This research focuses on the work carried out by waste picker’s cooperatives within the framework of the Integrated Municipal Solid Waste Management of Buenos Aires City, specifically in the Differentiated Collection System. We inquire into the forms that waste picker’s labor takes and its relationship with territorial dynamics of the urban spaces. We approach the processes of waste picker’s labor by investigating the practices and techniques, mediations, and technologies involved. From the theoretical perspective we adopt, this complex assemblage implies a way of linking a cosmos—a series of entities that distribute nature/culture—and a morality—a series of meanings and values. Through this composition, we aim to account for its relationship with the dynamics and logics governing certain urban territorialities. The general objective is to understand how the Differentiated Collection System of Buenos Aires functions as an assemblage, through the analysis of the practices and techniques employed, the mediations and technologies involved, and the territorialities that are (re)configured in the processes of work carried out by waste picker’s cooperatives.

Thus, the proposal consists of reassembling the network of lines and relationships that participate in waste picker’s labor within the Differentiated Collection System of Buenos Aires. In the first part, aside from building the theoretical-methodological perspective we work with, we undertake an archaeological examination of the academic discourses that established the “waste picker issue” following the 2001-2002 crisis. We also trace a genealogy of the various lines that, through their socio-historical development, constitute the local Integrated Municipal Solid Waste Management model. In the second part, we outline a cartography aimed at understanding some aspects of the processes of collection, sorting, and commercialization of recyclable materials within the Differentiated Collection System. Using a qualitative perspective, we rely on ethnography as a textual genre, disciplinary approach, and methodological perspective for knowledge production through experience with subjects, objects, and processes that we seek to understand. This is complemented by semi-structured in-depth interviews with key participants in the Differentiated Collection System, as well as the review and systematization of specialized literature and the gathering and analysis of secondary sources, such as relevant regulations.

This research is a contribution to studies on waste recovery and waste management, as well as to those that examine the recycling circuit. Additionally, it seeks to contribute from this specific context to urban public policy studies and environmental studies. Lastly, it can be useful for research on cooperative labor, its relationship with the state, and the organization of popular economies.