documents this project: the strongest evidence level in the atlas.
The evidence 3 ›
EvidenceTop-Down and Bottom-Up Formalization: Waste Pickers' Struggles for Labor Rights in São Paulo and BogotáILR Review (SAGE), Manuel Rosaldo · 2024
EvidenceWaste Pickers' Formalisation from Bogotá to Cartagena de Indias: Dispossession and Socio-Economic Enclosures in Two Colombian CitiesSustainability (MDPI), Laura Neville y Luisa Fernanda Tovar Cortés · 2023
EvidenceARB: Fighting for an Inclusive Model for Recycling in BogotaWIEGO (Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing) · 2019