Economies of waste: Work with recyclable materials and the natives logics of value (re)creation

Recycling is no longer an environmentalist`s exclusive subject of interest, and it has been progressively incorporated into the national and international political agendas. In 2010, in Brazil, a regulatory framework for waste management was created with the approval of the law that establishes the National Solid Waste Policy. In the Brazilian context of recycling is remarkable the presence of “catadores”, a category covering those who derive their income source from  collecting recyclable materials, work classified as "informal" by analysts. The category of catador is being changed – it's status has been progressively identified as a “professional category” – mainly due to the catadores’ political organization as a social movement. The doctoral research I have been developing takes place in Jardim Gramacho, located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. This neighborhood receives since the 70’s most part of Metropolitan Region waste production, where exists one of the largest Latin America`s landfills, which is not only a strategic piece of waste management but also of Rio`s recycling industry. Recycling is primarily an economy, and an ethnographic approach of its economic life proves essential for understanding the dynamics and the various actors and practices that shape these processes. Throughout the year 2011, I conducted ethnographic work in a local “catadores” association, closely following the activities that constitute this recycling economy`s intermediate step, between the landfill output and the big recycling industries input. Focusing on the intersection between economy and culture I try to highlight the relations, fluxes and native logics that permeates the work with "recyclable materials", especially considering the multiple roles that these heterogeneous materialities - as the instruments they required in everyday practices - play in the construction of units of account and ordinary forms of calculation, which enables to reflects on the (re)creation of value and the social construction of markets.