Ciudad Saludable Skoll Awardee Profile

Organization Overview

Key Info

Social Entrepreneur Albina Ruiz

Year Awarded 2006

Issue Area Addressed Economic Opportunity, Health

Sub Issue Area Addressed Responsible Supply Chains

Countries Served Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela

Website http://www.ciudadsaludable.org

Twitter handle ciudadsaludabl3

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/grupociudadsalud able

Youtube http://www.youtube.com/user/CiudadSaludab lePeru

About the Organization Ciudad Saludable (“Healthy City”) is a non-profit organization founded in 2002 that seeks to build healthy, inclusive cities where everyone can live in harmony, with justice and equality of opportunity. To do this, Ciudad Saludable believes in the need to build a new model of solid waste management, a model that is interdisciplinary, participatory, progressive, and innovative, and that involves the economic, social, and environmental inclusion of recyclers. Above all, Ciudad Saludable seeks to change attitudes towards the problem of inadequate management of solid waste, and the poverty and exclusion faced by more than 108,000 Peruvian families who work as recyclers. Ciudad Saludable’s programs are designed to impact the sustainable development of the green economy and public policy on solid waste management.

Impact

CS has organized more than 1,500 waste collectors, creating employment and improving health and living conditions for more than six million people living in poor urban and rural regions in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela, Guatemala, Argentina, Chile, Jamaica, Haiti and India. CS reaches 30 percent of Peru’s population with waste collection services in 1,835 cities. In partnership with recycling companies, the CS team have developed a distance education program that has trained 300 professionals from Brazil, Venezuela, Chile, Ecuador, and Peru in the complete management of residues. Instrumental in the creation of the first law in Peru (also the first in Latin America) to regulate recycling, adopted in 2010.

Path to Scale

CS supports replication within Peru, providing consulting and business services as well as assistance to local programs seeking startup and operating capital. CS International, the global umbrella group, provides similar support and services to new enterprises in other countries, in part through a for-profit subsidiary.

Social Entrepreneur

Albina Ruiz grew concerned about health and environmental problems caused by garbage in Peru when she was a student studying industrial engineering. After writing her thesis, she came up with an idea for a new community-managed system of waste collection that she hoped would serve as a model for urban and rural communities in Peru. Albina completed a master’s degree in ecology and environmental management and later earned a Ph.D. in chemical engineering in Spain. In 2001, when she returned to Lima from her studies, she founded Ciudad Saludable (CS), deciding that she did not want to create a typical donation-dependent NGO, but rather a feasible business that would engage poor communities as customers, and would be able to thrive in a financially sustainable way. Albina has since been widely recognized for her innovation and determination by Ashoka, Schwab Foundation, AVINA and a growing number of esteemed awards. Albina is no longer involved in the day-to-day running of CS but remains its president. Her daughter, Paloma Roldán, is now the executive director.

Equilibrium Overview

Current Equilibrium

As of 2010, 3.5 million tons of solid waste was generated per day, with that total expected to rise to 6 million tons per day by 2025. Likewise, the estimated global cost of dealing with that waste is rising as well, from $205 billion a year in 2010 to $375 billion by 2025, with the sharpest of increases happening in developing countries.[i] The problem has taken on a new urgency in times of rapid urbanization. Municipal waste programs do not have the capacity to handle the vast amount of waste produced in many developing regions of the world, resulting in waste accumulating in large heaps or being strewn along public roads near the most impoverished communities. Waste is also dumped into rivers, contaminating water that serves as a drinking source for many poor families. Fifteen million waste pickers worldwide (more than 4 million in Latin America alone) [ii] sort through these piles of waste for any usable items, often living near these very waste dumps with their families in unhealthy, unsanitary, and degrading circumstances. Not only are they poor, but are also socially marginalized because their work is deemed undignified. [i] World Bank, “Global Waste on Pace to Triple by 2100” [ii] World Bank, “Waste Pickers in Developing Countries: Challenges and Opportunities”

New Equilibrium

In the new equilibrium, municipal waste systems are supported by a parallel system of organized waste management entrepreneurs, helping to collect and sort greater amounts of waste to keep communities clean and disease-free. In partnering with waste management enterprises, municipalities take the lead in fundamentally shifting the relationship between impoverished communities and their environments by improving service quality and altering behavior patterns so that communities see real value in clean, healthy environments. Waste management enterprises and municipalities collaborate to formalize the work of waste pickers and recyclers, and in areas where waste is not managed at all, to create new jobs.

Innovation

Ciudad Saludable was established in 2002 with the mission of building healthy and inclusive cities where all can live in harmony, justice, and with equal opportunities. CS promotes a model of environmental citizenship and sustainable management for mitigation and adaptation to climate change. Ciudad Saludable seeks, above all, to solve the problem of inadequate management of solid waste and the situation of poverty and exclusion of hundreds of thousand recycling families or waste pickers. Ciudad Saludable executed its first project in 2003 in Carhuaz in the Ancash Region of Peru. As of today they have worked in 32 cities in Peru and also expanded their work in Latin America executing projects in Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Dominican Republic and Guatemala. They are also working in Egypt and India. Ciudad Saludable has grown into a conglomerate called Healthy City Group which is comprised of three organizations: Ciudad Saludable (a private non-profit organization), Peru Waste Innovation (a consulting firm), and Healthy Cities International Foundation (a non-profit dedicated to scale and replicate its work.) CS has chosen to engage in the issue of sustainable environmental management of cities in different and complementary ways directed at changing systems at scale. First, it tested new ideas and hypotheses and executed programs directly under Ciudad Saludable to effect change at the city and country levels in Peru. To accelerate the rate of its impact, the organization then applied its experience and learning by giving advice and providing engineering and environmental consultancy via the work of Peru Waste Innovation. Finally, the organization is disseminating and replicating its work in other countries and continents through the Healthy Cities International Foundation. The following is an explanation of the organization's work: Ciudad Saludable: seeks to contribute to the construction of healthy and inclusive cities where all can live in harmony, justice and equal opportunities in Peru and other countries around the world. To this end, it has three types of programs: Pro Reciclador (Recycler Pro) – Pro Recycler is the institutional program that promotes the formalization of recyclers with the purpose of achieving their economic and social inclusion, starting from the implementation of an integral solid waste management. The general objective of the program is "to contribute to improving economic opportunities and the quality of life of recyclers by promoting their inclusion with decent working conditions in the value chain of recycling". The program has a 48-month cycle, and all its activities are organized into 4 key thematic project: Pro Recycler: Monitoring, initial and partial studies.Pro Recycler: The Road to Public PolicyPro Recycler: Training, the curriculum that supports the Program - Technical and operational workshopsPro Recycler: The Recycling and Sustainability Business. Under this new Pro Recycler design each association should remain in the program for 4 years. By the end of the fourth year you must have reached maturity to continue operating alone. Basura Cero (Zero Waste) – This program contributes to the fight against climate change and promotes a green economy through the creation of dignified employment and promotion of reuse and recycling of waste. Additionally, it works to gradually change the policies and practices of integrated solid waste management at central, regional and local government levels. This is done through minimization and reuse of waste up to the point that ZERO tons of reusable material are buried in landfills and ZERO tons of unusable waste are thrown in dumps and the environment. The program works jointly with local and regional governments, citizens and businesses and local institutions. Ciudadania Ambiental (Environmental Citizenship) – The Environmental Citizenship program promotes training for good environmental practices in schools, businesses, communities, and universities by educating teachers, students, municipal officials, recyclers, and private company employees and managers. Perú Waste Innovation SAC: Founded in 2008, it is a company specialized in generating integral solutions in engineering and environmental consultancy, as well as in promoting synergies among the different actors involved in waste management: Integral management of solid waste: design systems that allow the development of planned environmental policies, evaluate strategies, generate plans and programs aimed at the sustainable integral management of solid waste, municipal and non-municipal, dangerous and non-hazardous, from generation to treatment and final disposal; Depending on the needs of our customers. Integrated water management: design integral systems that allow us to meet the need to provide the service, contributing to the objectives and policies of our clients and the State, under a comprehensive management of drinking water and wastewater reuse through collection, conduction, storage , Chlorination, distribution and treatment of waste water in urban and rural areas. Environmental management tools: develop environmental management instruments until obtaining certification by the competent sector, projecting the direct and indirect consequences of the project activities on the surrounding environment and proposing environmental strategies for the short, medium and long term for compliance in favor of harmonious growth between local development and community life. This process also includes measures to ensure, inter alia, compliance with the Environmental Quality Standards (ECA), the Maximum Permissible Limits (LMP). Healthy Cities International: based in New York City, works to replicate the group's model in other countries as described earlier in this section.

Ambition for Change

The relationship between impoverished communities and their environments is transformed through improved service quality and changes in values and behavior to maintain clean, healthy environments, oceans, rivers and lakes.