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Presentation short abstract

Mainstream visions of the circular economy focus on a design-first logic which oversee waste management. Turning the linear into a circular economy is an extremely valuable action that reverses entropy. Paradoxically, the socially stigmatized are the actors who perform these activities.

Presentation long abstract

While the mainstream narrative of the circular economy focuses on the design of zero-waste products, 88% of what is produced globally is not (yet) recycled and turns into waste. Cities worldwide are filled with trash-pickers who bring waste back to life, while the mainstream narrative does not look at the questions of circular for whom, by whom and in which way.

With notions of social-metabolism, entropy and decolonial justice we offer a counter-narrative centred on the functions and value of waste-pickers who rescue what would otherwise end up in landfill or incineration for metal scrappers, re-sale in informal street markets or sent to families abroad.

When pushing shopping trolleys or cycles they perform an energy efficient function throigh their zero-emission light vehicles.

Paradoxically, they are invisible to mainstream visions, to policymakers and are also socially stigmatized. In Barcelona, being often paper-less immigrants, their informal labour is invisibilised, exploited by the capitalist society, devalued with miserable salaries and racialized.

We shed light on this phenomenon and highlight debate topics at the intersection between urban, environmental and justice studies. We discuss how mainstream notions of circular economy do not consider power relations; how the waste industry, being at the border of the formal and informal economy is hard to be researched as well as legally opaque; how waste-picking constitutes a novel case of the environmentalism of the poor for its urban setting; consider policies such as job guarantee as desirable and finally consider the potential alliance with mobility and accessibility urban platforms.