Marc-Antoine Diego GUIDI

Exploring the creation of values through waste management in

poor communities as an alternative to waste externalization:

022

E Participative research examples showing collaborative learning in India, Bolivia and Brazil

2019SACL

: Thèse de doctorat de l'Université Paris-Saclay préparée à l’Université d’Evry-Val-d’Essonne NNT

École doctorale n°578 : Sciences de l’homme et de la société (SHS)

Spécialité de doctorat : Sciences de gestion

Thèse présentée et soutenue à Evry, le 18 Novembre 2019, par

Marc-Antoine Diego GUIDI

Composition du Jury :

Marc LEMENESTREL Professeur des Universités Président Université de Pompeu Fabra, Barcelone, ESPAGNE

Olivier GERMAIN Professeur des Universités Rapporteur Université du Québec à Montréâl, CANADA

Ângela Cristina SALGEIRO MARQUÈS Professeure des Universités Rapporteur Universite Federale de Minas Gerais, BRESIL

Pascal CORBEL Professeur des Universités Examinateur Université Jean Monnet, PARIS SUD

Hugo LETICHE Professeur des Universités, Examinateur Université de Leicester, ROYAUME UNI

Jean-Luc MORICEAU Professeur des Universités Directeur de thèse Institut Mines Telecom Business School (-LITEM), EVRY

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

“Cleanliness is Holiness. Jnananand: Waste, PhD!”

From Sadguru Shri. Matha Amritanandamayi Devi, Chancellor, M/s. Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham (University), as well as head and inspiration of a prominent Indian NGO, “Embrace the World”, and one of the world’s most renowned spiritual Masters, from Kerala, South India.

During a darshan (spiritual embrace) in 2012.

Matha Amritanandamayi (Amma)

This is how my journey, linking volunteering grassroots projects and research in India, began, guided to a spiritual purpose through waste and waste management. Starting a PhD at the end of 2012 in Management, at Amrita School of Business, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham (University), as Jnananand, the “one blessed in knowledge, knowledge as perception of the world from the heart chakra”. What a journey it has been for me!

Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha. (“I bow down at your Holy Feet, in deep gratitude … of the path you inspired me to take.”)

This journey took me through three continents - Europe, Asia and South America -in the course of volunteering in three countries (India, Bolivia and Brazil) and experiencing so many amazing

1 projects while meeting incredible people. Please excuse the length of this acknowledgment section, paying tribute to those who helped me in the course of seven years of my life.

It would be impossible to sum up here the seven years of my journey and mention all the people who met and who touched me. All of you are in my prayers of gratitude.

I would like to start by mentioning three major professors in my life, who have left us in the course of the seven years of the research journey: my father François Guidi, my life teacher and support, inspiring me to reach deeper, to give meaning to each and every step, and more importantly to always keep a humble and grateful heart. My professor of “genetics”, Pr. Giorgini Venturieri, from Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, the first to host me officially in Brazil at UFSC, to give me a new perspective on the theory of evolution looking at collaboration instead of competition, new evolution theories. And my forro teacher at UFSC, Mr. Kauan Waltrick Cardoso, with whom I learned about flows, letting go, letting others express themselves, musicality and empowerment through nature.

You all left us too soon, but you left so much behind. This thesis is a tribute to your presence and messages.

I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to the Jury, Jury Rapporteurs, Prof.ª Drª Angela Cristina Salgueiro Marquès, UFMG, Brazil, Prof. Olivier Germain, Université du Quebec a Montreal, Canada, director of thesis, Prof. Jean-Luc Moriceau, Institut des Mines Telecom Business School, Examiners, Prof. Marc Lemestrel, Universidad Pompeu Fabra, Spain, Prof. Hugo Letiche, University of Leicester, United Kingdom, Prof. Pascal Corbel, Université Paris Sud.

I would like here to express my deepest gratitude for the guidance of my thesis director Prof. Jean- Luc Moriceau, Head of Doctoral education at IMT-BS, who gave me a voice, and inspired a new confidence to tell the story of this amazing journey, the story of ten years volunteering in field projects, transforming them into academic research, and most of all finding a way to give a voice to outcast communities. Thanks to him, a corporate NGO and consultancy person became a ii researcher, finding the right methods and tools to allow this transformation of experiences into experiments, academic results and discussions. He helped me to build bridges between worlds, to learn from each of them, and to deliver messages. Jean-Luc contributed hours of volunteering work, visiting my projects in Belo Horizonte, tirelessly teaching me how to write academically, writing articles, chapters of two books, giving a place to voices that had never been heard, never been spoken about, telling stories that do not fit in with patterns… A special thank you too Isabela and Arthur who kindly welcomed me into their lives and shared precious time with Jean-Luc … These hours, selflessly given, and his collaboration, have built true respect and a cherished friendship.

I now want to give a massive hug to my friend Dr. Allen Gomes, who since the beginning of this academic adventure has shared ideas about our common passion for Social Innovation, and in the past two years has been such a teacher, providing amazing support to finish up that part of academic writing which has always been the toughest of all for me, way harder than negotiating with a “dono da droga” (the head of drug traffic in a favela). A special thank you to Virginie and Tom who patiently waited for our Skypes to be over!

Heartfelt thanks go to the Vice-Chancellor of Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham (University), Dr Prof. Venkat Rangan, who made it possible for me to embark on this academic path, along with Prof. V.S. Somanath, Dean, Amrita School of Business.

My heartfelt thanks go to the Dean of IMT-BS, Denis Guibard, and the Vice Dean, Estelle Assaf, whose kindness and friendship gave me such a boost in the final stages of the thesis! I would like to make a special mention here of Prof. Madeleine Besson, Head of the Doctoral School at IMT- BS, and Head of Research, for her endless support and trust in my work and approach.

I want here to thank also the two other Professors that guided me through my PhD, at IMT-BS. Prof. Mary Carpenter, who gave me great insights into academic research and innovation, and in ASB Bangalore Prof. Amalendu Jiotishi who was the first to take me on that academic journey, teaching me for two years in India, on 12 topics as well as on economic and research reading, iii translating my environmental and humanist passions into academic work. And whom I am proud to call a friend today.

Prof. Rick Miller who is hosting me in his lab in the CCA, UFSC, also guided me through academic writing and wrote two papers with me, who has also been my partner in crime, to set up recycling and community solutions: - “obrigado do fundo do coracao” Rick. Prof. Francisco de Paula Antunes Lima, Laboratório de Ergonomia e Organização do Trabalho, UFMG, for giving me the opportunity to work with Tomas Bauluino, W. “mon poto co.” doing his Master at the time and now on for his PhD, for his taking me on “his” team in Tomás Balduíno, and Prof. Mauricio Luis Sens, Departamento de Engenharia Sanitária e Ambiental (DESA), UFSC, who gave us his friendly support on União com Rio Doce. Prof. Raphael Tobias de Vasconcelos Barros, Departamento de Engenharia Sanitária e Ambiental (DESA), UFMG. I also want to thank Prof. Marc Lemenestrel for our long conversations overlooking the Canopy in Barcelona, exchanging ideas on how to add more spirituality to our business worlds, to our work, and Prof. Olivier Germain and Prof. Hugo Letiche for giving me invaluable guidance.

A special mention is to be made here for Prof. Bhumika Gupta, Associate Professor at IMT-BS for providing me with the opportunity to transfer my PhD in ASB, to IMT-BS, and to transfer my research work from Bangalore, India to Paris. As well as Mr. Jay Misra ex-Dean of Amrita School of Business and Dr. Krishnashree Achuthan, head of the Amrita Technology Business Incubator (Amrita TBI) who both gave me opportunities to test social innovative projects in Amrita University, as well as teach in my fields of Social Entrepreneurship and Social Innovation, Prof.ª Drª Ana Flavia Barros, Relações Internacionais, UnB for her friendship support and invaluable advice, Prof.ª Drª Marlene Grade, CCA, UFSC for her collaboration in the first steps of a social innovation incubator at UFSC.

Thanks also to my dear friends for their tireless assistance with administrative processes: Sylvie Prehu, chargée de gestion et assistante de recherche, Fabiana Dassoler, Coordenadoria do curso de Pós-Graduação CCA UFSC, Ramesh Kalshetty, ASB Bangalore, and Daniela Rezende Riner, Assistente em Administração, Laboratório de Biotecnologia Neolítica, CCA, UFSC. iv

A big thank you as well to Peter Thomas.

I would also like to pay tribute to my colleagues and friends in Amritapuri ashram, from the ABC center, the Amala Bharatam campaigns, swamis and bramacharis, especially the ones that became friends through this Seva of composting and recycling, Br Gurudas, Br. Yogamrita Chaitanya, Br. Shubamrita Chaitanya; they were always kind, smiling, and guiding. My friend Matti Rajakylä, Akhilesh an exemplary sevite and a gentle giant! Peter Ash for his teachings. Unni, Mahita, Chidanand and all my friends from ASB, especially the PhD first batch! As well keeping the wonderful team of União com Rio Doce and our work in the favela of Morro Bela Vista, Belo Oriente.

Fellow alumni from the Insead Social Entrepreneurship Program, who inspired me, and gave me insightful case studies to teach, especially my friends Hans Whal, its director, Majid El Jarroudi, Directeur de l’Adive, Rene Salomon, from Fundacion Trabajo Empresal (Juan Alex, Kiyu…), Bolivia, Ben Bowler, for so many great talks over a coffee or mint tea. Anne Scheinberg, Global Recycling and Benchmarking Specialist at Springloop Cooperatie U.A. for a truly inspiring day in the Hague, and for sharing your books and articles with me, and explaining what guided you…

Thanks also to the 3 Musketeers - Jean-Louis Machuron, directeur of Pharmaciens sans Frontieres, Arnaud Mourot, Director Ashoka, and Renaud Elfer-Aubrac, who taught me about so many battles in that field, with pride and a great sense of humor. To Victoria Anderson at the Charities Aid Foundation, for her friendly support and inspiration, for example in SI/SE, and Svenja Rüger from the ValueWeb, for supporting and believing in me. The same is true of Ana Claudia Bittencourt in Florianopolis! Thanks to Ze for our chats and for the providing the next great article topic to write with Isabela. Thank you too to Carlos Maco Camargos Mendonça and Sonia Pessoa for your fantastic collaboration for the book and the opportunity you gave me to present my work with the community of Tomás Balduíno.

I would like to express my sense of solidarity with all my fellow PhD students from LITEM, whom I thank for listening so attentively, and for their kindness and fraternity. I am thinking of Mehdi v

Elmoukhliss whose help and friendship have been invaluable, and Emilie Henriette! I also greet all my friends from the CCA in UFSC Florianopolis: especially Valmor, Marinice, Prof. Ademir Cazela and so many more… Obrigado kiridos

A word too for my buddies from Casa 808 e 730, the Florianopolis shared house with the highest number of diplomas per square meter: Prof. Dr. Mauricio Neves Cantor Magnani, Dr. Pablo Borges de Amorim, and also Dr. to be Mr Mário Sérgio Muniz Tagliari for our friendship, our home composting/ gardening sessions, our endless academic and political debates, our advice discussions and salutary surfing sessions, watching the sun rise in front of our house!

To you guys who put benevolence and kindness before ego battles.

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” Ralph Waldo Emerson.

“Per te u mu babbu , maestru di sempre, capitanu curaghju ,

Resistente e umile travagliatore mai stancu ....

Grazia a te per sti pezzi di vita di fiancu a te.

Frusta di babbucciu. Babbu presente. Babbu d’amore !”

A vous mes parents, ma famille.

For all the rag-pickers, outcasts, silently and tirelessly digging through the mountains of waste in Coimbatore, Chennai or Surat, etc…

Para ustedes catadores de Puerto Suarez et Puerto Quijaro, e residentes de San Antonio, Puerto Suarez, amigos de FTE, empredadores social de Santa Cruz.

Para voces catadores e moradores da Ocupacao de Tomás Balduíno…amigos das Brigadas e da UFMG, do INSEA

I am proud to call you my “brothers in arms”, irmaos do lixao!

May this thesis be a voice for your journeys and battles.

vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION: BUILDING BRIDGES ...... 1

1.1 OVERCOMING CULTURAL HEGEMONY ...... 3

1.2 THE ECONOMICS OF WASTE ...... 5

1.3 ALTERITY IN WASTE MANAGEMENT ...... 6

1.4 POSITIONING GRASSROOTS LEVEL PROJECTS IN RESEARCH FRAMEWORKS ...... 11

CHAPTER 1: PERSPECTIVES ON WASTE AND WASTE MANAGEMENT ...... 17

1.5 FOLDS IN OUR THINKING (“PLIS DE PENSÉES”) IN MANAGING WASTE: FOUR EXTERNALIZATIONS ...... 18 1.5.1 Waste: a valueless rejection at the end of the production and consumption processes ...... 19 1.5.2 Waste is pushed outside the citizen’s reach, and outside of social life...... 24 1.5.3 Waste must be buried and hidden ...... 28 1.5.4 Technology is the answer to managing waste ...... 32

1.6 LIMITATIONS OF THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY CONCEPT ...... 37 1.6.1 Circular economies work against the first externality by giving value to end of life products ...... 38 1.6.2 Circular economies are limited in addressing externalities two and three: the need to push waste away, and/or to manage it using technology ...... 41

1.7 FROM DIVIDE TO HYBRIDIZATION...... 46 1.7.1 Appadurai and hybridity ...... 47 1.7.2 Bhabha and hybridization ...... 49

1.8 CIRCULAR ECONOMIES IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH ...... 50

1.9 VALUATION MODELS IN THE SOUTH: A NEW MODEL AND THE THEORY OF COMMUNITY BASED ENTERPRISE ...... 52 1.9.1 Creation of value: looking for a model in the gaps ...... 53 1.9.2 Three cases showing different processes of value creation at community level: Salinas in Ecuador, and Chaquicocha and Llocllapampa in Peru...... 58 1.9.3 Social innovation also creating community and social value ...... 63 1.9.4 Hi-tech from the North rarely interferes; old knowledge and basic technology prevail ...... 64

1.10 BRAZIL: A SPECIAL HYBRID CASE INTEGRATING THE INFORMAL SECTOR: “CATADORES” AS THE SAVIOURS OF CITIES UNABLE TO

FULFIL THEIR DUTY OF CARE ...... 66 1.10.1 A strong and independent informal sector: the importance of “catadores” in Brazilian society .... 67

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY: LEARNING BY DOING ...... 71 viii

2.1 POSITIONS AND CONVICTIONS ...... 74 2.1.1 A personal experience, three case studies ...... 74 2.1.2 Learning by “doing with”: participatory research ...... 76 2.1.3 Seeking a gap, without “using” the local communities...... 77 2.1.4 The difficult challenge of avoiding a (post-neo) colonial posture ...... 80

2.2 LEARN RATHER THAN EXPLAIN OR ADVISE ...... 84 2.2.1 Tell and reflect from experience and not speak on behalf of ...... 84

2.3 STEPS FOLLOWED...... 86 2.3.1 Entry in each case ...... 92 2.3.2 Learning by contributing ...... 93 2.3.3 Assessing results ...... 96 2.3.4 Unexpected outcomes...... 99 2.3.5 Writing ...... 101 2.3.6 Discussion building ...... 102

2.4 CONCLUSION ON THE RESEARCH METHOD ...... 103

CHAPTER 3: FIRST CASE STUDY: INDIAN LESSONS, THE TREMENDOUS POWER OF COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT IN FIGHTING THE PLAGUE OF WASTE ...... 106

3.1 MY ENGAGEMENT (HOW WASTE AND WASTE MANAGEMENT CAME TO MY LIFE) ...... 107

3.2 FOSTERING ENGAGEMENT FROM WITHIN THE UNIVERSITY ...... 116 3.2.1 Getting involved ...... 120 3.2.2 Volunteering ...... 124 3.2.3 Evaluating achievements ...... 130 3.2.4 Learning collaboratively, participatively ...... 132 3.2.5 Learning to territorialize ...... 134 3.2.6 Beyond capabilities ...... 137 3.2.7 Lessons about engagement [or the enigma of engagement] ...... 140 3.2.8 Volunteering engagement ...... 142 3.2.9 Community engagement ...... 144 3.2.10 What is still missing and what I will look for in the implementation of further projects ...... 145

CHAPTER 4: SECOND CASE STUDY IN BOLIVIA: THE FIRST PILOT IMPLEMENTATION OF WASTE SEPARATION AT SOURCE IN A POOR NEIGHBOURHOOD: LOCAL INCENTIVES AND RESPECT ...... 148

4.1 PLACING THE RESEARCHER AT THE CENTER OF THE CHOSEN NEIGHBOURHOOD, CO-DESIGNING THE PILOT AND

IMPLEMENTATION PROCESS WITH AND FOR THE LOCAL COMMUNITY FROM A BIOGRAPHIC POSITION ...... 148 ix

4.1.1 A challenge to implement a first pilot of Community Based Waste Management (CBWM) center .. 149 4.1.2 A hellish local context ...... 150 4.1.3 Setting the project ...... 151 4.1.4 Positioning myself as a researcher ...... 154 4.1.5 First visits of the communities ...... 155 4.1.6 Involvement of local representatives of San Antonio ...... 156 4.1.7 FTE, a local Social Entrepreneurship driver ...... 158 4.1.8 Involving the local community in the co-design of a pilot ...... 159 4.1.9 Process and objectives ...... 160 4.1.10 Starting waste management ...... 161 4.1.11 An incentive from the local entrepreneurial ecosystem ...... 162 4.1.12 Presenting the project to people outside, other communities ...... 163 4.1.13 A wave of generosity: by nature, collective need or peer pressure? ...... 164 4.1.14 Education and repetition processes ...... 165 4.1.15 And finally, the full implementation of the project ...... 166 4.1.16 And some mafia threats to spice it up ...... 166 4.1.17 Celebrating a project, a pilot, a team, a community ...... 167

4.2 TOOLS, MODELS AND DATA ...... 168 4.2.1 An individuating project ...... 169 4.2.2 Collective entrepreneurship ...... 174

4.3 LESSONS LEARNED ...... 175 4.3.1 Local champions ...... 176 4.3.2 Start of an empirical model of community engagement based on community motivation and a mixed market approach ...... 176 4.3.3 Building the Wheel of Community Engagement framework ...... 177 4.3.4 An empirical framework: the “Wheel of Community Engagement” ...... 178 4.3.5 From a personal perspective ...... 181 4.3.6 What is still missing and that I will look for in further project implementation ...... 182

CHAPTER 5: THIRD CASE STUDY IN BRAZIL: A SANITATION PROJECT IN AN ILLEGAL LAND OCCUPATION, VERY POOR NEIGHBOURHOOD OF BELO HORIZONTE, THE FIRST PILOT IMPLEMENTATION ON THE FULL WASTE MANAGEMENT CHAIN ...... 185

5.1 ‘BAIRRO LIMPO’, TOMÁS BALDUÍNO: A STORY PLACING THE RESEARCHER AT THE CENTER OF THE COMMUNITY AND THE

IMPLEMENTATION PROCESS ...... 186 5.1.1 Tomás Balduíno, a very special ocupação, with W. as a catalyst ...... 188 x

5.1.2 Painful memories, doubts ...... 190 5.1.3 Second day of visits ...... 191 5.1.4 Meeting with the Municipality of Riberão das Neves ...... 202 5.1.5 Peripheral centrality ...... 204 5.1.6 Indirect jobs, value creation ...... 206 5.1.7 An unscheduled visit in 2017, three years after the project started ...... 208 5.1.8 Ghosts of history: a past built on clear inequalities and on the institutionalization of outcasts. With theatre as a catalyst ...... 209

5.2 TOOLS, MODELS AND DATA: COMMUNITY DATA FROM BRAZIL ...... 212 5.2.1 122 semi-structured interviews from Brazil and 5 unstructured interviews ...... 212 5.2.2 Two later visits to the Brazilian project, later interviews and visits to evaluate the lasting impacts 214 5.2.3 A conference at UFMG, and a meeting with A. the new UFMG master student taking on the coordination of Bairro Limpo, at the last visit (4th) to Tomás Balduíno, November 2018 ...... 215 5.2.4 The notion of contribution at the core of this process of self-sustainability for the community of Tomás Balduíno ...... 217

5.3 LESSONS LEARNED ...... 219 5.3.1 Role of the chief/ representative of the community ...... 220 5.3.2 A democratic and participatory decision process ...... 221 5.3.3 A specific and collaborative/participative economic model: each house pays for a waste management service provided by people from the community itself: community contribution and auto- sustainability ...... 222 5.3.4 Motivation and values: Eco-political and pride factors are linked/ intertwined ...... 224 5.3.5 When waste is placed at the center of the project, it works: this reinternalization of waste was key to the success of the project, which is still running 3-4 years after its start and our presence within the community ...... 225

5.4 FROM A PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE ...... 226

5.5 WHAT IS STILL MISSING ...... 226

CHAPTER 6: DISCUSSION ...... 230

6.1 KEY LESSONS FROM THE THREE CASE-STUDIES ...... 231 6.1.1 In India: spiritual representations of waste overcoming very strong social taboos ...... 231 6.1.2 In Bolivia: the spark coming from an incentive ...... 234 6.1.3 Brazil: structuring impact of waste management in a community fighting to exist ...... 237

6.2 MAKING SENSE OF THE EFFECTS OF INTERNALIZATION FROM A SIMONDONIAN PERSPECTIVE ...... 242

6.3 IMPLICATIONS ...... 252 xi

6.3.1 Value creation in waste management includes more than just economic returns ...... 252 6.3.2 Models of collaboration ...... 256 6.3.3 Collaborative research partnerships ...... 258 6.3.4 Towards a framework for community empowerment: linking economic and social factors ...... 258 6.3.5 Going beyond the externalization of waste ...... 264 6.3.6 Dismantling postcolonial hegemony ...... 264 6.3.7 Research as a transformative experience ...... 267

7 CONCLUSION ...... 270

7.1 INSIGHTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS ...... 271 7.1.1 Internalization is key ...... 271 7.1.2 Hybridity...... 272 7.1.3 Having a higher purpose ...... 273 7.1.4 Recognizing capability in marginalized communities ...... 273 7.1.5 Local champions ...... 273 7.1.6 The effect of external incentives ...... 274 7.1.7 Secondary impacts ...... 274

7.2 CAVEATS ...... 275

7.3 A FINAL WORD ...... 276

REFERENCES ...... 280

ANNEXES ...... 296

TWENTY FIRST QUESTIONNAIRES MADE BETWEEN DECEMBER 2014 AND JANUARY 2015 IN OC. TOMÁS BALDUÍNO, RIBERĀO DAS

NEVES, MINAS GERAIS, BRAZIL ...... 296

NON-DIRECTIVES INTERVIEWS ...... 301

TABLE OF FIGURES ...... 302

TABLE OF TABLES ...... 303

RESUME (IN FRENCH) ...... 304

xii

INTRODUCTION Building bridges

Amritapuri bridge between the ashram, the village of Vallekavu and Amrita University

Introduction: building bridges

Waste is a major global plague with increasingly serious social, environmental and economic consequences, for rich and poor alike. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, Western economies have grown on the back of an exploitation that can be summed up as “take, make, dispose”, large scale production and a “throw-away” mentality. However, waste created in 20th-century Europe and America pales in comparison to that which is now being produced by emerging economies in Asia.

The latest World Bank Report, “What a Waste 2.0” (Kaza et al., 2018) indicates current trends in global waste generation forecasted to grow by 70% over the next three decades which is far quicker than the rate of expected demographic growth. Our planet is facing a pollution crisis and there seems little need to argue about the necessity of dealing with waste. Nor to stress the urgent and pressing dangers of not doing so.

Major factors explaining why waste has grown so significantly over recent decades are new consumption habits alongside the growing use of plastic packaging and more toxic materials in industry. One could sum up the complexity of waste as a matrix of type of material/impact on the environment, volume, weight and place of production and disposal. The amount of waste generated by urban centers in 2016 doubled in the previous decade (from 0.64 kilograms per capita per day to 1.2 kilograms per capita per day). By 2025 the worldwide urban population will reach over 1.4 billion, with an average waste production per capita and per day of 1.42kg of municipal solid waste (MSW). The problem of waste generation is expected to grow exponentially especially urban waste forecasted to reach 2.2 billion tons by 2025, i.e. more than tripling.

There are many definitions and classifications of waste that vary according to statutory, institutional and academic viewpoints. Indeed, there are over one hundred laws and conventions currently in force which relate to waste management around the world. The conventional notion of waste as worthless rubbish is explicit in the definition “solid waste” according to the Statutory

Definition of Solid Waste RCRA Section 1004 (27)1: any “garbage, refuse, sludge from a waste treatment plant, water supply treatment plant, or air pollution control facility and other discarded material, including solid, liquid, semisolid, or contained gaseous material resulting from industrial, commercial, mining, and agricultural operations, and from community activities.”

Delacroix and Guillard (2018, p.2) offer a broader definition of waste that captures both the abovementioned tangible dimension as well as the act of ‘wasting’ which has important socio- political implications that this research aims to explore: “the structure of the hard core of the waste of objects is composed of a gesture and a content, a food; the periphery being constituted by what is wasted (clothes)”. According to Pongrácz et al. (2004), such cross-definitions of waste include that which the holder has disposed of/discarded or is going to dispose of/discard. ‘Dispose’ implies a thoughtful considered treatment of waste while ‘discard’ has the connotation of ‘abandoning’ or ‘tossing aside’ something expeditiously. This leads us to thinking more consciously about waste management and the idea of ‘waste management hierarchies’, with a preference for action that reduces and manage waste along the progression of a material or product through successive stages of waste management. In this regard there has been considerable cooperation internationally to minimize waste produced and to extract the most value possible from waste products themselves. The result has been major initiatives at local and international levels to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants, conserve resources and energy, and stimulate the creation of ‘green’ jobs and the development of green technologies (European Commission, 2008).

How people, communities and societies feel about waste makes a big difference in how they seek to manage it. Here there is an important distinction between seeing waste from opposing external versus internal positions. Externalization of waste is a perspective that sees waste as something dirty and unpleasant, that must be handled out of sight by some external means. Internalization of waste, on the other hand, is a state of mind of seeing waste as an ordinary aspect

1 https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2015/01/13/2014-30382/definition-of-solid-waste

2 of everyday life in our homes and communities, that we can play a part in processing without shame or discomfort.

As much as externalization of waste can be easily understood in economic and managerial terms, as movements that push waste outside of society in every way possible, physically, semantically, economically, biologically, psychologically, philosophically, etc. On the other hand we are very much aware that internalization is a semantic aspect that is mostly used in psychology defining internalizing as making (attitudes or behavior) part of one's nature by learning or unconscious assimilation, or even as acquiring knowledge of (the rules of a language), and more rarely in economics as the idea of incorporating (costs) as part of a pricing structure, especially social costs resulting from the manufacture and use of a product. In this research we will use “internalize” and “internalization” as a pure opposition to “externalize” and “externalization”, more specifically with waste and waste management concepts.

1.1 Overcoming cultural hegemony

Waste is a global issue but, in this research, I wanted to focus on its management among poor and informally organized communities in developing countries. However, the way that waste and its management are seen, understood and acted upon varies in these places versus elsewhere in the world differs as a function of historical cultural processes.

How waste is seen in technologically advanced nations that gained their wealth historically through colonization differs to how it is perceived in developing countries who were exploited through that same historical process. Indeed, much of the literature on waste distinguishes between practices in wealthier and technologically advanced nations – characterized as being in the “global North” because their cultures are derived from historical empire states located above the Equator who enriched themselves through colonization – versus poorer developing countries in the “global South” who were exploited through that very colonization.

An important consequence of this historical socio-political divide is the tension that it creates on the ground in the global South when waste management ideas and projects are transplanted from the global North. These often impose hi-tech solutions that are unsustainable for

3 reasons of cost and technical complexity, that are out of step with local needs and culture. Moreover, they stymie the emergence of more culturally aligned and locally conceived and owned solutions. They leave little room for local communities to learn by doing through small steps or to grow their own confidence through bringing forward direct solutions themselves that can be developed over time and scaled-up. This North/South divide thus has significant ramifications in terms of who has the perceived power and the right to seek change. People in the South are viewed as less resourceful and capable in terms of wealth and technology and social status. So, we must understand and overcome this post-colonial hangover if we are to tackle the problem of waste generation and management in countries in the global South.

The North/South divide is expressed in many ways such as through language which is imbued with the biases and prejudices of its host culture. Language shapes how people address others of the same versus other cultures or social standing, and it implicitly reinforces what is important to the dominant culture. Language is thus a vessel in cultural imperialism and to this end, Aimé Césaire, the francophone poet and activist from Martinique, cautioned half a century ago against what he called ‘European reductionism’ as the thinking system leading “prestigious civilization …to create a vacuum around it by abusively reducing the notion of the universal, to its own dimensions, in other words, to think the universal based solely on its postulates and through its own categories” (in Frimousse, 2019, p.57). The Kenyan novelist Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o similarly argued that the language of African literature and its economy or politics cannot be discussed authentically from an Euro-American perspective – and especially not in the English or French languages of Africa’s historical oppressors. He called for a “decolonizing of the mind” saying that “all those who write in African languages, … all those who over the years have maintained the dignity of the literature, culture, philosophy, and other treasures carried by African languages.” (Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, 1986, p.1).

To the poor communities in the global South involved in this research, I was conscious of presenting with an outward appearance (dress, wealth, education etc.) of a person from the global North. My efforts in learning to communicate in basic Malayalam and Hindi as well as being able to speak Spanish and Portuguese were thus important in building bridges that were necessary for collaboration. Speaking their language allowed me to sidestep the aforementioned language dimension of the North/South divide, to build trust and intimacy and gain a certain level of

4 acceptance and legitimacy in their eyes. I also never pretended to hold a universal solution or a superior truth because of where I had come from. Sensitivity to the hegemony of the global North was something that I remained aware of throughout each of the projects that were developed.

1.2 The economics of waste

Waste generation and its management are complex issues with serious environmental and health risks. How it occurs from a global perspective is also a function of economic policies. In fact, I started this research seeking to understand waste in developing countries from an economic perspective.

Neoclassical economics defines human wellbeing in terms of accumulated goods and services. Ecological economics on the other hand, recognizes that wellbeing depends to a large extent on economic development but nevertheless stresses the risks of an unbalanced relation with nature. Ecological economics aims to integrate values of natural systems with human values, human health and well-being together with economic theories and analysis. However, assigning market value to dimensions of nature and sustainability proves to be challenge when it comes to integrating these valuations into economic systems.

At the same time, ecological economics stresses the importance of preserving and investing in natural, social and human assets, for the benefit of a socio-economically more balanced system. Hence, for environmental economics, the efficiency of resource allocations has to be measured in relation to collective well-being. Ecological economics sets an important value on a healthy society, integrated with a thriving natural world, respectful of social values such as intergenerational equality. A growing number of countries are leaning towards this perspective by introducing laws that recognize and protect nature as something vital to sustainable development.

The study of the economics of waste has helped to clarify, delineate and quantify some of the key factors that contribute to its generation and how this affects the sustainability of a community on any scale. I chose to analyze various factors that can define sustainability, influence pollution; the impact of waste for example in our society being summed up in the IPAT equation:

I = P*A*T, where I= Impact, P= Population, A=Affluence, T=Technology

Population and Affluence are more complex to influence, hence Technology is often used to reduce impact, as we will see later on, especially in developed regions.

Sustainability can be defined by the Sustainability Impact Equation as follows: SI=P*C/P*I/C

Sustainability Impact = Population * Consumption per capita * Impact per consumption

The complexity already shown by the diversity of the factors and the complexity of assessing and measuring their impact is taken further by their interaction. The terms of IPAT are co-dependent:

I = P(A,T) * A(P,T) * T (A,P)

While the IPAT equation simplifies our efforts to understand and measure the relationship between important variables it is not complete enough to predict real world outcomes in the present let alone predict the future. The real world operates in a dynamic way, rather than the linear way implied by this equation. A strict application of IPAT requires that we discount the role and importance of experience, quality of life, enjoyment and self-determination. More population equals more people enjoying life, while more consumption equals more welfare and education. More population reaching the middle class and a certain degree of comfort, means as well automatic economic birth control, and an auto-regulation of the population growth rate.

Furthermore, each of the IPAT variables are correlated rather than independent. Leaving aside highly controlled laboratory type environments, we need to understand the impact of waste and find ways of minimizing it in real world settings – and that is what we wanted to achieve through this research program.

1.3 Alterity in waste management

The global North and global South divide is a geographic over-simplification that might help some people make sense of complex processes involved in the way waste is produced, understood and managed around the world. There is however a necessity to “move beyond the north-south binary”, to lay bare the larger dialectical processes that have produced global North and global South perspectives on waste and its management approaches (Comaroff & Comaroff, 6

2012 p.2). This alterity is a categorization in terms of social class (in a Marxist sense) or of ideological superiority (the model of market democracy in a capitalist vision). Figure 1 illustrates the key tensions and major dichotomies I observed on the North/South divide when I started this research.

Economics is an important tool in understanding why and how waste is generated and managed in different parts of the world. Particularly among the third of the world’s population at the “bottom of the pyramid” (BoP) surviving on less than US$2.50 per day, and who produce twenty times less waste per capita than the rest of society but suffer disproportionately more serious impacts on their wellbeing and quality of life because of it. Those at the BoP are the outcast, unsupported peoples living in fringe communities of large urban centers who cannot afford the centralized and sophisticated technology-driven solutions devised for those who live more comfortably in richer communities and societies. The predicament of communities at the BoP has been exacerbated in recent times by the growing efforts of unscrupulous multinational corporations to target BoP markets, promoting consumerism and thus greater waste generation. The living situation for those at the BoP is a product of unplanned and unregulated urbanization, together with a general inability among responsible institutions to sustainably address local pollution problems or provide affordable sanitation solutions. New action and understanding are needed to improve public health, general well-being and environmental quality for communities at the BoP. The major obstacles to progress in finding sustainable waste management solutions for communities at the BoP are preconceived notions about what they are capable of and what waste itself represents.

This new understanding has implied a necessity to take some distance from our habits, uses and even preconceived ideas. To find new insights we need to recognize and overcome the prejudices and biases in our thinking about waste and its management in poor and disenfranchised communities. Francois Jullien, French philosopher, Hellenist, and sinologist calls these our “plis de pensées” – that is, our habitual way of thinking about a topic organized around certain deeply held beliefs, that invariably leads us to consistently draw the same conclusions. He proposes a deconstruction from the outside (“du dehors”) to detect hidden biases in both cultures, as well as to elucidate the unthought of (“l'impensé”). This research will follow this thread of looking for the “fecundities” or fruitfulness that lies in different cultural approaches to see if poor marginalized

Figure 1 - Major dichotomies in global waste management perspectives (myself as the author)

NORTH

SOUTH

Table 1 – Aspects of the North / South divide (myself as the author)

North South Imperialist/Colonial Colonized countries Economically Evolved Non-Economically Evolved Developed Countries Developing Countries Consumer cultures Mostly outside main Marketing influence Non-slavery Slavery (still exists in some areas) Individual/Personal Group/Societal Consumer cultures Mostly outside main Marketing influence Welfare Political Left/Right movements and Mostly inequalities, and high discrepancies some social justice Political Left/Right movements Political Left/Right movements with major impacts on livelihood and sustainability Theory Practice High-Tech Basic-Tech Centralized Waste Management Decentralized or inexistent External waste management processes Internal waste management processes

8 communities can come up with other solutions to pollution and waste management, because they do not share the same ‘folds’ in their thinking.

Societies in the global North of wealthy and technologically advanced nations, externalize waste as something to be kept out of sight by transporting it and treating as far away possible from daily lives in city centers – ultimately burying and forgetting it (Hird, 2013). Waste is associated with the notion of dirt, semantically, fiscally, psychologically and more importantly unconsciously. Northern societies and especially European ones have been caught in a cultural association of dirt with sin – as the diametric opposite of purity. Approaches to waste management in the global North are thus unwittingly limited by this social image which defines the way that waste is interacted with Douglas (2004).

The urge to hide waste, including the need to replace goods at the end of their life of usage, has been accelerated by the industrial revolution in Europe with a corresponding change in consumer habits. The 20th century’s economic model of “use, produce and discard” has caused waste generation to skyrocket with devastating impacts on nature due to the increasing volume of toxic waste materials released into the environment. Natural cycles are incapable of absorbing the amount of toxic waste currently produced by our consumerist societies, as they did in the pre- industrial era.

Wealthy developed “Northern” countries have turned to complex technologies to make their increasingly toxic waste disappear, either by incinerating it to transform it into energy or turning into something that can be reused or else buried in landfills. Complex technologies requiring high levels of investment ensure that people in the global North have as little contact with waste as possible, be it in their households or industry.

The colonial era saw European countries invade and exploit most of the global South, imposing their philosophical, organizational, political, economic and religious views in the belief that theirs were inherently superior. Through historical colonization and the architecture that underpins current globalization by multinationals, the values of the global North continue to be imposed upon the developing countries of the global South. These post-colonial postures can be seen in internationally sponsored efforts to improve sanitation for people of the global South with

9 a presumption of “we know better and we will tell you how to do it” and “you must simply do what you are told”.

Following a more ecological paradigm, many indigenous communities tend to see waste as part of a continuous circle of life and thus not something to be rejected and hidden but treated as part of daily life. Through the perspectives of Arjun Appadurai, American Indian anthropologist, Homi Bhabha, Indian English scholar and critical theorist, and Ana Maria Peredo, American-Peruvian professor of Environmental Studies, we see different ways of thinking.

Appadurai and Bhabha have developed perspectives on the influences that the global North and South have had on one another, that include a notion of hybridity which is what happens when geographical, ethnic, cultural, economic and/or political factors from both sides become inevitably shaped by each other to form new hybrid ‘mixes’ of the initial elements. Appadurai and Bhabha define hybridity in a similar way that Césaire speaks about “creolity” and Said about Orientalism, as a “mixity” of western and eastern cultures either in co-opting or adopting parts of each other’s cultures – for example, the way that cricket has been adopted into the Indian psyche, or distorted, as a “plis de pensées” sometimes are to justify abuses and subordination. This whole mixity, creolity creates a new space in between where Jullien says things get mixed, each side inevitably influencing the other.

Peredo takes us with her research work to South America, describing collaborative, organizational and economic models that have helped poor communities of the Andes in Peru, where she is from, and Ecuador to survive and achieve self-sustainability. She even elaborates new entrepreneurship models from these BoP communities’ experiences, through the observation of these strategies against poverty: Community Based Entrepreneurship (CBE) (Peredo & Chrisman, 2006), some specificities of indigenous entrepreneurship, and a perspective on social innovation from these angles.

It was only in the ultimate analysis phase of this research in putting the pieces together, that the importance of the perspective of the French philosopher Gilbert Simondon started to emerge as a way of making sense of the collaborative and empowering processes that were observed in the communities. Although he is an author from the North, Simondon has not been involved in waste management. His theory of individuation (Simondon, 1989) and the associated concepts of

10 hylemorphism, autoindividuation, pre-individual, concretization, phase changes, transduction, opposition between technology and technology – were all relevant in the three cases in this research.

1.4 Positioning grassroots level projects in research frameworks

I was born on a French island in the Caribbean to a Corsican father and a mother from Brittany. While I was born to white European parents, my eyes opened to being cared for by black doctors and nurses. In effect I was born in the middle: geographically, in the center, simultaneously among the global North and South, from both worlds and at an equal distance from both. This mix and creole origin have afforded me an ability to enter new places and to adjust easily to diversity and different communities. Understanding languages or dialects has been a means to adjust to connect with others as the white tourist, always as one coming from the outside but with something to say and contribute. I do not see colors or religions but respect and contribution, and this has constituted the basis of my interaction in this research in working with communities. And that is what I always wanted to do: to work with diversity and alterity from a different angle, which is more positive, maybe in the sense of its richness and not the fears it raises, blocking the processes of interaction. I want to show how it is possible to achieve something without being trapped in a post-colonial posture.

I wanted this thesis to transcend North/South dichotomies and postcolonial postures, and to understand how to act participatively to find solutions to waste management with communities at the BoP. My thesis is about learning how to contribute together, with respect, understanding, and efficiency. During my almost seven years of research that underpin this thesis, I explored different perspectives, from empirical to action research, to finally find participative research as the most conducive approach. Implementing projects within and with the communities in partnership appeared to me as what I really wanted to give my time for, beyond what was required as an academic exercise, but as a contribution to society in line with the principle of respect that I aspire to.

Participative research operates in partnership with the stakeholders in civil society and aims to produce knowledge that is useful to academia and which also contributes to the needs of research 11 partners (Anadón, 2013). The objective is not only to analyze a project or a community context, but to contribute to changes at personal, community and other levels (Maguire, 1987). Participation implies a share in ownership and responsibility together with a community over the direction and form of research that includes them as subjects (Chambers, 1996).

The purpose of my research in this thesis was not to test existing models about waste management with marginalized communities at the BoP because none exist. My research was instead a systematic process of learning in partnership with these communities about what sustainable waste management might look like. It was an endeavor to uncover new knowledge and insights, without knowing where the next step would lead to, in the hope that this would open up new avenues for progress that had not previously been imagined.

The research approach focuses on learning from projects of value creation through waste management in poor outcast communities in the global South. Contrary to the culture of the global North that externalizes waste, I was interested in what might happen when waste and waste management are internalized and placed at the center of the community. What can we learn from community-based participative research about the management of waste in this way?

My research started with a volunteering experience in India that included opportunities to participate in the implementation of sanitation projects in poor communities. That was my stance to begin with but as I progressed in this adventure, I gradually realized that it is not by drafting solutions in advance to impose and test, but by co-initiating participatory projects and learning collectively as they evolved (and even being transformed by what was happening), that I gathered hands-on information and experience to reflect on. From this approach I began to develop meaningful insights into what sustainable waste management for these communities can look like. Contrary to the classic approach of global North interventionism, I moved instead to engage and discuss with many local stakeholders in order to take decisions together and to act collaboratively.

Participatory research – along with an auto-ethnographic, at times biographic framework – were key ingredients that allowed me to document a story of a “hybrid” (North/South) white guy passionate about diversity who undertook a journey in partnership with poor communities in the South to try to find solutions to their waste management problems. This research is presented through the voice of the first person of the author - primarily to avoid the all-too-common habit of

12 people from a more advantaged position speaking in the name of the disadvantaged “others”. Such paternalistic voices are imperialist and impede empowerment, maintaining a presumption that a divide exists between those who have the skill and right to speak versus the others who don’t.

The global picture shown in Figure 2 gives an overview of the scale of the global plague of waste production over coming decades, including in the three countries chosen for this research: India, Bolivia and Brazil.

Figure 2 – World waste generation, Map from The Economist 2nd October 2018 (adaptation of World Bank Report, What a Waste 2.0, Kaza et al., 2018)

_ Table 2 conveys the magnitude of the global waste generation per major generating countries, problem including plastics, levels of incineration, establishing a level of development of institutional policies and waste management strategies, and the percentage of recycling in the major waste generating countries. This table shows in particular the situation of the three countries where the case studies were implemented for this research, India, Bolivia and Brazil.

Table 2 - Annual production of waste in ton/year, Major countries,

Recycling level (Kaza et al., 2018)

Total Plastic waste Total Total Ratio COUNTRY generated Incineration Recycled Production/recycling USA 70 782 577 9 060 170 24 490 772 34,60% China 54 740 659 11 988 226 12 000 331 21,92% India 19 311 663 14 544 1 105 677 5,73% Brasil 11 355 220 0 145 043 1,28% Indonesia 9 885 081 0 362 070 3,66% Russia 8 948 132 0 320 088 3,58% Germany 8 286 827 4 876 027 3 143 700 37,94% UK 7 994 284 2 620 394 2 513 856 31,45% Japan 7 146 514 6 642 428 405 834 5,68% Canada 6 696 763 207 354 1 423 139 21,25% Bolivia 1 550 000 0 17 000 1,10%* * Estimation : author

The first chapter of this thesis begins with a description of perspectives on waste and waste management around the world. Here I begin to underscore differences between Northern and Southern perspectives, highlighting the social images, waste management practices and problems in different countries. This includes the technological and economically driven focus of the global North versus countries that are disadvantaged in this regard, but which emphasize other important aspects for waste management such as collaboration and community as in the case of Brazil. In Chapter 2, I present my research position and discuss the challenge of how to avoid a post-colonial posture when working with poor communities of the global South. That is, how to learn with, instead of “thinking and speaking for”. I detail here as well the methods of participatory research and autobiographic/autoethnographic that were used. In Chapter 3-4 and 5, I describe each of the 14 three case studies from India to Bolivia and Brazil implementing pilots on sanitation, as well as my reflections on the experiences accumulated.

I then discuss the key lessons learned from the implemented solutions presented in Chapter 6, highlighting the possibilities arising when we internalize (instead of externalizing) waste management and allow for the integration of the complementary economic/technological, social and philosophical/spiritual dimensions. I propose here a theoretical framework from Simondon to analyze the effects of the internalization of waste. Lastly, I reflect on the implications from value creation to collaboration. I propose a framework for community empowerment and describe how transformational this research has been. I then propose a conclusion, summarizing insights and recommendations from this research, its limitations and further research questions that it raises.

Chapter 1

Perspectives on waste and waste management

Rag pickers with me, in Puerto Suarez, Bolivia, Barrio Limpio, (Project with FTE – Fundacion Trabajo Empresal) 2014

Chapter 1: Perspectives on waste and waste management

This chapter explores the rationales that have underpinned action in waste management, particularly as it affects poor and marginalized communities in developing countries.

The French writer François Jullien coined the expression “plis de pensées” to describe the habitual way that humans think when they problem solve, which inadvertently hinders them from seeing new possibilities. The analogy being that if you continually fold a garment in the same way, creases will eventually form in its fabric that will make it harder to fold in other ways - even if they might serve you better.

Fixation in thinking gets in the way of seeing the problem from other (ie. local) perspectives and of the full scope of possibilities and opportunities that are available in a given context. In short, when our thinking follows the same ‘folds’ and we repeat the same conceptual processes, we arrive at similar choices. While such thinking may have been very useful in finding solutions to a problem in a past context, it prevents us from conceptualizing problems in other ways that may be more beneficial in a new and different. Jullien cautions us to look for the “écarts” (literally the gaps) between the creases and folds in our ways of thinking in order to discover other possibilities that may exist. Not the contrary, the opposite, the symmetrical, but other paths that can be taken toward a solution.

To understand the well-worn “folds” in mainstream thinking about waste management we will look at the work of Myra Hird (who draws upon Mary Douglas and Margaret Mead) on waste, the logic of the ‘circular economy’ and finally, how waste is seen in the “global South” through the perspectives of Appadurai, Bhabha and Ana Maria Peredo. Our starting point will be to identify some of the “habitual folds” in our thinking when we design waste management solutions. The aim is not to be exhaustive, or to suggest that these folds of thoughts govern the totality of mainstream conceptions, but to show four particular folds (i.e. habitual ways of thinking about waste) which we take for granted because they seem so obvious and are so entrenched in our conceptions, that we rely on them as if they were universal truths.

1.5 Folds in our thinking (“plis de pensées”) in managing waste: four externalizations

Myra Hird offers a penetrating and enlightening critique of contemporary conceptions of waste in industrialized and post-industrial societies, that reveals the essential premise behind mainstream thinking in waste management. Hird (2013) explains that mainstream treatment of waste is about pushing it away as a product that is at the end of its useful life - away from our lives, away from where we consume, away from where we live. In economically wealthy Northern societies, waste is thus something we get rid of by burying and forgetting it through technological means (Hird, 2013). In other words, mainstream thinking is largely predicated upon externalizing waste and its management.

Hird goes on to point out the inherent flaw in this mainstream approach that dominates in the global North: “[d]espite this forgetting, waste does not really go away, it flows over time and through space” (Hird, 2013, p.105). Through its accumulation and progressive immersion in the earth's strata and in different environments, burying and forgetting waste represents a major environmental risk to current and future world health. Hird is particularly worried about the consequences of mainstream approaches to waste because in her view, waste management forms part of a deeper social obligation toward future generations.

Landfills, according to Hird, are a prism through which social scientists refract the “politics and economics of consumption; intergovernmental, industry government and labor relations; urban-rural divides; health; gender and waste economies; science-public relations; risk; governance”; and more (Maclaren & Thi Thu, 2003) cited in (Hird, Ethics and the environment, p. 454). Waste and its management are thus not simply a problem in need of a better technical solution but an inherent part of our way of life and needs to involve all elements of society. In short, Hird warns us that our conception of waste needs to be rethought and changed if we are to avert serious environmental, health and social consequences, stressing the dangers of trade-offs between processes and consequences (Le Menestrel & de Bettignies, 2002).

1.5.1 Waste: a valueless rejection at the end of the production and consumption processes

The dominant economic model in countries transformed by the industrial revolution of the 19th century has been linear in structure: extracting raw materials from nature to make products that are expected to be used up or thrown away eventually. Driven by consumption, reducing time to market and product life cycles with planned obsolescence has led to increasing levels of waste generation since the Second World War. However, from an economic perspective waste has been categorized as an ‘externality’. That is, an unwanted by-product of the production and consumption process.

Economic interest has concentrated on the value associated with production and consumption, including as metrics for gauging the well-being of a population, economic policies and welfare. To date, societies do not want to see waste in economic terms, except as an economic activity or in terms of taxes to pay for its management. As Hird noted earlier, waste is not just at the very end of the process of production and consumption, it is something we no longer want, we no longer want to see, we want to forget: “Waste is a monument to all that we once wanted and now do not want, once valued and no longer value. Waste is an ironic testimony to a desire to forget.” (Hird, 2013 p.106).

The problem here is that waste has become too large to hide. Landfills and dumpsites are now forming mountains that blight our countryside or that of the poorest parts of the world (when we pay them to accept it). Even if we bury waste or ship it elsewhere, it does not disappear; it accumulates and slowly poisons the Earth, but few people want to face this reality. As noted earlier, waste is permeating all facets of the environment. Indifferent to human intention, waste assembles itself in ways that go beyond our understanding and our control (Hird, 2016).

The world is being forced to face the issue of waste as it is now too large to hide and externalize. From an economic perspective, trends are emerging that indicate growing efforts to value waste. That is to internalize waste handling in communities through increased economic valuation (Gregson et al., 2013). This includes through resource recovery (El-Haggar, 2007), remanufacturing, and ultimately circular production economies (Singh & Ordonez, 2015; Stahel, 2013). With internalization, waste becomes a resource with potential for value creation (Chalmin

& Gaillochet, 2009). It possesses an economic potential that the biggest waste management corporates from the global North (eg. Veolia, Suez Environnement) are investing in, as in the global South; the recycling market in Brazil already generates a turnover of US$ 1.2 billion. (Fergutz et al., 2011).

The valuation of waste is not only dependent on the economic context, but also the social and cultural context in which we live (Degobert & Brangeon, 2016). Economies are driven by outside forces, such as political constitution of markets (Gregson et al., 2013) or moral economies (Gregson et al., 2015). From a social perspective, labeling waste as rubbish is a way of managing social relations and their representation (Hetherington, 2004) and resource recovery is mostly ‘dirty’ (peripheral, poorly paid) work (Gregson et al., 2016), again at the periphery of social activities.

Other considerations in terms of value range from the individual value of waste to its collective value. In many countries waste becomes public property, and more importantly a public, municipal responsibility as soon as it is disposed of in ‘common’ municipal grounds. One of the major problems for its recovery, for its management, is the value that is attached to it. What is the price of a product that comes to its end of life? As a commodity, for its raw material price, or for its price when repaired, refurbished, reused, transformed into something else valuable, like compost? But we are not talking here only about face value, but also about societal value. Both from a material and epistemological perspective. In a society that in mostly geared and orientated to production margins, to new products, the second-hand market is marginal, and until relatively recently was mostly charity-linked. The concepts of recycling, 7 to 9Rs, or XRs, are very recent. It started with 3 Rs which come down as Reduce, Reuse Recycle – and the mix went up to 5 Rs now: Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Repurpose, Recycle, in that order. The order referring to the hierarchy of waste management and indicating the higher chances to reduce waste, to fight waste generation in an efficient way. New trends in consumerism and pressure of the public opinion have helped the creation of many more R’s including: Redesign on top of the now famous 7 R’s: Reuse, Repurpose, Rot, Repair, Return, Refill and Refuse. The more we intervene at a higher stage in the value chain (in redesigning for example), the more chances we have to reduce waste at product conception, at the more macro level of the circular economy. One needs to mention here reverse logistics that could be considered as a spin-off of the circular economy.

Let us take the example of agriculture, which is intensive in developed countries and those tied to globalization. Roughly one third of the food produced for human consumption in the world every year – approximately 1.3 billion tons – is lost or wasted. Food losses (see Fig.3) and waste amounts to approximately US$ 680 billion in industrialized countries and US$ 310 billion in developing countries, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)

Figure 3 – World per capita food losses and waste, at consumption and pre-consumption stages

Gustavsson et al. (2011)

It is interesting to note that the highest levels of food losses at the “production to retailing” level of the food supply chain are found in Latin America and North Africa. This can probably be explained by the poorer quality of production, distribution and logistics in these areas in comparison to Europe, North America and Industrialized Asia (i.e. the rich regions of the world). But the highest levels of food losses per capita for consumers are to be found in the rich regions, reflecting consumerist mentalities and behaviours.

The loss of food as waste and the environmental impacts of waste are forcing the world to face fundamental socio-political questions: “Waste, as both an epistemological and material 21 phenomenon, invites timely questions about possibilities for acknowledging an inhuman epistemology”. (Hird 2012, p.453). In this regard there is also an urgent need for material and political mobilization to change the way we think and act around waste (Hird, 2012). Two years after the introduction on a French law against food waste in February 2016, a range of improved food management practices have been observed: the volume of donations has increased, redistribution start-ups have been created, and major supermarket chains such as Carrefour are seeking greater involvement.

According to France’s Agency for Development and Energy Management (ADEME), households are responsible for about 20% of food waste, throwing away around 20 kilos of food per person per year, including 7 kg of products that are still packed. At the societal and behavioural levels, the practice of food recovery in urban areas (or “freeganism”) is creating an opportunity for important social interactions and exchanges for random people in the streets, waste traders, waste workers or waste pickers (Guien, 2019).

The model of economic valuation considers the issue of economic sustainability through the prism of market value, which in the case of the waste management value chain, is not well- defined. How can we ensure that value is created with recyclable goods? What is / can be sold where and at what price? What is the opportunity price? The market for waste has not yet matured enough to provide a successful value creation system. What are the marginal costs and marginal productivity of the waste market? Some of these can be reversely explained by the concept of willingness to pay: how much are Low-Income communities willing to pay for cleanliness, a healthy environment and the sanitation actions and services associated with it? The State generally fails (so far in studies that I have come across), to establish fair prices for waste, work with waste and recycling, as well as proper health support especially in poor outskirts communities. From a cost-based analysis perspective, the waste market does not operate successfully and fails to provide acceptable levels of revenues, because the elements of exclusivity and rivalry are missing, which suggests that a collective approach is needed to regulate and deal with waste management.

Nevertheless, the state failure to comply to its duty of care, be it on hygiene or health topics, translates into another tragedy of the commons, which is often described as the ill-defined market value of waste and waste management. The commons here being the common tools of a municipality paid at municipal level to collect and treat waste produced by its inhabitants, and in 22 most of the cases, dedicated to serve first and foremost wealthier neighbourhoods, leaving aside outskirts poor communities, especially those that cannot participate in the tax systems. Commons also encompass the waste itself, which in most cases becomes a common property of the municipality as soon as it leaves households of inhabitants. These commons could also be extended to include common health and common environmental aspects and so on. The failure of institutions starting at municipal level to address waste and operate their duty of care, often leads to waste market failure. In many cases in Indian cities for example the PPP (Private Public Partnership) scheme is used and appears often as a delegation of duty given to the private sector which often pushes core decisions on private companies about common health that become dangerous. There is hence an urgency to work from the ‘commons’ building collective responses for broader societal changes (Furedy, 1992).

Economic sustainability comes from well-defined markets. In the case of waste management, this means defining recycled material markets, both today and potentially into the future. Not only is the value of end of life products hard to specify, so is waste management work itself. In Brazil, rag-pickers (who sometimes make up for the failure of municipalities to exercise their responsibility of waste management and their duty of care) are paid, but they are paid 300 times less than contractors in the private market of waste collection (Medina, 2008).

However, the question is not only a matter of basic economics. More efficient waste management requires a change in the social image and social narratives of waste and its handling, from externality to centrality, from cost to resource, from dirt to an asset or even a sacred duty, and this can change waste management and its place inside a society. According to Corvellec and Hultman (2012), a change in the social narrative involves a change in the institutional context of organizations and thus a change in the conditions for organizing and managing and for the role of entrepreneurs. It induces new relationships among people: the solidarity to face potential unemployment and social exclusion (Singer, 2006), and more contribution within communities including non-fiduciary contributions, such as “gifts” or reciprocal exchanges of competences. Graham and Thrift (2007), at odds with common perspectives depict waste as being at the very core of Northern societies. They describe all the processes of maintenance and repair that keep modern societies going, preventing the constant decay of the world. These authors claim that by

23 considering such processes as central, and not simply mundane or repetitive, we gain not only more control but greater potential emancipation in urban cities.

In conclusion, waste in the global North is widely seen as external to the production – consumption process. Waste is an unwanted byproduct that must be buried and forgotten. This leads to an unmanaged accumulation of waste, which is particularly disturbing. The problem with attempts to reintegrate waste into the production process is establishing its market value. Market forces left alone, as they currently operate, will lead to failures or insufficient change. Disposal and forgetting of waste are made possible through legislative decree, risk models, community accession, and engineering practices (Hird, 2013). A systemic change is required. The solution must go beyond the economic sphere and become a social and political issue.

1.5.2 Waste is pushed outside the citizen’s reach, and outside of social life.

For Hird (2013), what is important is that waste can be kept “out of sight, out of mind”. Waste remains outside of social life. Waste must remain hidden. We want to bury it, to export it, to be able to forget it. Waste is surrounded by shame and secrecy. We do not show waste; we do not talk about it. Waste is not only outsourced outside the realm of economic activity (production and consumption), it must also remain outside of social life and public life. It comes to the fore only when landfills become insufficient or a strike occurs, bringing it out of the background.

But before turning to Hird’s critique of neo-liberal governmentality, we would like to consider the roots of this attitude in social life. Indeed, another core explanation of our ways to externalize waste is our perception of dirt, and of pollution in general. As Douglas and Hird have shown, the relationship to waste is highly dependent on culture. Waste is mainly associated with dirt, and dirt has a long tradition of being what is expelled outside of the community.

Mary Douglas links the notions of dirt and of disorder. The aversion of modern society to waste might well be a reflection on its difficulties to deal with disorder: “As we know it, dirt is essentially disorder. There is no such thing as absolute dirt: it exists in the eye of the beholder.” (Douglas, 2004 p.2). On one hand, dirt has to be avoided and expelled, and on the other hand it is central to society. “Dirt offends against order. Eliminating it is not a negative movement, but a positive effort to organize the environment.” (Douglas, 2004 p.2). What is true for dirt can be

24 extended to pollution which as well reflects on social order. Mary Douglas described how rituals of purity and impurity create unity, how beliefs about sex will express symmetry or hierarchy. “Each primitive culture is a universe to itself”. A society where “beliefs can be claims or counter- claims”, creating taboos, “subjected to external pressures”, creates boundaries and margins in our case of waste, dirt, as an urge for externalization (Douglas, 2004 p.4). “Reflection on dirt involves reflection on the relation of order to disorder, being to non-being, form to formlessness, life to death.” (Douglas, 2004 p.5).

Dirt is not only inconvenient. Relation to dirt is central in our behavior and influences the way we envisage the world. Douglas defines as well our idea of dirt, embedded in both care for hygiene and respect for conventions. And she links the evolution of rules for hygiene to knowledge progresses. For her, the interpretation of the pollution rule has to be done in its own culture. Hence, the idea pollution exists in a total structure of thought with boundaries, margins and internal lines held in relation by rituals of separation. That is why the social pollution that we have experienced is easier to understand than cosmic pollution. The idea of society controlling or influencing human action in its own right has external boundaries, margins, and an internal structure, rewarding conformity, and repulsing attack. Pollution rules do not correspond to moral rules, but only to a small aspect of morally disapproved behaviour. External attacks as mentioned earlier foster solidarity, or even like the collateral beneficial impact of laws against food waste of social interaction, more generosity, and a corporate social contribution. At the same time, it is possible for the structure to be self-defeating, which highlights the contradictions of all social systems.

“Pollution fears do not seem to cluster round contradictions which do not involve sex”. (Douglas, 2004 p.158). Because of its relation to dirt, waste is both rejected, and central to society formation. At the heart of questions about sacredness and uncleanness, dirt, being normally destructive, can sometimes become creative.

Studies of primitive cultures have brought to light the position of fear as well as those of deﬁlement and hygiene. Different approaches favor the idea nurture against nature, that concept of otherness mentioned by Jullien (2012) and here brought in by Margaret Mead: “as the traveler who has once been from home is wiser than he who has never left his own doorstep, so a knowledge of one other culture should sharpen our ability to scrutinize more steadily, to appreciate more lovingly, our own.” (Mead et al., 1973). Her findings on social perceptions around sexuality in 25 primitive communities, and their freedom with regard to gender and sex could be combined with the symbolic structures of Douglas. On one side are the primitive cultures in Samoa freeing themselves from the dirty image and culpability around sex generated by evolved societies, and even gender, and on the other and Douglas setting parallels between our perception of dirt and purity and sex. Yet the idea of learning by imprinting, which is one of the major aspects of Mead’s work in Samoa would be problematic in today’s utterly consumerist societies: children learning by watching their parents throwing away waste, most of which is plastic, is a major problem in waste generation and toxicity today. That same imprinting learning has to adjust to technological and marketing trends as well as globalizing or a mix of both; we need consumerist practices meeting preservation and nurturing cultures halfway. The nurturing approach of Mead could though be an avenue in our case of waste management, as a possibility to “assemble socio-cultural and biogeological processes in complex indeterminate relationships”, and propose solutions owned by the communities themselves (Lougheed et al., 2016).

We may usefully consider the deconstructions of taboo, Mana (be they ordering genders, sexuality, linked to purity) and our perception of dirt and waste. “It is instructive to know that standards differ in the most unexpected ways.” states Boas in his foreword to “Coming of Age in Samoa” (Mead et al., 1973). Here Mead conveys the same elements of contradiction in our societal perceptions of order, contradictory perceptions which lead most societies to push away dirt, externalize waste. “Never depend upon institutions or government to solve any problem. All social movements are founded by, guided by, motivated and seen through by the passion of individuals” (Mead et al., 1973 p.34).

What is worth noting, is that this rejection outside of society is not only a Northern trait. Waste and work with waste are heavily stigmatized in many global South societies too. The example of India maybe one of the most striking ones. Untouchables, also called Dalits (meaning “depressed”), are the manual scavengers, the removers of human waste and dead animals, leather workers, street sweepers and cobblers. Touching a Dalit was, and still is considered “polluting” to a cast member. Hence the concept of “untouchability”. Untouchables work as rag-pickers in India. Until the late 80’s they were called Harijan (children of God). This title was given to them by Mahatma Gandhi who wanted society to overcome this stigma of untouchables. His ban of the caste system in the 50’s was never accepted by the Indian society as a whole, and the caste system

26 still exists. Throughout India, the perception of waste, partly due to the Hindu culture and caste system, unavoidably affects peoples’ behavior and attitudes. And this impacts both the formal and informal waste management sector, especially the actors involved in collection, even involuntary waste disposal schemes (Snel, 1999a, 1999b).

Waste pickers recycle almost 20 per cent of India's waste. Yet they are unrecognized, facing discrimination without any access to government schemes. Forcing low-caste people in Indian communities to remove accumulated human waste from latrines is still in practice despite legal prohibitions. No law has yet been issued in India to give a protective legal framework to a severely outcast segment of Indian workers, who are nowadays increasingly recognized as a matter of necessity, to compensate the incapacity of the institutions at all levels to exercise their duty of care regarding waste management. Furedy (1989) notes that changes in the perception of waste workers among the Indian population can be reported. She writes that although the cultural values remain deep-seated with regards to those working with waste, whether they be in the formal or informal sector, there are signs that communities are starting to change their attitudes. New movements, in cities such as in Hyderabad, are starting to present waste pickers as entrepreneurs in their own right, although this is proceeding slowly. Other cities like Pune have even started to integrate waste pickers in their municipal waste management teams. The city of Surat has been a pioneer on awareness about waste and the necessity of efficient waste management, both through heavy taxes and waste management rules, especially in the streets, with shop keepers, and incentivizing strongly waste separation at source, with an innovation education campaign (the mayor campaigned himself, singing songs promoting a clean city). We later mention and describe the influence of spiritual movements on these changes, and in particular the Amala Bharatam project in Kerala, inspired by the principle of “cleanliness is holiness” advocated by Mata Amritanandamayi Devi. This clarifies the societal contradictions and the duality analyzed by Douglas and mentioned earlier. This shift in attitude demonstrates a diversity of economic opportunities in the informal recycling sector, based on supplies from all segments of the community and on deliveries to dealers and enterprises who can make profits from waste materials. It appears that income earned, however much or little this may be, overrides the social stigmas attached to this work.

So, there is a paradox. Society rejects waste, but it is structured partly on this rejection. As Hird et al. (2014, p.442) put it: “Given the vast regulatory, engineering, transportation, science, policy, governance, behavioral, and other considerations necessary to maintain our modern waste management system, it is remarkable that waste is, for the most part, so unremarkable.”

Due to its externalization out of the social world, waste management is largely left aside in democratic deliberations. Instead it is organized with regard to the needs of individuals. Hird attributes this to neoliberal governmentality: “This form of governance leads to the configuration of waste management as a technological issue supported by norms and practices of individual responsibilization. That is, waste management is largely structured as a matter of responding to individual citizens’ waste ‘needs’ through industry and technology, rather than, for instance, as a socio-ethical issue requiring forms of democratic deliberation on issues of overconsumption and economics based on relentless growth.” (Hird et al., 2014 p. 443) Such a neoliberal approach emphasizes a market economy, enhanced privatization, and an overall decrease in governmental control. What is more, in emphasizing individual attitudes, such an approach ultimately obfuscates potentially more profound systemic or upstream changes, which are unable to be addressed at the level of largely independently operating local governments (Hird, 2016).

In conclusion, waste must be externalized from society, from the social world. Paradoxically, for in part society is formed by its rejection of waste and dirt. It may be asked, however, whether society would not be formed differently if it accepted waste.

1.5.3 Waste must be buried and hidden

Waste does not only need to be kept outside the social world; it has to be rejected outside of the geographical territory. Waste is landfilled, burnt, and/or exported. Yet, despite our willingness to forget it, “waste doesn’t really go away—it ﬂows over time and through space.” (Hird, 2013 p.105). Could that stigma associating waste, i.e. products at the end of their lives, to disorder, explain our urge to hide it as suggested by Mary Douglas? Our efforts to bury waste, far away from our living spaces and outside of our cities, seem to be failing, with today’s urbanization and the tremendous expansions of cities. Even the smartest cities are overwhelmed by their waste generation. Most current landfills are either too small or too close to city centers.

As mentioned in the World Bank Report, What a Waste 2.0 (Kaza et al., 2018), almost 40 percent of waste is disposed of in landfills around the world. This global figure does not sound so alarming, but the situation of landfilling varies a lot depending on the economic status of the country concerned. About 19 percent undergoes materials recovery through recycling and composting, and 11 percent is treated through modern incineration. Recovery and recycling are way higher in rich countries, due to high tax-systems for waste as well as higher awareness of the population, participating more actively in waste separation. Although globally 33 percent of waste is still openly dumped, 5 governments are increasingly recognizing the risks and costs of dumpsites and pursuing sustainable waste disposal methods. Waste disposal practices vary significantly by income level and region. Coming back to our example of food waste and the dramatic situation of consumerist practices around the world, over 97 percent of food waste is landfilled in the United States (Levis et al., 2010). This at a time when cities around the world are now imposing composting at municipal level. The city of Florianopolis this year (mid-2019) became the first city in Brazil to pass a law-making composting compulsory.

In lower-income countries though, open dumping is still prevalent, where landfills are not yet available. About 93 percent of waste is burned or dumped on roads or open land, or dumped in waterways in low-income countries, whereas only 2 percent of waste is dumped in high-income countries. More than two-thirds of waste is dumped in the South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa regions, which will significantly impact future waste growth. As nations prosper economically, waste is managed using more sustainable methods. Construction and use of landfills are commonly the first step toward sustainable waste management. Incineration is also more common. In high- income countries, 22 percent of waste is incinerated, largely within high capacity and land- constrained countries and territories such as Japan and the British Virgin Islands (Kaza et al., 2018).

Landfills are the sites where we can forget waste, legislate, regulate, evaluate risks through models, based on community access and engineering practices. “Landfills make their appearance on and in the landscape as a material enactment of forgetting… They are ubiquitous places of forgetting, the presumed end point to the garbage we diligently put on sidewalks to be taken away to dumping stations and then to the countryside and other countries for burial out of sight, and mainly, out of mind.” (Hird, 2013 p.107). Even if their size, capacities and technical levels vary a

29 lot, landfills in developed countries tend to be scientific landfills whose impermeability is supposed to be ensured by layers of rocks, sand, liners, and geo-textile membranes. In developing countries landfills are often open dumping areas where little or no attention is given to leachate leaking: most kinds of waste are accepted, even unsorted hazardous waste.

Nobody knows what these kinds of practices can lead to. What will this waste evolve into, through putrefaction and gas emissions, or through the creation of bacteria? Hence, we need to start to think more ethically and sustainably about landfilling practices in light of our increasing vulnerability to the environmental problems and begin to address the threats landfilling creates (Hird, 2013). A number of countries, particularly Japan, South Korea, and some countries in Western Europe, have almost completely moved away from landfilling, and aim to reduce incineration and maximize waste reduction and recycling. With recycling reaching 50 percent and more in certain Western European countries, trade between countries in household waste for incineration is increasing.

For instance, in Sweden, the social narrative has shifted from “less landfilling” to “wasting less”, leading to a redefinition of the socio-material status of waste and imposing major changes on waste management organizations. Furthermore, what is defined at a given point in time as a sustainability object may gain social momentum and become performative. It triggers social dynamics that shape or delay a transition toward more sustainable social practices, among objects and between people and objects (Hodder, quoted in Corvellec, 2016).

Brazil passed a law2 banning dumpsites in 2010 but is facing tremendous difficulties to implement it. Some examples of cities in developed countries that have closed their landfills to comply with the requirements of legislation, or in response to public opinion or even leachate leaks and environmental disasters, reflect these difficulties. Waste diversions become rapidly saturated, and costs of transportation for waste to other regions become unsustainable. We have not found

2 A Lei nº 12.305/10, Política Nacional de Resíduos Sólidos (PNRS).

30 economic models that either enable the closure of such landfills replacing them by viable technological and economical solutions (Waste to Energy), or solutions that still promote the reduction and recycling of waste, with a mix of parallel solutions giving flexibility and efficiency to the waste management models.

In Brazil the positive example of the transformation of the dumpsite in Brasilia, the second biggest dumpsite in the world (after Jakarta, on the island of Java), into a sanitary landfill, shows the success of a global strategy that took almost 4 years to implement. The Estrutural dumpsite had been used for the final disposal of waste since the 1960s, receiving for decades 100% of the waste collected in the Federal District. From 16th January 2015 the start of the project ‘Vem Saber’ to the 20th of January 2018 – with the closure of Estrutural Dumpsite - and the 18th of July 2018 - with the opening of ATTR Estrutural - many resources from Brasilia, Serviço de Limpeza Urbana (SLU) team and municipality were involved, and the governor himself was actively involved in the project. The hiring of 1,200 waste pickers (through cooperatives and associations) as providers of public services helped to fight the high unemployment rates that currently exist in the Federal District, as elsewhere in the country. And, finally, there was a reduction of ICMS tax from 12% to 1% for recyclable material. The rag-pickers, ‘catadores’, were integrated into the municipal waste management forces, as public service providers. This is a similar system and model to those implemented in India (in the north Indian cities of Pune and Surat to a certain extent). The sustainability of the project was ensured by the strengthening and supporting of cooperatives and the mobilization of the population, improvements in the units of waste processing and construction of the transfer stations, improvement of computerized control systems, and systems monitoring large waste generators and construction. The receptivity of several local business sectors, such as supermarkets, shopping centers, bars and restaurants as regards compliance with the new regulations for large waste generators, and the role of volunteers in closing the dumpsite and mobilizing efforts for separate collection demonstrate the broad scope of the efforts that culminated in the implementation of the extraordinary change in the management of solid waste in the Federal District. Transforming this dump fill into a sanitary landfill is of course an in- between step but considering the size and illegal practices in that old dumpsite (after 58 years of existence, pollution, and risks) it was a huge step forward. Brasilia decided to join the Municipal Solid Waste Initiative of the Climate and Clean Air Coalition in 2017; since then, the SLU staff

31 have participated in capacity building training courses and webinars on topics such as data assessment and communication, acquiring knowledge that strengthened the efforts to close the dumpsite and improve the waste management system.

Landfilling, and our waste management institutions and practices more generally, might be viewed as a tragedy of the commons. Each government sites landfills discriminately on the basis of minimizing costs to its taxpayers and certain kinds of protest, and other political-economic considerations (Wynne, 2012 cited by Hird, 2013). The tragedy occurs when this hitherto common ground is confiscated and taken over by nonlocals (Ambler, 1991). If the commons render visible, then landfills disavow, externalize, and abject (Ostrom et al., 1999 cited in Hird, 2013).

As a conclusion, externalizing waste outside of the territories we live in, means in effect intending to forget about it. But waste cannot be forgotten, and without the right kind of management it will come back to bite us as a major problem. Primarily as an environmental problem, but also as a political problem. Drawing on the example of Canada, Hird shows that waste occasions particular material and political mobilizations. “Landfill leachate, colonialism, disinterested publics, freezing arsenic, global corporate investments, country food, land claims, neoliberal governance, permafrost, ravens, and a host of other socio-material forces both empower and thwart ‘management’ politics.” (Hird, 2017 p.1).

1.5.4 Technology is the answer to managing waste

Hird regrets that most scientific work about waste is about its management, and therefore leads to technological solutions (Hird, 2012). Technology is probably the best way not to be in direct contact with waste, a way not to touch, not to see and be able to forget about waste. However, reducing waste issues to technology might well be a way of not facing up to the entirety and the urgency of the problems.

Our favored waste management solutions are technological because they keep out of sight the unwanted and shameful sides of production and consumption processes. Waste management in the sense of treatment following linear techno-economic, end-of-pipe approaches usually falls under the domain of engineering, while concerns in the social sciences are more often related to

32 environmental policy, environmental education or urban planning and making visible the social facets of waste (Gutberlet, 2013).

Yet landﬁlling requires ethical as well as technological innovation (Hird, 2013). As technology changes the way people live, communicate, and transact, it also affects the way waste is managed around the world. Governments and companies that manage waste integrate technologies at all steps of the value chain to reduce costs, increase materials for energy recovery, and connect with citizens. Despite the ability of technological solutions to improve the way resources are used and recycled, technology selection differs by context. Communities vary in terms of geography, technical capacity, waste composition, and income level and often the best solution is neither the newest nor the most advanced technologically. Whereas a mobile app may be the simplest way to inform citizens on service changes in an affluent city, technologies such as radio advertisements may be the most effective in neighbourhoods with high illiteracy rates.

Technology is being used in a variety of ways to improve waste treatment and disposal. However, the range of optimal technologies varies greatly by income level and local characteristics. More detailed information and guidance regarding solid waste management treatment and disposal technologies can be found in the World Bank’s Decision Maker’s Guides for Solid Waste Management Technologies (Kaza et al., 2018).

Sanitary landfills and incinerators are prominent in high-income countries. High-income countries have higher rates of recovery and reintegration of materials from recycling and organics and make greater use of byproducts such as refuse-derived fuel or other energy from waste than lower-income countries. Waste-derived energy is used for a range of purposes, such as in industry or to power waste facilities or buses. Automated landfill monitoring has increased, with some sites even using drones to assess the capacity of cells (Lucero et al., 2015). “The science and engineering of landﬁlls is all about making sure waste doesn’t leak. Leachate—putrescible and organic material transported by water—does just this: it leaks” (Hird, 2013 p.107).

High-income countries are making a substantial effort to recover materials from the source, with an emphasis on recycling and the productive use of organic waste. Automation in recycling centers ranges from a conveyor belt to use of optical lasers and magnetic forces to separate waste (Peak, 2013). Citizen participation for source separation of waste is common for smaller

33 communities of less than 50,000 inhabitants, and mechanical sorting is commonly used for large cities. Greater attention is also being placed on management of food and green waste, sometimes through windrow composting, in-vessel composting, anaerobic digestion, and waste-to-liquid technologies. These technologies allow organic waste to be used effectively through capture of biogas and creation of a soil amendment or liquid fertilizer. These advances are complemented by improvements to distributed waste management, which emphasizes household interventions such as source separation. Some solutions are less well-known or are still being piloted. A bioreactor landfill is a type of sanitary landfill that involves recirculation of leachate to more quickly degrade organic waste than in natural situations, increase landfill gas generation in a concentrated period, and reduce final leachate treatment, under certain conditions (Di Addario & Ruggeri, 2016). Non- landfill solutions that have been available for some time but have not been applied at large scale with municipal solid waste include advanced thermal technologies such as pyrolysis, gasification, and plasma arc technologies (Rajasekhar et al., 2015). These thermal processes break down waste with high temperatures in a zero- or low-oxygen environment with one of the main outputs being a synthetic gas. When these processes are applied to municipal solid waste, commercial and technical viability has shown mixed results, with multiple failed attempts. Those solutions, very heavy on investments become viable and financially profitable only when high levels of waste are treated, i.e. in incinerators meant to treat centralized levels of waste. The solution itself to deal with and treat waste becomes a trap, preventing reduction of waste when faced with the necessity to feed huge plants. They end up requiring waste collection from further areas, which generates firstly high levels of transport.

Various solutions around the world appear as alternatives. We have chosen to focus on two types of solutions in Northern developed countries: one is technology based, and the last one considers responsibility.

With demand for resources increasing exponentially, experts are warnings about dangerous future shortages. Not only reserves of key elements -such as gold or silver- could be depleted within 50 years, but also arable surfaces may continue to disappear. Not to mention wildlife which is threatened to have disappeared completely in the coming years. Therefore, rethinking how our ways of functioning is a high priority.

While the data on waste production show that most waste is generated in developing global South countries, waste production per capita is however close to 4 times higher in the global North due to higher levels of consumption, packaging and so on.

Northern approaches to waste management tend to emphasize economic and technological aspects for collection and disposal of waste. As such, waste management costs are high, from taxes to pay for centralized collection and handling, and there are also environmental costs in terms of landfills and toxic materials including nuclear waste. Such centralized technology-based solutions have worked sustainably in the global North ostensibly because they are supported by a strong economic model.

The global North shows that technology can be harnessed to improve waste management when financing is plentiful. In San Francisco, GPS tracking systems improve collection and disposal efficiency and costs and penalization in Taiwan, including musical garbage trucks (Kaza et al., 2018). Automation of waste collection shows potential for replication of the successful implementation of new waste management processes in Israel. This has induced the development of very competitive multinationals dealing with waste collection, and treatment of waste, be it with solid waste, organic waste, or even wastewater: Veolia and Lyonnaise des Eaux are two examples. Stronger involvement of producers in the supply chain of waste is another avenue producing great results in northern European countries like Denmark, or in schemes like Extended Producer Responsibility. Other examples of success including more decentralized solutions in the global North are renewable energy, and community empowerment for separation at source, reutilization and repair.

Yet technology does not always work, and waste reduction sometimes clashes with economic priorities. Waste incinerators installed in Munich in recent years required very high investment that has to be amortized over a long period, which is typical of many big technology plants supported by mid- to long-term investments (amortized over 30 to 50 years). Hence their operators do not favor waste reduction or recycling but instead more and more waste to justify full capacity use of the plants. Moreover, most of these solutions are centralized and require complex and expensive collection/transport systems. From the centralized model using Biogaz in Sweden described by Corvellec (2016) we can conclude that such models are not economically viable, given the small amount of waste actually collected for use in its biogas plant. Many technological 35 examples showcase the urge and need for our societies - be they rich or poor - to deal with waste by not touching it, through the use of machines and systems.

We have chosen here to describe four externalities which not only explain why our societies have such difficulties to deal with waste generation but also with its management in efficient and sustainable ways. We believe that a global paradigm shift is necessary to change beliefs, taboos, manas, as well as the technical orientations that have been taken. This applies not only to developed countries in Europe and Northern America, where the highest waste generation per capita is witnessed, but also to developing countries. The example of India shows the failure of implementations of incinerators in New Delhi, mostly because of the transfer of models and techniques from outside to a different local context (different overall composition of waste, different communities, etc.). We need a shift in our perceptions that waste, and end of life products, have no value, or have a capitalistic value that forces the full-for-profit capitalistic model to create value. A shift in our intrinsic need to push away, and forget all kinds of waste in our societies, considering waste as dirty, impure, pollution, a source of a sense of sexual guilt, that is not only a religious perspective but as well a human repulsion. And finally, to consider alternative ways to manage waste than an all-technological solution.

As Hird put it, referring to Kennedy, “while most disposables appear the same before and after their use, their ontology has fundamentally changed. Before use, the object is a desirable commodity; afterwards it is garbage” (Kennedy, 2007). What makes things garbage is their unusability or worthlessness to human purposes (Kennedy, 2007). As such, no entity is in its essence waste, and all entities are potentially waste (Hird, 2013 p. 455). Being aware of and updating these folds of thoughts is a way to fight against their perverse effects and the terrible consequences of the incapacity of our developed societies to combat the impact of the growth of waste in volume and toxicity. The post-industrial, post-revolution linear economy, and the excesses of hard-core capitalism, and of forced consumerism, have imposed new reflections, openings, other modes of thinking: new economic models with a systemic vision reintegrating waste either in consumption cycles (repair, reuse) or in cycles of natural and nature-friendly degradation (recycling, compost). The terms sustainable, ecology, responsibility, 7R are emerging with these recent new societal paradigms (2002). However, the circular economy does have limitations.

1.6 Limitations of the Circular Economy concept

This second part aims to look into the concept of circular economy as a contemporary approach to organizing waste management, as a counter proposal to the linear economy as presented earlier. We will first go through the major definitions and directions taken in this new field, mostly developed since 2002. Stemming from the concepts of industrial ecology, extended life product (cradle-to-cradle), and new approaches to life cycle thinking, this approach proposes new economic models based on reconditioning, remanufacturing and recycling which within the EU largely apply neo-classical economic theory to the environment (Pearce, 2002). We will then look more closely at how circular economies create value for waste, “restores” value at the end of the production line and by doing so succeeds in addressing the first externalization we mentioned in Part 1: the necessary valuation of waste, and of end of life products, for their reintegration into life cycles. In our third part we will look into recent criticisms pointing at flaws that have emerged lately from the positioning of circular economies, positioning, mostly linked to its failure to take social aspects on board.

Circular economy is a generic term, and also a process that integrates Waste in a circle where things are used but return to the supply chain as raw material, recyclables and so on, and need to be taken care of in a loop, part of a restorative industrial economic model. In this model, the production of goods operates like a natural system: waste becomes the source of growth for something new. It is based on the principle that our systems should work like organisms, processing nutrients that can be fed back into the cycle, hence the term “restorative”. The objective of the circular economy is to maintain values, and manage stocks, of assets (the stocks may be natural, cultural, human, manufactured or financial). It thus contrasts with the linear industrial economy, which aims at adding value by transforming natural resources into goods and managing the corresponding manufacturing and supply chain processes (Stahel, 2019). Walter Stahel was among the firsts to express ideas on product life extension through remanufacturing and became a prominent advocate of circular economies in the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Nature is viewed as a non-valued externality but as a set of stocks, potential resources, flows and services that can be measured and value economically. Various methods and tools to account for materials and

37 energy flows have been developed, including life-cycle analysis, materials flow analysis and triple bottom line accounting (Alexander & Reno, 2012). Both are cited in Gregson et al. (2015). We can even add to the circle, the even newer logistical concept of reverse logistics. Here we can clearly see the trend in shifting responsibility back to the producer, in the sense that products will have to get back to producers, at their end of life to be reintegrated in the waste management hierarchy (reused, recycled and so forth). As well as an economic responsibility to the consumer who will have to pay extra for that “restorative” loop.

This is all the more interesting because it goes against the first externality, helping to create value for waste. In any case, this shows the importance of valorization and the interest of the possibilities offered by other folds of thought. Waste is no longer seen at the very end and outsourced from the consumption/production process. Nevertheless, while stressing the importance of this trend, we believe that it must go further. Only one of the four externalities is bypassed or modified by the new Circular Economy. Waste management in circular economies is still outside the social sphere, outside of human, community activities, and often heavily technological.

1.6.1 Circular economies work against the first externality by giving value to end of life products

Let’s look now at how circular economies address the problem of value creation for waste described in the first part of this chapter, from adding value to keeping value, or giving value to products that were considered dead or inert.

Dealing with drastic coming shortages by reintegrating raw materials into consumerism cycles has a clear economical value. Not only could reserves of key elements -such as gold or silver- be depleted within 50 years, but also arable surfaces may continue to disappear, not to mention wildlife, fish and so forth which have an even shorter life expectancy in our current societal schemes. Therefore, setting new societal paradigms and economic models is a vital survival priority. At the core of this rethinking is value, valuing, value creation, giving value, reestablishing value and restoring value. The rethinking of value creation within circular economies is restorative and regenerative by design and aims to keep products, components, and

38 materials at their highest utility and value at all times, distinguishing between technical and biological cycles. It rests on the following principles: the first one focuses on preserving and enhancing natural capital by controlling finite stocks and balancing renewable resource flows, creating the condition for regeneration. The second one aims at optimizing resource yields by circulating products, components, and materials at the highest utility at all times in both technical and biological cycles, designing for remanufacturing, creating inner loops (e.g. maintenance, rather than recycling), maximizing the number of consecutive cycles and/or the time spent in each cycle, by extending product life and optimizing reuse and sharing in turn, which increases product utilization (Ellen Mc Arthur Foundation, 2015). Here the circularity of value not only implies giving a fiduciary face value to a product, for its raw material value, and for its refurbishment value; circular economies also expand the concept of value, expanding the concept of usage, by multiplying usage for consumers. Such principles are going against the dogmas of linear and marketing economies, which are still based on mass consumption, and single usage. Traditional business models are mostly built on the presumption of cheap, unlimited natural resources which manufacturers take to make products that are consumed and then disposed of. This is our most widespread system, the linear system. According to McKinsey (Bouton et al., 2016), there is a yearly 80% of unrecovered materials from the $3.2 trillion worth that are used in consumer goods. Efficiency would increase if consumers and organizations thought twice about the end of products’ lifecycles and how to extract the embedded costs of the materials within the products. What used to be regarded as “waste” can be turned into a resource. That is one of the bases of the circular economy.

Taking care of the first element of externalization mentioned in the paragraph is one of the key elements of the circular economy and its success. It introduces an awareness of value of things that are involved in our life cycles, and a societal approach to natural human cycles. It considers the value of what we take from nature, the value of an end-of-life product (end-of-life is a nonsense in an ecosystem in which nothing disappears, and everything is transformed) and the value of polluting processes (e.g. China’s recent raising of coal prices) as costs need to be integrated in the face value of the raw material. Similarly, for every product, the value of having the product transformed to be returned to the natural cycle in a healthy way has to be taken into account.

There is no cheap price anymore, but the idea of a fair price is gaining currency. A fair price is a price for respectful collection, in mining from nature for example (the example of Brazil showing sadly that reducing maintenance and repairs on mining dams, divided by 10 in the past 12 years by Vale, can cost lives and environmental disasters), a price respecting local communities during this extraction, a price integrating social costs, a holistic price of using natural resources, as well as social resources, in an ethical and sustainable way. “The price system needs correction through government-sponsored research and development.” (Boulding, 1966 p.12). Boulding is considered as one of the fathers of the concept of the circular economy. We considered it relevant to show the evolution from the linear to the circular economy, the paradigm shift that occurred in the past decades, even though I do not want here to compare Boulding with the new trend of thought that has created and developed the circular economy per se.

There are many layers of values involved here: the face value of a product/service in end of life consumerism, the value of its recovery in our current society, the value of the work to do so, and specifically its devaluation, and non-financial appreciation in developing countries. Rag- pickers (“catadores”) are outcasts and are not respected for the service they render to society and communities, assuming a mission which has been dropped by local institutions and sometimes more broadly at national levels too (Medina, 2004).

But on the valuation front many steps need to be taken in a way stronger form to reach a certain level of balance. “Many of the immediate problems of pollution of the atmosphere or of bodies of water arise because of the failure of the price system, and many of them could be solved by corrective taxation.” (Boulding, 1966, p.13).

The role of institutional controls - in rich but also in poor countries – is to set a proper value for waste reintegration, as well as a cost for not doing, not participating, which up to now has been carried out using tax systems in rich eco-systems. “A law for tax penalties for social damages, with an apparatus for making assessments under it, a very large proportion of current pollution and deterioration of the environment would be prevented” and “unless we at least make a beginning on a process for solving the immediate problems we will not have much chance of solving the larger ones.” (Boulding, 1966 p.13-14).

Even if circular economies are making steps towards fair valorization, including waste, we have here attempted to define the span of value that is attached to waste and waste management, and how much still needs to be done way beyond economic value. If the circular economy in the past two decades has surely helped societal models to take some of its core and most important elements - such as the face value of discarded objects, the return value of end of life objects, cycles, and energies to production and consumption cycles - it has also failed to address some other important elements: social costs, and social value in end-of life products in ethical, sustainable and reverse logistics production models.

1.6.2 Circular economies are limited in addressing externalities two and three: the need to push waste away, and/or to manage it using technology

“Resource recovery through global recycling networks is regarded as a dirty and illegal trade.” (Gregson et al., 2015 p.3).

Here again, even in the frame of circular economy waste is still viewed as dirty and its trade as illegal, just as rag-pickers around the world are viewed. Semantically they are termed informal, but the perception is similar. Hence our need to push waste away, and most of the time to treat it technologically. In this part we will look more closely at the flaws of circular economies to address these two externalities and more importantly their failure to integrate social aspects into its circle. Indeed, most of the steps considered in the circular economy model are process- or technology-oriented.

“Our obsession with production and consumption to the exclusion of the “state” aspects of human welfare distorts the process of technological change in a most undesirable way. We are all familiar, of course, with the wastes involved in planned obsolescence, in competitive advertising, and in poor quality of consumer goods.” (Boulding, 1966 p.12). This obsession is termed “systemic stupidity” by Bernard Stiegler (2006). The failure to generate responsibility and action by manipulated consumers can probably be broadened to include the way our societies deal with the end of the supply chain, with the end of life (Stiegler 2009, 2010, 2015).

Although the concepts and implementation of circular economies have gained a lot of traction over the past two years – providing a semantic and a framework for growing public calling for drastic and rapid political and economic paradigm shifts taking into account new environmental 41 and social needs - many are now exposing the flaws of CE. Firstly, in the fuzziness of its many definitions, “it means different things to different people (…) CE’s link to sustainable development is weak… The focus on economic prosperity is particularly prominent among practitioner definitions (…) Mostly neglect the social considerations(…) One out of five definitions consider the consumer as a second enabler of CE… Describing good CE implementation examples can help sharpen the understanding of the CE concept both among scholars and practitioners.” (Kirchherr et al., 2017 p.221, 229, 230). A thorough literature review and review of definitions of circular economies (Kirchherr et al., 2017) has led to such negative comments describing clearly the incapacity of circular economies to include social elements, and to include the human and community factors which are crucial to any waste management approach.

The example of T-Mobile given in this article shows the limits of circular economies in the corporate context, and reflects the company’s willingness to push replacement rates from 2 to 1 year, aiming at doubling replacement rates through the Juhu new contract in 2014, while at the same time T-Mobile puts forward its take-back system. Circular economies are described as weak by the author (Wieser, 2016). Indeed, if a cellphone and communication company aim at selling twice as many phones by doubling consumers’ replacement/renewal contract rates, what are the chances of take-back systems being able to compensate such marketing systems? In an all- consumerist economy, the “American dream” described by Stiegler as driving more consumers to buy faster, bigger, renew faster, is there room for Reduction, the R of reduce in the hierarchy of waste? The systemic stupidity blinding and manipulating consumers not only stems from the marketing of the products themselves but also in consumers’ readiness to comply with the fashionable circular economy concept. What are the chances of extending the service-life of objects - the, Extended Producer Liability advocated by Stahel (2019) – to counter the never- ending capacities of marketing and consumer manipulation?

And the perspective of the communities involved, in our case of very poor communities, are core to elaborate solutions for sanitation and waste management in such contexts. Because there are solutions to counter waste generation that can come from communities themselves, bottom up, because communities often have solutions based on self-sufficiency, as well as traditional practices to head in this direction. “Implicit practices of low consumption of resources and diverse goods seem to have characterized all traditional societies. These practices could not

42 have become norms and be formulated as “sobriety” only in contact with cultures where moderation and limitation were absent… Voluntary sobriety as a pillar of a humanism of the biosphere is part of the entanglement between the ecology of society and the socialization of ecology and characterizes exactly a social and cultural project” (Bourg & Arnsperger, 2017 p.100).

Can a “Reduce” approach reach the top of the the waste pyramid, and what best practices can we already showcase to advocate this direction? This research is not about building new reports or simply criticizing existing ones. We look here at the social element that circular economies do not address with the weight and importance it deserves, focusing on the level of communities and more specifically poor communities.

Figure 4 - Outline of a circular economy (Ellen McArthur Foundation, 2015)

There is no question that the new concept of the circular economy is a paradigm shift that moves our societies in the right direction – in terms of consumerism, and ethics of industrial and services production in general –, leading to more sustainability. This concept, which dates back to the 70’s, and was revived through consulting reports and promoted through heavy marketing and competitive models, is welcome, and forces us to take a new perspective on our consumption models and discarding patterns. As seen in Figure 4, biological cycles are put in correspondence with technical cycles to preserve and enhance natural capacity. But as I suggested, this seems to fail to integrate the social component, such as considering consumers, producers or even communities at the step of exploitation of resources or services by including them in decision making. Many tribes are being currently expelled from south Amazonian regions without having any say in the matter, in Brazil, to allow further mining exploitations that have no environmental and social plans.

It is very difficult to assess or quantify the impacts of circular economies. There is no doubt that a shift of mindset and a systemic approach are needed. It is impossible to say today whether or not the circular economy is a concept that will “end up as just another buzzword in the sustainable development discourse” (Kirchherr et al., 2017 p.229).

We have chosen to focus on some consumerist behaviors which explain the ways we externalize our waste and how it influences our waste management practices. Circular economies are sometimes seen as a panacea to all our problems of pollution, and waste, in the sense of “gaspillage”, as well as end of life… but they have many shortcomings that we also set out here. Are circular economies the equivalent of CSR, a mere marketing tool used by many corporates to hide many unethical and non-sustainable practices?

In terms of valuation, CSR has in most of the countries where it is implemented a fixed value, a fixed share of corporate participation. Circular economies however have not yet reached such a level of compulsory implementation and remains at the level of “good to have”, and in many cases they are merely a “manual of good behavior”.

We have come to the conclusion that including community perspectives is pivotal if we want to incorporate such paradigm shifts in an efficient manner in our daily practices, and to shift our previous derogatory perceptions and actions in a sustainable and lasting way.

After looking into some of the folds of thinking (“plis de pensées”) of the North, we wanted to seek out any similar gaps and folds of thinking in the global South. Yet we could not find authors showing in the same way such folds of thinking for the global South. This is most probably due to greater diversity of situations and cultures, what Bhabha and Appadurai term hybridity, which we analyze in the next paragraph. Nevertheless, we will look at the global South through authors such as Gutberlet and Furedy who have looked at waste management in South America and India. We will then take the example of Brazil which due to its rich diversity, seems a very interesting case.

1.7 From divide to hybridization

When you need to find a gap, the possibility of other models or other folds of thinking, it is too easy to say to yourself that you just have to look south. The North/South division is far too indiscriminate and seems to be rooted in a mythical past or a colonial imagination, which in no way reflects contemporary realities. For many years now, the south has experienced an (often violent) influence from the north, and the opposite movement is becoming just as true. But these models are not simply inherited or forced, they give rise to very creative movements of translations and re-translations. Globalization creates multiple and complex hybridization processes.

For our research enterprise, this means first of all that if we want to start looking for a gap, we must look for organizations that are largely influenced by a non-colonial tradition, and these are not so common. The idea is not to look for “virgin” organizations, but where other folds of thinking can be visible (which may even be hybridized or in the process of hybridization). Secondly, the question of hybridization processes, and the potential creativity they contain, may be even more interesting and promising than any pure alternative model. We must therefore both try to go back to origins to make other folds of thinking more visible, away from the dominant ones, and on the other hand open ourselves up to the experiences and processes of hybridization.

To move forward on this idea, we will be guided by Arjun Appadurai and Homi Bhabha, both of Indian origin, who seem to me to have given the most thought to this issue of contemporary cultural hybridization.

1.7.1 Appadurai and hybridity

Appadurai, an American Indian anthropologist, focuses on the illusion of thinking in terms of an opposition between North and South; there is not only an opposition here, but also merging elements, like the “creolity” of Césaire. In the case of India, the influence, particularly the British influence, has deeply marked the Indian culture and practices, and yet what we see now in India is not English culture anymore. There are many hybrid situations. The most famous example Appadurai describes is probably cricket and how it became an agent of the Indian community and nation building through its indigenization: how this English sport – characterized by elitist values of British Victorian era – has become an iconic symbol of Indian culture, not only surviving after the independence of India beyond urban elite classes but becoming what one could call the “football” of India. This shows the integration in a colonized country, in this case India, of a highly class-centered and elitist activity like English cricket, assimilated and merging with the local cultures and characteristics, to the point of becoming a national symbol and being practiced with Indian codes.

A similar point of integration of an external habit is made with the example of enumeration politics carried out by British colonists in India. Enumerations are now often used in informal settlements by a people’s own community organizations. In poor urban communities they also help as well local people to mobilize knowledge about themselves – that helps develop better relations with local governments, institutions, build projects. This example of enumeration, transforming a colonially imposed process into a useful local practice, became important in the case of India for communities to undertake their own research. And such a use of hybridity can be replicated in other contexts around the world, where the practice of origin and the community taking it on may come from as many binary or mixed interactions as possible.

Moreover, Appadurai apprehends the concept of culture and cultural hybridization inviting us to think about the “disjunction” of global flows, and their multiple interactions, suggesting the idea of flow movement in permanent construction depending on the perspective from which we consider it. For him the “new global cultural economy has to be seen as a complex, overlapping, disjunctive order” (Appadurai, 1996 p.32).

For us, a very important point is the place that Appadurai gives to what he calls the imaginary dimension. Imagination refers to the folds of thoughts of Jullien. It is of course not the same concept, but it is particularly in the imagination that some specific thoughts are seen, where Appadurai articulates a view of cultural activity known as the social imaginary, which is composed of the five dimensions of global cultural flows he describes. “Imagination as a source of agency constructing new transnational identities that no longer remain bound to nation-states functions as neither an ‘emancipatory’ or ‘disciplining’ agent, but rather ‘a space of contestation in which individuals and groups seek to annex the global into their own practices of the modern’.” (Appadurai, 1996, p.4).

The image, the imagined, the imaginary – these are all terms that direct us to something critical and new in global cultural processes: the imagination as a social practice. “No longer mere fantasy (opium for the masses whose real work is somewhere else), no longer simple escape (from a world defined principally by more concrete purposes and structures), no longer elite pastime (thus not relevant to the lives of ordinary people), and no longer mere contemplation (irrelevant for new forms of desire and subjectivity), the imagination has become an organized field of social practices, a form of work (in the sense of both labor and culturally organized practice), and a form of negotiation between sites of agency (individuals) and globally defined fields of possibility. This unleashing of the imagination links the play of pastiche (in some settings) to the terror and coercion of states and their competitors. The imagination is now central to all forms of agency, is itself a social fact, and is the key component of the new global order” (Appadurai, 1996, p.31). Imagination enables us to consider all possibles, and to select and combine them.

Further major concepts are put forth to encompass this complexity: the concepts of scape or landscape placed by Appadurai into various frameworks. Ethnoscapes is the migration of people across cultures and borders. Mediascapes describes our understanding of the world through the variety of media at our disposition. Technoscapes is defined as the scope and movement of technology around the world. Financescapes are the flux of money and capital. And ideoscapes shows the global flow of ideas and ideologies. It is used as a heuristic tool with which he proposes to imagine the hybridity of our contemporary world and consider the strength of the great cultural models, without neglecting the agentivity of individuals, and without minimizing the importance of resistances. We will see later the example that Peredo (2003) gives of the collaborative

48 communities sending their kids to university and their coming back influencing the community in many folds of thought: in new management practices, or a willingness to facilitate external financial interventions. At the same time, ancient practices of agriculture can be mixed with new business models giving the community access to outside markets.

1.7.2 Bhabha and hybridization

If Appadurai has framed in a way the complexity of hybridity, Homi Bhabha, the Indian English scholar and critical theorist, looks more at the hybridization processes. Rather than the static and comparative concept of cultural diversity, or the definition of differences for Jullien, Bhabha prefers to look at cultural differences, and what happens when they are observed in matrixes: creativity, mimicry, the experience of ambivalence (when what is valued by one culture is rejected by another), as well as time planes, the processes here too are complex. “The enunciation of cultural difference problematizes the binary division of past and present, tradition and modernity, at the level of cultural representation and its authoritative address. It is the problem of how, in signifying the present, something comes to be repeated, relocated and translated in the name of tradition, in the guise of a pastness that is not necessarily a faithful sign of historical memory but a strategy of representing authority in terms of the artifice of the archaic” (Bhabha, 1994 p.34-35). “Hybridization” is a characteristic of the emergence of new cultural forms of multiculturalism. Instead of seeing colonialism as something from the past, Bhabha shows how its histories and cultures constantly influence the present, placing cross-cultural relations at the center of new positionings.

We used the semantic around dichotomy to describes the divides between North and South, rich and poor, but we could have used ambivalence as well. The idea of ambivalence sees culture as consisting of opposing perceptions and dimensions. Bhabha claims that this ambivalence—this duality represents the “traumatic scenario of colonial difference, cultural or racial, returns the eye of power to some prior archaic image or identity. Paradoxically, however, such an image can neither be 'original'—by virtue of the act of repetition that constructs it—nor identical—by virtue of the difference that defines it” (Bhabha, 1994 p.8). Here the colonial presence remains ambivalent. This opens up the two dimensions of colonial discourse: one characterized by invention and mastery and the other by displacement. This means that if we look at the experiences 49 in the South, what we will see will most likely be hybrids or hybridizations. This is very interesting if we are looking for innovative possibilities, but to be able to observe the differences better, it is best to look in certain places, where hybridization does not yet fully cover some more original forms. This is the reason why we will for a time show some essential features of waste management in the Great South but we will then turn to some cases described by Ana Maria Peredo where it seems to us that more divergent experiences are to be found.

If we reposition these examples and concept into our original thread of Jullien, we see here as well the idea of otherness and how in those cases of Apadurai Bhabha and Peredo (presented in the next chapter) in an involuntary manner, diversity and multiculturalism can bring rich new perspectives, breaking each side’s folds of thought, preconceived ideas and practices.

1.8 Circular economies in the global South

In the global South, waste and its management are far more visible in daily life compared to the global North in which they are seen as remote from society, to be buried and hidden from sight (Furedy, 1992). The contribution of informal waste recycling to development also remains largely unacknowledged (Nzeadibe, 2009). How greater acceptance of waste management affects organizational, social and political processes is not entirely clear.

The global South contains a greater interplay between the economic, ecological and social dimension of waste management than we see in the global North (Gutberlet, 2013). While still characterized by ‘dirtiness’ and secondary status, a less secluded position allows for more social and political participation. In some places, cooperatives of waste scavengers are now beginning to be recognized as preferential partners by municipalities (Dias, 2011) and gaining greater voice in relevant public decision making (Tremblay & Gutberlet, 2011). From a community perspective, this makes a very important difference. Medina (2008) reports that 90 percent of a surveyed scavenger cooperative in Latin America indicated that they liked what they did and considered it decent work. Medina (2007) estimates that 2% of these urban scavenger populations survive by salvaging materials from waste for recycling. This represents around 64 million people from the 3 billion urban population of the global South.

Huge quantities of unmanaged waste – in the cases of India, Bolivia and Brazil – have the potential to be managed by local communities and at the same time to provide jobs and dignity to unemployed and unqualified people.

Each of the three projects for this participative research have been chosen among the opportunities that emerged in terms of getting involved with community waste management. In India this was mostly through the spiritual organization of Amma in south India, Kerala, where Seva (Selfless Service, community work) is a common practice that turned into a research project, and the start of my PhD. In Bolivia, it stemmed from contact with an alumnus of the INSEAD Social Entrepreneurship Program. And in Brazil contacts with a local university in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, central Brazil created an opportunity to engage with a very specific community: a land occupation, i.e. a squat.

The example of Brazil has been chosen since I had already worked in Rio de Janeiro on projects involving NGOs and kids in the streets and still had good contacts in Rio and other places. The work I had done in Bolivia in September 2014 raised the interest of a colleague of mine at INSEAD. A conference on Social Impact Investment in Sao Paulo gave us the opportunity to define a project to implement in Bolivia. The “Bairro Limpio” Project in Bolivia led to contacts with UFMG, and to a challenge to go and do something in a very poor community in Minas Gerais close to Belo Horizonte.

Brazil seemed an obvious opportunity in terms of replicating some of the ideas that had worked in Bolivia. It was clearly necessary to use experience of ideas that worked (and ideas that failed) to design a new model of intervention specifically for the new context of Tomás Balduíno, the favela, a land occupation in Riberão das Neves, 45 kilometres north-west of Belo Horizonte.

All those projects came as consequences of my presentations to fellow colleagues of the INSEAD Social Entrepreneurship Program, particularly at its conference in Sao Paulo in May 2014. Each project was improving my level of experience and generating greater legitimacy to present my field work in grassroots level projects. And each time the projects gave me the opportunities and ideas to propose new projects and pilots to tackle some aspects of poor communities’ sanitation problems.

Most of the problems of waste in the Global south come from lack of resources/funding for collection-treatment-separation, a lack of organization, and a lack of investments in global solutions or even decentralized ones. Rising urban affluence in many developing countries is creating a new culture of consumerism with little consideration for recycling or reuse where most of the failures of waste management systems, if they exist, come from lack of local engagement.

Some examples of success are seen in decentralized solutions especially dealing with waste separation and composting (40% to 60% of waste levels in poor countries). The example of Pune in India, where rag pickers are integrated in in PPP, has shown a way of including the informal sector in institutional waste management processes. Sustainable source separation in Panaji India is another sign of local capacities and knowledge to implement decentralized community-oriented solutions.

The necessity of acknowledging other kinds of models of value creation and of empowering communities from the bottom up is also present in the examples referred to above. This is what we were looking for when we found new economic models, such as the Community Based Economy developed by Ana Maria Peredo.

1.9 Valuation models in the South: a new model and the theory of Community Based Enterprise

In areas where globalization and brutal insurgent conflicts create poverty and wither away villages and cultural traditions, solutions to create value, and to solve the problem of poverty have been thought about in many ways (Peredo, 2008). And these solutions – especially at the BoP – are more sustainable when they are designed and implemented with and for the local communities. This is why I want to introduce this “otherness” from Peru, following the thread from Jullien. I referred to Peredo’s anthropological as well as business analysis of three cases, two from her country of origin in Peru in the Andes, and one in Ecuador.

Ana Maria Peredo looks here at how poor communities are creating solutions to survive. She studies in those three cases the processes of poverty alleviation. And shows how through a collaborative, cooperative spirit they manage their own resources, creating activities, jobs, streams of revenues as well as supporting their own livelihood, social systems and even adjusting to an 52 ever changing outside world, where globalization brings opportunities as well as threats to culture, ancient traditions and local and self-sustainability.

This gap is bringing new perspectives on poverty alleviation, on how to engage with such very poor, faraway and sometimes outcast populations. It also suggests as well new models to create value, as well as to preserve existing values such as ancient knowledge, basic techniques, even basic technologies that could be exemplary in many other cases - whether as replication examples, or models, or as scaling examples and ideas for other contexts, for example in more privileged communities (developed, rich ecosystems).

1.9.1 Creation of value: looking for a model in the gaps

The major externalizations we have witnessed and studied amounted to “stamping” from models mostly developed in northern countries which are rich developed societies, but they are also found in rich southern areas. These situations have highlighted first the need to establish systems and economic models for value creation. Value creation has thus been the focus of this research from the beginning, from perspectives tending to be based on economic, managerial and business development.

Nevertheless, looking at poor communities of the south has shifted some of the elements of externalization of waste. For example, through a “technification” of means to treat waste and develop waste management, we have gradually discovered how social factors are way more important than external factors, and externalizing problems.

The entrepreneur is considered by Joseph Schumpeter (1934) as an “economic actor” who causes development or creative destruction in a part evolutionary, part revolutionary approach to societal “wellness”. He investigates and reasserts the transformative process of creative destruction through socioethical discourse and regrounding within the public space of current, real-life community contexts. Deconstruction comes from predetermined concepts and hierarchies of traditional definitions, practices, and understandings of entrepreneurship, and encourages regroundings within multidiscursive spaces. Richard Swedberg and Yohann Stryjan support the idea of recombining existing resources in new ways to create dynamic potential for entrepreneurial activity. Honig, and Peredo, assert that this potential should originate from basic human needs and

53 desires and should contain indigenous (as opposed to preestablished) cultural and social identities that promote well-being—an ethical view of entrepreneurship (Steyaert & Hjorth, 2008).

Ana Maria Peredo has shed light on the necessity of integrating more social aspects into local business models, and her insight has had an important influence on this research. Ever- increasing poverty and social inequalities are withering away of poor, remote villages and cultural traditions. Peredo shows how purely local initiatives centering on community-organized and community operated enterprises have produced some creative approaches. These may offer alternatives and hope to other communities, and they are the focus of this study.

She has created the theory of Community Based Entrepreneurship (CBE). In this theory, people themselves are the major asset, and although the road to the future is fraught with pitfalls, they have shown with their resourcefulness and communal approach that there may be alternative paths to sustainable development (Peredo, 2003). CBE describes a community acting corporately as both entrepreneur and enterprise in pursuit of the common good (Peredo & Chrisman, 2006).

We are talking here about a proposition of value creation through entrepreneurship at the level of communities that fits perfectly the purpose of this participatory research, with the Community-Based Enterprise (CBE) model. It provides a potential strategy for sustainable local development that can be seen as a new way to create value – whether through material acquisitions, or the direct creation of value through direct jobs or indirect jobs, for example.

Even though, Peredo does not analyze sanitary systems or waste management or even waste problems per se, the community empowerment aspects are here crucial and very similar to the processes observed in our case studies and are indeed developed in the solutions co-created with the communities themselves. Lots of similarities can be drawn upon, especially regarding the first externality of value creation. This model of CBE appears to be quite unique in the literature. Although many have tried to provide global systems to help and, support such poor communities, none have managed to propose a unique model. Most have failed and are still failing to address poverty overall and to work with very poor communities in remote areas, especially in the global South. The CBE model here does not claim to cover all aspects, or to propose an intervention model as a one-for-all fit, but it makes propositions for how entrepreneurial activity may be

54 harnessed to ameliorate chronic poverty. CBEs are created by community members acting corporately (Peredo & Chrisman, 2006).

Entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship have been seen over the last few decades as the panacea for job and value creation. Some have already pushed such small business models for community empowerment and capacity building even in northern ecosystems, especially to create value and jobs for minority communities. “The social entrepreneur aims for value in the form of large-scale, transformational benefit that accrues either to a significant segment of society or to society at large, and value proposition targets an underserved, neglected, or highly disadvantaged population that lacks the financial means or political clout to achieve the transformative benefit on its own”. (Martin & Osberg., 2007 p.34). This is what is achieved in the three cases analyzed by Peredo through cooperatives mostly founded and managed by commoners. An approach combining the tragedy of the commons of Adam Smith, with a social entrepreneurship “balanced feedback loop” defining the suboptimal equilibrium of Social Entrepreneurship, the approach adopted by the Skoll Foundation article in Stanford Social Innovation Review. The concept of “social entrepreneurship”, is further defined by Mair and Marti (2006 p.40) as “a process involving the innovative use and combination of resources to pursue opportunities to catalyze social change and/or address social needs”. Social businesses can be seen as a subset of social entrepreneurship, which includes both profit and not-for-profit initiatives, and which can be distinguished from conventional entrepreneurship through the “relative priority given to social wealth creation vs. economic wealth creation”. According to Uqam's Center for Research on Social Innovations3, the businesses have four characteristics defining a social enterprise: they are created in collaboration by a diversity of actors, their objectives are hybrid (economic and social, material and intangible), and their effects can go beyond the initial project and thus contribute to changing some of the major social balances. In keeping with this approach,

3 https://crises.uqam.ca/

55 we conceive of social innovation not as the action of a heroic social entrepreneur, but as a collective movement of value creation. It aims at innovative activities and services that are motivated by the goal of meeting a social need and that are mainly disseminated by organizations whose primary objectives are social (Mair et al., 2006). Social innovation is a collaboration between institutions and individuals promoting innovative solutions to fill social gaps, where private actors are engaged alongside individual philanthropic and state initiatives, as a “multi-stakeholder collaborative approach” and optimizing its collaborative “impact” (Hanleybrown et al., 2012).

Many of these aspects are to be found in the model developed at local levels by Peredo in CBE, as well as in her theory of indigenous entrepreneurship where she looks at “motivations and strategies of entrepreneurs and their important contribution to economic development” applicable to indigenous people (“towards a theory of indigenous entrepreneurship”) (Peredo et al., 2004 p.3).

For its part, the concept of “social entrepreneurship” “targets value creation in the form of large-scale transformational benefits that benefit either an important segment of society or society as a whole, and the value proposition targets an underserved, neglected, or highly disadvantaged population who lacks the financial means or the political weight to achieve the transformative advantage alone” (Martin & Osberg, 2007 p.35). Social enterprises can be seen as a subset of social entrepreneurship, which includes both for-profit and non-profit initiatives, and which can be distinguished from conventional entrepreneurship by prioritizing social wealth creation. Looking back at the creation of the Grameen bank and of many of the social enterprises linked to the micro credit organization, Yunus defines it as a place “where stakeholders replace shareholders as the focus of value maximization – (this) could empower capitalism to address overwhelming global concerns” (Yunus et al., 2010 p. 314).

And he has introduced in the Grameen Group a Hybrid Value Chain model (HVC) implementing SJV (Social Joint Ventures) where leverages are created between private and citizen sector resources to provide services / products for more fragile and underserved communities: reduce poverty, accelerate open access health insurance, housing, credit services, Grameen Bank models, Grameen Phone (partnership with Telenor); facilitate access to drinking water, Grameen Veolia (co-creation with Veolia Water); tackle malnutrition, Grameen Danone (collaboration with Danone), for very poor communities in Bangladesh. These examples of the implication of 56 multinationals in the process of economic development of very poor communities probably mean as well dangers for local communities, their identities, their culture, their traditions, and ancient techniques, and go against Peredo’s models. But this also shows the capacity of hybridity, mixing full-for-profit and highly globalized corporates with isolated and outcast communities. The utmost globalization is joining forces with exemplary models created like the Grameen Bank and micro- credit, designed in poor regions like Bangladesh by local people to solve local problems.

It seems to us that a key point of social innovation is its territorial anchoring. It is created by and for a territory. It is about generating ideas by identifying needs and potential solutions from the communities themselves, by “fundamentally changing relationships, positions and rules between stakeholders, through an open process of participation and collaboration with relevant stakeholders, including end-users, crossing organizational boundaries and jurisdictions.” (Haneybrown et al., 2012 p.5).

This element of territoriality is also a common element in the three cases described by Peredo. In each case, some elements of individual property are mixed with the most important source of revenue in the “common”, for collective use and production. “Collective property differs from private property in that it consists in joint ownership, but it resembles private property in that individuals can independently exercise their property rights, especially the right of alienation. Common property resembles collective property in that is held by a group, but it differs – crucially – in that rights are held co-equally and indivisibly” (Peredo et al., 2017 p.2).

This is why we believe that the new model presented by Peredo is by far the most advanced idea regarding Community Based Entrepreneurship, embedded in social entrepreneurship and – more specifically regarding our focus - value creation at the grassroots community level. It “represents an alternative and promising model for development of impoverished communities, regarding collective and individual interests as fundamentally complementary and seeing communal values and the notion of the common good as essential elements in venture creation. Its holistic approach integrates economic, social, cultural, environmental and political aspects of communities allowing cultural identity, cooperative traditions, to be a driving force, impelling social, economic and environmental initiatives concurrently” (Peredo & Chrisman, 2006 p.37).

1.9.2 Three cases showing different processes of value creation at community level: Salinas in Ecuador, and Chaquicocha and Llocllapampa in Peru.

The three cases described by Peredo (2003) are located in a very poor region of Peru, country where Peredo comes from, and in Ecuador: Salinas, Chaquicocha, and Llocllapampa give a clear perspective of the use of their social energy and their own strengths to create alternatives that have been instrumental in improving the well-being of many of their inhabitants.

The case of indigenous specificities (Banerjee et al., 2018) is also touched upon here. Salinas is at the end of a dirt road in an isolated region of Ecuador. Peredo starts to describe first how on privately-owned land before the 70’s – in a situation reminiscent of colonial practices –, farmers had to pay 20% to 50% of their produce as rent for their land to two owners (Cordovez and the Catholic church). The transfer of the salt mines in private ownership to a peasant cooperative (with the help of progressive members of the Church, following the arrival of a visionary activist priest, Padre Antonio), saw the creation of a savings cooperative. In the entire valley land was now owned by peasant organizations, some of it for private and some for communal use. Another cooperation was then created at a whole new level with the government and the Swiss Cooperation Agency for milk, cheese and butter production.

The Salinas cooperatives inspired by Padre Antonio have created amazing value, directly with 363 factory jobs, while providing indirect related activities for the 5000 inhabitants of the town. Salinas also has other side effects in terms of influence and exemplarity on other villages in the country and abroad, by demonstrating self-sufficiency. Its supporting activities have provided a way for increasing economic income and enhancing both collective and individual entrepreneurial activities. It has diminished poverty. It has stimulated markets and revitalized culture, all of which would suggest that culture and economic development can be compatible and mutually supportive. The Salinas community has been able to mix culture, community, and ethnicity while responding to market imperatives. If the development of the cooperatives in Salinas has been of undoubted importance at many levels, especially in terms of economic benefits, many developments (e.g. technological and economic developments) have not been accompanied by similar ones in social cultural and political areas. Moreover, many locals fear that the whole system will fall apart once Padre Antonio is no longer there. As well-being is dependent on external markets, Salinas’ co-op products are often designed to suit foreign tastes and not local preferences. 58

This means they are subject to ferocious international competition, and the vicious effects of globalization (Peredo, 2003). Peredo concludes that even if the results of the cooperative movement in Salinas have been impressive in many areas it has failed to empower the local community, build capacity for self-management, and generate social capital.

Another example for value creation and the fight against poverty is the case of Chaquicocha, a poor community in the Peruvian Andes. The setting is quite different, with few resources based on agriculture and strong environmental limitations. Despite these constraints the village had managed to create minimum food security, with access to a low income and a basic level of education and health. Peredo shows how through entrepreneurial initiatives and traditional knowledge the community created local value through collective enterprises including dairy, a sheep barn and cattle feedlots as well as plantation of well-known local Peruvian staples. The plaza has been totally transformed into a colorful market, creating an outlet for its products and generating local incomes. Not only through selling local products but also through fees.

Where prior to 1979 the land was still owned in a colonial way, the land restored to community ownership saw important changes: most of the work on the communal land is done collectively, with assembly decisions made on new ideas, finances, and services dispensed, by non-remunerated community members, rotating on regular basis. As consequences of colonial domination local people were allocated infertile land parcels, and the collaborative model of Chaquicocha has given new perspectives to the local people. The community enterprise has undeniably improved their livelihood. Its supporting activities are fairly distributed and have thus increased economic income, enhancing collective and individual entrepreneurial activities, diminishing poverty, stimulating markets and revitalizing local culture. As the culture and economics are compatible and mutually supportive, the community is able to mix culture, community and ethnicity as well as responding to market imperatives.

One can add to the economic and social value creation the following improvements: better environment control, reduction of social polarization and the revitalization of traditions such as communal labor, according to Peredo. The Chaquicocha model shows the possible synergy of culture, tradition and community, which can be harnessed to serve the community.

In another perspective Llocllapampa has probably the most complete approach of CBE (Community Based Entrepreneurship) among the 3 examples chosen by Peredo. Started from leasing of local hot springs for tourism in the 20’s, the SMCE (Self-Managed Community Enterprise) was established in 1975 and is still active today. The community and the enterprise are one and the same legally. This project represents the community’s quest for a system that would provide optimum social and economic benefits. In the industrial production side of the SMCE, activities range from bottling, hot spa, transportation, agriculture, a marble quarry, and a silicon plant (Lima) to mining (mining is the major activity). Each unit has a manager who reports to the executive body and through it to the assembly. The general assembly is at the centre of governance, and has effectively held this position for almost half a century. With meetings every month and compulsory attendance, the chair is elected at the beginning of each meeting (each commoner is a member with equal rights). Llocllapampa’s form of governance is somewhat cumbersome, with all commoners having a say in policy and operations. Many measures to protect the environment derive from traditional practices (e.g., rotating crops and livestock) handed down from ancestral times.

There are ancestral practices, such as the traditions of ‘faena’ (a public form of reciprocity), and a public work day called by the leader of the community, on a rota basis (‘Mita’). Ayni is a similar form of private reciprocity. All these practices involve relationships with ‘Mother Earth’ (‘Pachamama’). Environmental management is at the core of those traditional cultures, with crop rotation and livestock grazing, etc.

Llocllapampa stands out within the region as an example of what can be done through collective innovation, synergy, and social learning. Social, cultural, and environmental goals have been integrated in the common interest. The community has been successful to date because its members have been able to combine and adapt ancestral social practices and values to the creation of business (Peredo, 2003). The Llocllapampinos, or commoners, are proud of their Inca heritage as well as their independent spirit, with a history of rebellion against authority during colonial empires. Community kinship is incredibly strong. Llocllapampino is a mixture of courage, persistence, tradition, culture, and determination which are human and social characteristics that we will find as well in the three case studies presented as field work in this thesis.

If the main activity is mining providing most jobs and benefits, the agricultural department has on the one hand the objective of guaranteeing food security for all and on the other hand to produce small quantities for export or direct sale. Even if only 15% of the cultivable land is communal it is the most productive (potatoes, meat, wool, milk and cheese), and through communal investments have been installed efficient irrigation systems and hired professional managers hired. Other areas of natural medicine and tourism benefit from the hot springs natural resources and from the archeological ruins.

Social services are provided: education for everybody until secondary schooling, and a health center and community pharmacy.

Some conflicts (or at least divergences of objectives) are arising between younger educated local people who want to introduce external private investments and capacities. Nonetheless, it may be feasible to formulate propositions that point the way to the creation of viable CBEs, at least for poor Andean communities.

Although Peredo does not suggest a “one size fits all” solution, she proposes a model for CBE with 10 propositions (Peredo, 2003 p.165).

- Proposition 1: CBE is a mechanism for change and emerges as an innovative response by impoverished communities to macroeconomic, social, and political factors. - Proposition 2: Communities may use CBE to combat social disintegration, increasing poverty, and environmental problems. - Proposition 3: CBE reflects a community’s desire to manage its own resources and improve the quality of life. - Proposition 4: CBE arises as a means to compensate for lack of political power and to try to improve the living conditions of the community by capitalizing on natural, cultural, and social resources. - Proposition 5: The more outside organizations (e.g., governments, churches, and aid agencies) act as decision makers and diminish the community’s autonomy, the less likely it is that CBE will engender proprietary involvement and broad support in the community.

- Proposition 6: Conversely, when the CBE is created and self-managed by the community, its goals are shared and based directly on local economic, cultural, social, and environmental needs. - Proposition 7: The creation, success, and sustainability of CBE depends on the community’s capacity to adapt and innovate and to combine traditional organizational and participatory skills and practices with new processes and systems capable of facing market challenges and challenges posed by globalization. - Proposition 8: The success, survival, or failure of a CBE is directly related to the ability of the CBE to pool resources, diversify its activities away from land-based resources, and combine market and nonmarket activities. - Proposition 9: Successful CBE combines strong individual leadership with communal initiative and risk-taking. - Proposition 10: A favorable legislative, legal, and financial framework at the national and international level is important to the sustainability and survival of a CBE.

Peredo mentions a global research with more than 40 propositions. It is perhaps regrettable that the propositions described here are mostly descriptive and not really prescriptive of ways to achieve such goals of self-sustainability, value creation and creativity. But we can identify here that Proposition 5 and 10 clearly mention direct externalities, in external intervention in the decision process, governance itself, as well as the legal framework that is needed. Proposition 1 mentions the externalities of macro-eco-social and political factors, Proposition 2 environmental problems, and Proposition 4 the lack of political power, hinting at the isolation created by external political factors, as well as the geographical isolation in each case. Proposition 8 insists on the need for CBEs to adapt on their own, hinting here too at the need to keep away from external influences, while Proposition 9 mentions communal initiative and risk-taking which should not be left in external hands.

All these three cases have driven social factors as key elements of community structuration, collaborative schemes and self-organization. The 10 propositions mentioned by Peredo as a core of CBE creation support strong leadership, creating the conditions or letting the local communities

62 manage their own resources to improve their qualities of life. Even though the success of external support has proven elusive – be it governmental, ONG or foundations –, these three non-related examples, from different countries, show that local community self-sustainability is possible.

1.9.3 Social innovation also creating community and social value

Ana Maria Peredo has evidenced the necessity of integrating more social aspects into local business models, the social aspects being way more important than the economic factors. We will look in the fourth sub-part how social innovation embeds such models as CBE, and how it fosters social factors. The approach of Peredo on Social Innovation also seems to be specific.

She starts out with a social innovation critique, where she defines “social entrepreneurship exercised where some person or persons (1) aim either exclusively or in some prominent way to create social value of some kind, and pursue that goal through some combination of (2) recognizing and exploiting opportunities to create this value, (3) employing innovation, (4) tolerating risk and (5) declining to accept limitations in available resources. The prominence of social goals and what are thought of as the salient features of entrepreneurship” (Peredo & McLean, 2006 p.56).

More generally in the field of social innovation, “social innovation refers to innovative activities and services that are motivated by the goal of meeting a social need and that are predominantly diffused through organizations whose primary purposes are social.” (Mulgan, 2006 p.146). This perspective of social innovation, adopted by the Young Foundation, is completed by the approach of the Skoll Foundation article in Stanford Social Innovation Review defining the suboptimal equilibrium of Social Entrepreneurship as a “balanced feedback loop,” where “the social entrepreneur aims for value in the form of large-scale, transformational benefit that accrues either to a significant segment of society or to society at large, and value proposition targets an under-served, neglected, or highly disadvantaged population that lacks the financial means or political clout to achieve the transformative benefit on its own” (Martin & Osberg, 2007 p.35).

This is an organic, as opposed to mechanistic, view of social entrepreneurship – one that sees creative potential within connections and relationships and supports dynamic process and a deobjectification of the human element. In a “Conceptualizing Social Entrepreneurship” and

“Contextualizing Social Change”, social entrepreneurship is seen as a way to fill the gaps that institutions as well as businesses or NGOs have been unable to address. The project is to create social innovation. The aim to create social value is a commitment in Peredo’s critique of Social Entrepreneurship and her theory of CBE. This is the core intention that marks the divide with other form of entrepreneurship.

In the case of Llocllapampa in Peru social goals are driving the entrepreneurial initiative, as it seeks innovative ways to achieve and fund social services such as education, sanitation (i.e. sewage system), health and subsidized food, electricity, potable water as well as public security. Moreover, many community professionals are homegrown (teachers, sociologists, lawyers). Social, cultural and environmental objectives have been integrated for common interest, adapting ancestral social practices and values to business creation (Peredo 2003).

That is where the concepts of CBE and SE converge towards a common good managed by commoners, with communal solidarity, democratic administration and control and equity of rights and obligations. The respect and contributions generated are such that they could be envied by many societies in rich developed communities or in similar poor communities.

1.9.4 Hi-tech from the North rarely interferes; old knowledge and basic technology prevail

Peredo describes in the three cases – but especially in Llocllapampino – how local knowledge, and ancient knowledge, is used, far removed from new high-technology to build new ways to create value, through collaborative schemes which have been there since the Pre- Colombian eras and were already strongly based upon such cooperation in ancient societal models. We can find in the Pre-Colombian cultures elements of collaboration like ‘Ayni and Faena’. They can be compared with the ‘Mutirão’ concept in Brazil.

High-tech has not interfered in those communal models where the objectives are to foster local and traditional knowledge and practices, e.g. for agricultural practices, as in Llocllapampa in Peru for the growing of local potatoes. Even with less than 20% of the common agricultural land the productivity is high. The organizational models are mostly based on collaboration at individual and collective levels.

The concepts of ‘faena, ayni, minga’ are used to build together, own together, and learn together. A sense of community empowerment is self-developed. Even globalization influences and pressures – with younger generations’ eagerness to integrate private, corporate methods and technologies – have up to now failed to derail a successful model of culture and ancestral techniques aiming at the common good that has been in place for almost 50 years.

In the three cases, ancient knowledge, local technics, and basic technologies prevail – to produce local products like Peruvian staples, local potatoes, bottled medical water, plants, dairy products, and local craft products. Even with higher education, “higher” technologies are not yet eliminating ancient practices. In the case of Salinas, the production – mostly oriented to external markets – runs the risks of such technological influences (with production geared towards outside tastes and foreign preferences). Here the risk of high technologies with foreign investments and control is higher.

From the heights of 3500 meters in the Peruvian Andes to the end of dirt roads each of these communities bear witness to cases that have sustained over a long period local value creation, and common management for community economic, social and political development. Finding this gap, this otherness, brings us new ways of considering community development, and even empowerment. By looking deep into the stories of the building of such cooperatives and collaborative schemes by the local ‘campesinos’, we learn about mechanisms for being independent that show commonalities and similarities in the way they were built, managed and evolved along the way. All of them have been self-sustained in the long run, and all them face today similar challenges of globalization. Although far from perfect, their answers to ever- increasing poverty and marginalization are local and courageous. The CBE model developed by Ana Peredo does not claim to be a “one size fits all” solution, but it is an innovative way to sum up an avenue for reflection and appeared to me as a good fit for my research. It is a very fruitful approach in terms of finding new ways to observe such very poor and outcast communities, and to work with them, while integrating local collaborative and ancestral practices. Not only can we learn about how to work with such communities but we believe that our own more favored societies could learn a lot from such management of the ‘commons’, from such democratic governance, with respect for ancestral simple and basic techniques – with technologies that could help change today’s very complex systems that have started to be completely disconnected from communities,

65 and lack merging economic social and political perspectives. Even if the work of Peredo, like the work of many social entrepreneurs mentioned here, is not directly linked to waste management and the valuation of waste for very poor communities, their work and example of creation of value in very poor communities is pivotal for this thesis. It throws invaluable light on community models for value creation, for the design at local levels of solutions against endemic poverty and many collateral plagues such as sanitation and skyrocketing waste generation.

Such diversity in examples, approaches and cultures – sometimes mixed and protected by being outcast or kept apart – raises questions about how the mix is made between modern and ancient cultures, between indigenous and western, between full-for-profit and cooperative. All these differences bring opportunities (or what Jullien calls fecundities). They call for a clear comprehension of the reality of mixity, of hybrid models, contexts, and ecosystems.

1.10 Brazil: a special hybrid case integrating the informal sector: “catadores” as the saviours of cities unable to fulfil their duty of care

Brazil: a gigantic country with so much space and natural resources that its inhabitants think they are inextinguishable. A high level of mineral resources and agriculture, essentially monoculture generating huge levels of industrial waste. Innovative legislation in Brazil has pushed landfilling to the back of the list of technologies and has established social technologies as the first option for the lawful disposal of urban waste. Waste has been classified into 3 fractions – dry recyclable, wet compostable and ‘rejeito’ or refuse for landfill – according to the Política Nacional de Resíduos Sólidos4.

Waste is processed by the poor. Waste pickers in Brazil are more structured and organized (even with their own trade union), which is not the case of most of the global South countries. Brazil passed a comprehensive Solid Waste National Policy in 2010. And yet scavengers are

4 Lei 12.305/2010.

66 usually poorly treated, poorly paid and suffer from very low social status (Fergutz et al., 2011), hazardous working conditions (Gutberlet, 2013) and health problems (Gutberlet & Baeder, 2008). Efficiency gains can lead to waste scavengers losing their jobs thus endangering municipalities’ more inclusive societal policies (Sembiring & Nitivattananon, 2010). Many global south waste problems are based on cultural specificities. For example, any objects thrown away cannot be taken back or used again; they can only be handled by untouchables.

It is very debasing to work with waste. Second hand products are looked on with distaste, especially in India due to social perceptions. Solutions in Brazil are more decentralized and community-based, and the informal sector plays an important role. Brazil passed a comprehensive Solid Waste National Policy in 2010, which both recognized waste picking cooperatives as service providers and created mechanisms to integrate informal waste workers into the country’s formal system. The legislation’s focus was on establishing safe disposal systems, decreasing waste generation, and increasing reuse and recycling, all through the combined efforts of the government, private, and informal waste sectors.5

1.10.1 A strong and independent informal sector: the importance of “catadores” in Brazilian society

In Brazil there are more than 800,000 people who survive by collecting and recycling solid waste (Gutberlet, 2013), and they achieve higher recycling rates than many formal recycling systems in the developing world (Dias, 2011). They save city governments money, contribute to cleaner cities and reduce the volume of dumped waste (Fergutz et al., 2011). According to Medina (2008b), Brazil has one of the most progressive policies and institutional frameworks for waste- collecting (later implemented as PNRS 2010) and the collectors there provide up to 90% of the material for the recycling industry (Conceição, 2005).

5 An overview of the legal framework in Brazil can be found at: http://www.inclusivecities.org/wp- content/uploads/2012/07/Dias_WIEGO_PB6.pdf

Although less externalized, waste management in the global South still remains at the margins of both the economy and society. While integrating the informal sector into formal waste management planning could benefit from the waste collectors’ practices and experience, and improve their living and working conditions (Wilson et al., 2006), most of the activity is still confined to the informal sector (and thus is not included in GDP) or to the solidarity economy. In some places, cooperatives of scavengers are starting to be recognized as preferential partners by municipalities (Dias, 2011), gaining a voice in public decisions, and regaining full citizenship (Tremblay & Gutberlet, 2011). 90% of the scavengers in Latin America working in a cooperative declared that they liked what they did and considered it decent work (Medina, 2008). The fast growth of formal recycling cooperatives in Brazil has been going hand in hand with that of the solidarity economy since the 1980s, showing here again the intrinsic link between economic and social factors. (Singer, 2003). Due to the unique setting of favelas, priority is given to ‘catadores’ or gleaners/scavengers, who collect and organize dry recyclables for sale to middlemen.

Illegal settlements are more precarious without the support of formal city services: municipal (waste management) services are absent, or for many inaccessible, due to impracticalities and organizational hypocrisy (Zapata Campos & Zapata, 2013, 2014) – and moreover in illegal land occupations, where such services might simply be illegal. In such settlements, big projects (initiated by NGOs or development aids) and urban policies are often resisted, because they come from outside powers. They need to be translated to allow for local groups’ needs and agendas, via processes of reframing, anchoring and “muddling through” via action networks and/or via attention directing and labeling by the media (Kain et al., 2016). Such translations can lead to unexpected connections and outcomes, with for example residents in Managua becoming active policy actors in making the city (Zapata Campos & Zapata, 2012).

Belo Horizonte, the closest city to our case, is, according to Dias (2011), prominent in regulating informal recycling and addressing the social issues of urban poor. Although only 10% of the ‘catadores’ are syndicated in associations and cooperatives (Medina, 2007; Gutberlet, 2013) Dias argues that including scavengers elsewhere in the collection, separation and transformation of recyclable material and in the re-education of consumers presents an opportunity to recover their livelihoods. At the same time, scavengers could educate and disseminate information regarding waste reduction, resource recovery and the social benefits of organized, selective waste

68 collection. Such a cooperative movement for ‘catadores’, other workers and marginalized families to free themselves from poverty through solidarity shows, in the view of Singer (2006) that other productions are possible: coops, self-sustained communities, or even Private Public Partnerships (PPP) in waste management, and the integration of the informal sector into municipalities. The solidarity economy is here an alternative to the invasive influence of the capitalist organization model (Vizeu et al., 2015).

In this chapter we have seen some of the characteristics that we believe play an important role in the plague of waste and the difficulties of setting efficient and respectful waste management practices.

In the next chapter we will now present the methodological choices that have been made for this research.

The presentation of the further steps of the research will now be made in a more personal tone, from the “I” statement, referring to the choices of the researcher, his positioning be it in the methodologic framework or in the description of the cases and the lessons learned from them. The presentation of seven years of research and academic reflections around this topic of waste, waste management and community empowerment will be geared at drawing lessons from the research approach focusing on collaborative learning with poor outcast communities, and what has happened when waste was positioned at the center of those communities.

Chapter 2: METHODOLOGY Learning by doing

Working wall in Bangalore

Chapter 2: Methodology: Learning by doing

In Chapter 1, I have presented how much of a paradigm shift is necessary to tackle pollution, the decline in nature resources, impacts of climate change and the huge increase in waste generation, almost everywhere on the planet. What seems to be needed is a shift from a horizontal linear perspective of resources and waste to a circular flow that is necessary to redefine usage and discarding, as well as to introduce pivotal social elements, particularly local communities.

I will now consider how to define the scientific object I am studying, namely the perception of waste in our societies and the range of biases that define it. How I have decided to study these shifts is the basis of my methodology. My aim with this research is to make a contribution to the fight to overcome this contemporary plague – the growing volume of waste generation – particularly in certain poor regions in the South that are particularly vulnerable. To achieve this, I seek to learn from experiences in which waste management is not already, or not mostly, locked into the “folds in our thinking” of the four externalities we described in chapter 1.

But how could I begin to make this contribution? To be honest, I did not follow a methodology defined a priori.

When I presented my research work for the first time in front of my new lab in Paris I carefully reviewed the way I would present my field work in India over the previous four years, and was looking forward to sharing with peers, professors and getting their feedbacks. Nevertheless, all I can remember of that session is that professor who stopped me in the middle of it, stood up, pointed his finger and asked me: “What is your epistemological position?” He repeatedly asked me the same question.

The rest of the assembly stood there petrified, the scholars probably because they, like me, would not have liked the question, the other professors because they, like me, did not like the way it had been asked. I thought these kinds of bullies belonged to previous centuries, definitely not at the highest levels of French academia in the 21st century. Although it poisoned the atmosphere, it did make me ask myself about my vision of the world, of knowledge, and why I was here in a way.

I had studied in a very classical French elitist system up to a master’s degree in finance in a “Grande Ecole”. You could say that most my education was very rationalist, my knowledge more 71 logical than intuitive. But having grown up living on tropical islands, being born and raised in a setting of luxuriant and wild nature had exposed me to a great deal of more intuitive knowledge and an endless world of experimentation. I was a hybrid of different perceptions, different types of education, and different theories of knowledge.

It is from there that I tried to consider and start my research work. All my thesis is an effort to open myself up to all kinds of experiential insights. I led many empirical cases in order to learn. I sought information from communities where I travelled over the past ten years in remote worlds, engaging by implementing projects with them.

Your existence, the experience you go through, impacts your vision of the world. I had left earlier on one of the biggest corporate high-potential groups to enter a banking system in London where shareholders were the most important values, with an imposed hierarchy of values and systems; shareholders’ interests being more important than stakeholders’ needs and their livelihoods, or indeed their lives.

I wanted to participate at grassroots level in actions that could lead to societal changes, pragmatic solutions, learn from new ways of studying and social interactions, value creation processes. A set of societal values that had been shaken to its foundations when I witnessed in 2008 the collapse of hardcore capitalism, as a result of the excesses of profit maximization especially in the largest financial centers, and London in particular. Later, I witnessed the biggest ecological catastrophe in Brazil at the end of 2015. I went to do volunteering work in India to make new discoveries, and to feel more collaboration between people (and indeed between systems) and experience a much lower focus on capital maximization.

To sum up my positioning, even though I have been exposed to a positivistic education in the sense that there are observable and actionable truths, independently of culture or social constructions, I am anchored in an approach where the intuitive and emotional aspects of the researcher might challenge the hypotheses dictated by literature. To me researching is more about learning than about proving.

The purpose of this second chapter is to present my general approach, which can be described as community-based participatory research. An approach that allowed me at the same 72 time to actively contribute to these communities, to try to improve their situation and to learn from these experiences as a basis for my academic endeavours. It will first present the principles that guided my approach, then the aspects concretely studied in the three cases, and finally quickly a few points to justify this approach.

But before presenting the approach as partially formulated a posteriori, I would like to recall the evolution of this method. My PhD started in India, in economics. My approach was by then more classical, with quantitative, empirical methodologies designed after a literature review. Theoretical framing was the tragedy of the commons and the ill-defined market value of waste, with Life Cycle Analysis and reflections about the valuation of waste. The value creation of waste was at the center. However, what I was seeing did not match sufficiently well with these theories. Seeking another design, I soon found my ground in community-based research, looking for solutions to help communities, participating in projects in the form of ‘implementation or replication’ projects.

Switching my PhD, started in India, to a doctorate in France provided me with a second director of thesis specializing in innovation who directed me towards action research and motivational theories. This was far closer to my way of thinking and my field experiences. While this helped me see waste management from another perspective, this introduced the problem of how to combine and make sense of results obtained under different perspectives when the only thing in common during the journey was me as the researcher… and even myself and my understanding had changed.

While most of my three cases were already completed, I was considering abandoning the doctorate, when the person who would become the third director suggested to me the possibility of an autobiographical/autoethnographical account of these experiences and forewarned me that postcolonial reflexivity would probably be necessary, and valuable research output. I then started to consider far more positively a research based on my own participation, reflecting on my contribution and the one from the communities involved in forms and shapes that could not be planned or foreseen. I would thus also be able to speak about my own life experience, having been exposed to colonialism and postcolonialism in the French colonies and later in India and Brazil. I investigated the academic field and came to understand that I had done participatory research. A

73 mode of research where I could participate in setting out solutions, hoping to contribute to the improvement of living conditions of very poor people who were looked upon as outcasts.

2.1 Positions and convictions

The design was built as I went along. Finding my place and my way of connecting with communities has been a gradual process, trying to find a balance between the demands I perceived, my personal commitment, and what was happening in the field. It seems to me clearer to begin by presenting my approach with some elements on this position, which seems still uncommon.

2.1.1 A personal experience, three case studies

I had learned through the actions I took, or more precisely by trying to contribute as best I could. It is by thinking with hindsight that I can talk about my approach now. However, very quickly I realized that there were a few principles that motivated me, that defined the outline of a position that is not the most common in management research. My reflection focused on three experiences, defining three case studies. These cases are not to be compared, nor to be analyzed according to certain dimensions in order to draw general characteristics. Rather, they are like three experiences, three successive trials, from which a conviction has gradually been formed. First of all, I saw that there was a lot to learn from working in poor communities; I drew from this a way or mode of approach to intervention. But above all, and in fact quite a while later, I realized the potential possibilities opened up by the internalization of waste and its management that we witnessed in each case study, in other words by organizations that do not slip into the four externalities mentioned earlier.

What I wanted to avoid above all, was to get involved with local communities as someone coming from the North, the one “who knows it all”, the scientist or expert, who imposes his solution on a community in a paternalistic way. In coherence with the problem of ethnocentrism, I have preferred a more constructivist approach that allows me to share a vision with the people involved and to learn from them.

The principles that guided me were the following:

1. Participative focus. Where I could probably be most useful and learn most was with poor, neglected communities, away from the large waste management systems. But to learn, I felt it was better not to try to “help” (i.e. defining myself what is “helping”), nor to want to “use” communities for the purpose of my research, but to contribute. 2. Avoiding postcolonial posture. Similarly, it was a question of avoiding, as much as I could, a postcolonial posture, presenting myself as the one who knows, with a superior and universal knowledge. 3. Learning posture. So, rather than the one who comes to advise, or try to explain and modelize, I have tried to position myself as the one who seeks to learn. 4. Learning by “doing with”. Learn, not only by observing or questioning, but above all by “doing with”, something I will present as participatory research. 5. Autobiography/autoethnography. And that to consolidate this learning and to transmit it, the best solution would be to tell this experience not from a divine point of view, but as I lived it, in the first person, without seeking to speak on behalf of the members of the community (but by regularly reporting what they told me or showed me).

And then there were also “certainties”. These have not been denied, but that does not mean that they have been proven either. I think that, especially for such communities, it is better to put men and women at the centre of projects rather than implement a specific approach or a technology. I think that the question of value and valorization is key; the social aspect does not exclude the role of an economic model and links with markets. Finally, decentralized solutions offer a potential for innovation and flexibility that centralized approaches do not have.

I did not choose the three cases because they would sufficiently match the missing pieces in the puzzle of my thesis. They came to me, like opportunities in a life course, creating diversity (Germain, 2010). My approach has thus been first inductive, as one learns from life experiences, rather than by mounting experiments. I was not planning the next step per se, but adjusting the next phases to each lesson learnt, whether positive or negative. These three experiences led me to an Indian ashram and to two poor communities in Bolivia and Brazil. Each time it was a question of creating, together with the communities, inventive and effective solutions to manage waste.

2.1.2 Learning by “doing with”: participatory research

It was also a question of learning by contributing with the local people. I was looking for a methodology that would embrace my desire to participate in solutions for poor communities in the global South, acting from within the community, being involved in the co-design of the implementation of the project and at the same time to not impede a process of community empowerment that was happening. I think that what I accomplished can be labeled as community- based participatory research.

A participatory research project is a partnership with members in a civil society with the aim of producing knowledge that is both academically valuable and which contributes to the respective expectations of participants (Anadón, 2013). The objective is not just to describe an organizational world, but to contribute to changes at personal and organizational levels, and potentially beyond (Maguire, 1987). The approach is based on the notion of participation and is intended to empower a community, in part by giving it control over the research and ultimately over more of its own world (Chambers, 1996) It has its roots in Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed, Dewey’s progressive education and Lewin’s action-research (Storup, 2013).

This participatory aspect enabled the involvement of community participants early on in the research process, allowing them a stake in the creation and mobilization of knowledge on recycling and giving the research a means of collecting valuable first-hand information (Gutberlet et al., 2013).

Our aim was not to test or observe some pre-determined elements, but rather to learn by participating. Roles and places of researchers and subjects were reinvented on the spot (Chambers, 1996) because some forms of indigenous involvement were required in order not to repeat postcolonial habits (Weston & Imas, 2018). Trying to keep control over process or over results could be considered as a source of oppression rather than of emancipation (Maguire, 1987), so we tried to remain ethically aware of the possible effects of our research on the participants’ situations and lives.

Because we did not control the process, we did not know where it would lead us. Each step of the project and of the research would be decided for example in the case in Brazil in assembly by voting and with our key partners, i.e. the representatives of the community.

I have been asked if I should not call this approach Participative-Action-Research, a respectable form of community engagement and shared learning. I feel completely in tune (even if this is an ideal that I could claim to have perfectly achieved) with the principles set out by the Colombian sociologist Orlando Fals Borda: “Do not monopolise your knowledge nor impose arrogantly your techniques, but respect and combine your skills with the knowledge of the researched or grassroots communities, taking them as full partners and co-researchers. Do not trust elitist versions of history and science which respond to dominant interests but be receptive to counter-narratives and try to recapture them. Do not depend solely on your culture to interpret facts, but recover local values, traits, beliefs, and arts for action by and with the research organizations. Do not impose your own ponderous scientific style for communicating results, but diffuse and share what you have learned together with the people, in a manner that is wholly understandable and even literary and pleasant, for science should not be necessarily a mystery nor a monopoly of experts and intellectuals” (Fals Borda 2001, p.27-37).

And yet, I cannot help resisting this label. In organizations it has sometimes been used to ultimately impose planned changes and give participants little flexibility for the purposes pursued. In fact, I tried to look at Action Research at the Indian stage of my research, on the suggestion of my director of thesis at the time. But Action Research required that everything should be planned in advance including the kind of data that was to be collected. This ran counter to the principle of letting the project unfold, and learning from each step, incrementally, without planning and hence without imposing on the local communities my views nor a research process. That is why we then defined Participatory Research as the best method to go about the last two projects in Bolivia and Brazil and more importantly to transcribe those projects into research formats.

2.1.3 Seeking a gap, without “using” the local communities.

The idea is to learn in communities where practices do not seem to be already determined by the four externalities. In fact, as I was pointing out before, I did not 'choose' the cases for this purpose. As it will appear in a more developed manner during the presentation of the three cases, I had set out on a path in which I wanted to contribute, and these three communities have been

77 particularly significant. There have been three other projects that I got involved in6,7,8, but they were set in different circumstances, i.e. human and ecological disaster, political contexts, and I chose to focus on the three exposed here for my research. I will present these cases below; at this stage, I would just like to highlight their situation showing their gap relatively to the usual studied sites.

The first community is located in Kerala, India, in the Amritapuri ashram, which includes Amrita University. Even though there have been decades of colonization, particularly by Great Britain, India has a cultural heritage dating back 2500 to 3000 years. The sub-continent is far from Europe, and above all its situation is radically different: with a population of nearly 1.4 billion people, a huge economic gap (now the 5th economy in the world but with huge discrepancies and inequalities amongst the population), and a tropical climate in the south where I was. Furthermore, I was in a very special place, a monastery, constituting a huge spiritual gap. Language, clothes, customs, food, with various appointed times of day (waking up at 4 or 5am); whoever enters this monastery can easily measure the size of the gap. Here we were in a village of 5000 persons in the middle of coconut trees, by the Arabian Sea, inside the walls of the ashram, where 3000 people were living all year long. The region was very poor, but at the same time it is one of the regions of India with the highest levels of tourism. Volunteering in India came for me after a nervous breakdown in London. The opportunity of volunteering in an ashram with Amma (the spiritual

6 Project 1: União com Rio Doce: a collaborative team from UFSC to go and build alternative water tanks in a region heavily affected by a toxic landslide caused by the collapse of 2 mining dams: Catastrophe of Mariana, Nov. 2015

7 Project 2: Value creation model for Revolução dos Baldihnos: helping a local NGO collecting and composting waste in a favela to rebuild its value creation model (2016-2017). 8 Project 3: Value creation model for COMCAP, the waste management organization of the municipality of Florianopolis, SC, South Brazil, with a team of consultants, a laboratory of UFSC (Prof Miller) and a local municipal counselor/vereador, Marcos Jose de Abreu. Switching from a tax system approach, to a pay per use approach (2017- 2018) for waste management costs.

78 leader) came via a London friend who is an Amma devotee. Amma assigned me a spiritual mission, summed up in two words: PhD and Waste.

The second case took place in Bolivia, one of the poorest countries in the world. There, the gap with Europe was even larger than with India. Furthermore, it took place in the region of Puerto Suarez, at the border with Brazil. And like many borders, drug smuggling and prostitution are endemic; the community was busy with both illegal activities and legal ones. People here were very poor, mostly at the outskirts of the city. There were also some indigenous settlements (such as the Comunidad Ayorea, barrio Fatima, de Chiquitania). In brief, I was probably dealing with the poorest people in the region, rejected and outcast, or migrants. This means that technology was minimal; this immediately became obvious when I tried to find a Wi-Fi connection. On the other hand, we were amidst beautiful mountains, with many signs of a rich history, and the early presence of Jesuits missions. Chiquitania is a region of tropical savannas in the Santa Cruz Department in the East of the country, dried up by its arid climate, and a lot of dust, but shortly after this first impression, you could discover one of the most beautiful ecosystems in the world (before the recent enormous fires that took place in Brazil, ruining a huge part of the Pantanal, before an acceleration of deforestation driven by the state and large Brazilian companies): the Pantanal Sul, with its amazing wildlife diversity. Managing waste was again here of primary importance to save this ecosystem, while the low technology, paucity of resources, and scant attention paid to the people living there meant that the Northern technological externalized solution was unlikely to be implemented.

I came across this case as a result of a conference in Sao Paolo, Brazil, with an alumni group of the Insead Social Entrepreneurship Project. A fellow ISEP Insead alumnus challenged me to do something about waste management in his region of Santa Cruz, Bolivia, and I took up the challenge to implement a quick, five weeks, simple waste management project with separation at source. Here again, as compared to the cases studied by Peredo, and presented in the previous chapter, the project does not come from the community itself. Municipal waste management systems existed, and some permaculture was already established in schools. It started with a few people’s initiative and spread over the community outside of any centralizing organization.

The third case was in Brazil. While in some regions Brazil is closer to the European setting, due to various European recent settlements, the case here is a squatted settlement in Riberão das Neves, in the suburbs of the Belo Horizonte megacity, with a very mixed population. This “occupation” of close to 2000 persons now, was fully self-sustained and totally illegal. There was little to no technology, apart from cellular telephony. There was and still is a high level of uncertainty, due to the harassment by the police and the owner. The history of this occupation is very recent: it was created in 2013. And we will find there many collective dynamics as in the cases referred to by Peredo and McLean (2013).

Here, the gap is not only at a technological level. It also comes from the fact that the occupation is illegal and therefore municipal waste management systems cannot deal with the waste generated by the community. Nor would any large international company have wanted to integrate the community’s waste into their management system. Pollution was beginning to become a problem. It was necessary to (re) design the organization around waste.

I would like to stress here again that although these cases were not selected for theoretical reasons, the purpose of my intervention was not primarily to obtain data to substantiate my research. The main objectives of the projects were to focus on co-designing solutions for the community. I remember my supervisor often referring to the reflexivity of a Canadian researcher, Samuel Veissière, who was researching in the streets of Salvador de Bahia, Brazil. At the time, he described feeling like a “gringo”, and compared his position to an academic pimp who in a way sustains a livelihood from exploiting human suffering and violence (Veissière & Diversi, 2009). My endeavor was to contribute, and to try and learn from this experience, not to design whatever project was needed in order to get the data required for research purposes.

2.1.4 The difficult challenge of avoiding a (post-neo) colonial posture

I will not pretend that this contribution was easy, or that it was fun every day. First of all, it was sometimes necessary to find the courage to move forward, to accept these difficult conditions so that the project did not stop before reaching a satisfactory point. The first thing I heard when starting my Seva (selfless service) in India was: “Dealing with the shit of others is

80 cleansing”. A certain amount of faith and spiritual engagement was necessary for separating waste on big tables, by hand, under the pounding sun of a south Kerala summer! I was often telling myself this message that Ralph Waldo Emerson drew from his Asian studies (especially India), that I had noted down when someone passed it on to me: “the purpose of life was spiritual transformation and direct experience of divine power, here and now on earth.”

But the challenge was undoubtedly above all to fight against this deeply rooted tendency in us, to think that we know better than the communities themselves what they need and how to achieve it. While colonial power and practices have largely disappeared, a certain postcolonial logic is very difficult to get out of our minds. Fighting this trend was not only a principle to follow, but also essential to open myself up to other points of view. “If we consider control rather than actual occupation of territory, by the early decades of the twentieth century a handful of Western countries directly or indirectly controlled about 90 percent of the globe” (Young, 2001 p.2 cited in Prasad, 2003). “Postcolonial theory and criticism (or post-colonialism, in short) represents an attempt to investigate the complex and deeply fraught dynamics of modern Western colonialism and anticolonial resistance” and “is explicitly committed to developing a radical critique of colonialism/imperialism and neocolonialism” (Young, 2001 p.5-7 cited in Prasad, 2003).

Our societies find it difficult to recognize that much of their success and alleged superiority has been won from the slavery and exploitation of other peoples (Wekker, 2016). In particular, Business and Management Studies have tended to move from one postcolonial logic to another (Weston & Imas, 2017). What we call the other, the East (or the global South) is largely a creation of the West, it is difficult for us to consider other cultures, other practices of other organizations outside our own projections on them (Said, 1985). “Colonial empires, with both Britain and France being in actual physical possession of vast territories all over the globe, by contrast, the current system of American imperialism is one that is seen as primarily non-colonial: to a considerable degree, American imperialism seeks to exercise power not through new conquests and occupation but through the control of powerful economic institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the like” (Young, 2001 p.5).

However, it is precisely through contact, or from other thinkers or other territories, that a “thought of tremor” can be invented, capable of shaking up many of our folds of thinking (Glissant, 81

1981). Post-colonial logic risks making us blind to what the South brings and predicts. The movement of practices and situations from South to North is growing (Comaroff & Comaroff, 2012).

Originally born in the West Indies myself, it is to Aimé Césaire, and his Discourse on Colonialism (1950) that I would like to turn for a moment. He stressed the deafness and asymmetry of the system of thought of the former colonial powers: “I am referring here to this system of thought or rather to the instinctive tendency of an eminent and prestigious civilization to abuse its prestige even to empty the space around it by abusively reducing the notion of the universal, dear to Léopold Sédar Senghor, to its own dimensions, in other words, to think of the universal based solely on its assumptions and through its own categories” (Césaire, 2004 p.84-85). For Césaire, this supposed superiority is not sustainable, because it has not succeeded in stemming two of the main evils that affect humanity. “The fact is that the so-called “European” civilization, the “Western” civilization, as shaped by two centuries of bourgeois rule, is incapable of solving the two major problems to which its existence has given rise: the problem of the proletariat and the colonial problem” (Césaire, 2004 p.7). Worse still, it amplifies them: “I am talking about natural economies, harmonious and viable economies, economies commensurate with the indigenous man of the organizations, destroyed food crops, established undernourishment, agricultural development oriented solely towards the benefit of metropolises, product stalks, raw materials” (p.24).

There is an insistence of northern knowledge to claim to know what should be done, to explain it and impose it, when after all these years, the problem is far from being solved. So, I tried as much as I could to silence these tendencies in me. They reappeared regularly. Every time the projects were starting to build up I had always impulses to lead. In India, the culture was so different, and my spiritual endeavor was directing me towards a posture of gratitude and humility. I was more following guidance and teachings – be they spiritual or technical or practical – in waste management, than taking a postcolonial stance. However, I was feeling an urge to push for the concept, and it did not work fully in the end. Yet the elements of waste management came together on their own, just through being there, working there, participating and being.

For the case of Bolivia, I was fully embedded with FTE and tried to contribute only an experience and not a management style. Yet, I often felt I needed to show FTE as well as the local 82 community that I knew something about waste management, that I could lead the project. In the case of Brazil, I was also entering a project where local people were actively involved: professors and students from UFMG, activists and volunteers from Brigadas Populares. I tried every time to respect their work, their presence and dedication knowing I had to learn from them and about their context before starting to lead any project. Nevertheless, there was always a fine line between generating confidence from the local people and legitimacy in being there, speaking about the waste management and sanitation project and not being invasive and directive.

However, as someone born in the West Indies, in between the North and the South, I can see how these North/South dichotomies are increasingly giving rise to creolization or hybridization processes. If the “folds in our thinking” of the North impose themselves on the South, they nevertheless give rise to great creativity in their reinterpretation. I can only follow Appadurai here: “Most often, the homogenization argument subspeciates into either an argument about Americanization, or an argument about “commoditization”, and very often the two arguments are closely linked. What these arguments fail to consider is that at least as rapidly as forces from various metropolises are brought into new societies they tend to become indigenized in one or other way: this is true of music and housing styles as much as it is true of science and terrorism, spectacles and constitutions. The dynamics of such indigenization have just begun to be explored in a sophisticated manner” (Appadurai, 1990 p.549).

Not only are the logics and practices presented by the North as universal indigenized, but it is the transcendental subject, capable of appealing to a universal reason, that is questioned: “Universalism does not merely end with a view of immanent “spiritual” meaning produced in the text. It is also a challenge, for its reading, a subject positioned at the point where conflict and difference resolves and all ideology ends. It is not that the Transcendental subject cannot see historical conflict or colonial difference as mimetic structures or themes in the text. What it cannot conceive, is how it is itself structured ideologically and discursively in relation to those processes of signification which do not then allow for the possibility of whole or universal meanings” (Bhabha, 1994, p.96).

The Kenyan novelist Ngugi wa Thiong’O (1981) proposes to “decolonize the mind” and is strongly committed to contesting and subverting the unquestioned sovereignty of Western

83 categories—epistemological, ethico-moral, economic, political, aesthetic. This other challenge to the logics of the North highlights the importance of communication through local languages.

2.2 Learn rather than explain or advise

Because of this commitment against a postcolonial attitude, I could not come up with a defined framework, a ready-made solution that should have been implemented. Nor could I try to model from my experiences with the aim of producing universal knowledge. And because of the desire to first contribute, and eventually derive knowledge from the project, I could not only observe or interview. My aim was not explanatory, but it was not strictly speaking understanding either. It was about learning by inventing with community members. Learning by doing together. And when you learn fundamentally, you don't really know at the beginning what you're going to learn.

Learning here was learning new techniques, learning a way to connect and interact with a community, learning to know its history, values, challenges, learning to learn from such experiences, learning to write them up, and comparing them with the literature. The main act of the research was not to prove, verify or test, nor was it to understand attitudes or think from the participants' point of view. Above all, it was to invent solutions to waste-related problems with the communities and to learn from such experiences. I think that communities have also learned from these processes.

What is fascinating about learning – which we do not find with explaining and not always with understanding – is that learning transforms us. This is what we will see later with the notion of individuation. It was not a question of adding an element of knowledge but of transforming my thinking, my way of doing things and myself.

2.2.1 Tell and reflect from experience and not speak on behalf of

Another important aspect of my methodology choices is the fact that I did not want to speak for others, nor to categorize them in my research boxes, nor to say what is THE solution to their waste/sanitation problems. Although it was important for me to be at the center of the community

84 itself, it was crucial to allow the space for a co-design of needs and solutions. That means being able at the same time to give a voice to communities that are outcasts, that are never taken into consideration, and never listened to.

In fact, this concern led to very difficult questions, and I received some contradictory feedbacks in this respect. How is it possible to give voice to some people that are seldom listened to, and not to speak for them when it is me who is writing? Even long quotations would have to be edited, framed, interpreted, etc.

I chose to speak from the “I” perspective: I speak in the first person about what I saw, what I felt, feelings, affects (Moriceau & Paes, 2013; Moriceau, 2016), what it made me think and how I evolved through the global process. I try to quote them when they spoke in my presence, I describe what I saw when we were working, deciding, or simply living alongside each other. I try to do justice to their presence, style and agency when I describe activities, but I do not pretend to represent them, nor to tell an unquestionable story. I describe the cases the way I lived them, say how I understood what was going on, and try to testify to the creativity and the engagement of the people there. But I can only tell what I saw from my perspective, and I am not claiming that I could grasp their perspectives. I often asked questions about their feelings, attitudes, affects, thought, but what I can tell is only what they responded to my enquiry.

The “I” who speaks is the “I” of the researcher within the community (Moriceau & Soparnot, 2019), and not someone analyzing data and linking them to academic frameworks. The descriptions and behaviors can’t be disconnected from the context. The reader will have recognized that this is a way of countering the “externalization” process that usually operates inside academic spheres.

One can discuss if this should be called auto-ethnography. An auto-ethnographical voice connects first-person experience and reflection to wider cultural, political and social understanding (Ellis, 2004). The reader is invited to live the experience of being there, gaining knowledge which is not only conceptual but also emotional and ethical (Ellis & Bochner, 2000).

Auto-ethnography is justified by my constructing knowledge from my subjective experience. The auto-ethnographic voice enabled me to live my research and to learn from it as a practitioner who shared his learning and experiences with others. Writing about myself as a waste

85 management development practitioner alongside my participants made my own experiences a topic of investigation in its own right (Ellis, 2004) and helped me study the organization of the community through the lens of the “self” within the social context. It helped me to see the learning processes, as I could return to the way I felt and envisioned the project at other moments of the experience. This voice was also a way to look critically at the interactions between “self” and “others”, because the writing phase required reflection on both intentions and meaning, both on their part and on my part. Anyway, of course, the auto-ethnography perspective and transcription are not one emanating from a community member, but from a practitioner. That is why we should probably simply talk of biographical accounts. Making an account of one’s experience enables to see the hurdles that appeared during the projects and that may be repeated in similar experiences (Martuccelli, 2013).

In other words, the voice that will relate the three cases is not the objective voice telling from the outside what 'really' happened. Nor is it the voice of the community. It is a voice informed by experience and driven by the desire to transmit a collaborative learning process, and to be as faithful to the experience and respectful of other participants as possible. So, my way of giving them a voice was not only to quote them or claim to have managed to transcribe their own point of view. Rather, it is to show them in their lives, how they act and speak, as I have seen them in our interactions, and to testify to their achievements. It can be argued that it is still too much of my own voice, but it is the best compromise I have found so as not to speak for them, in their place. It was for me the only way to tell a story taking into account as many aspects and opinions as possible and giving the community a possibility to transmit and to express their own feelings and intuitions.

2.3 Steps followed

The research strategy I chose was to learn from experience in and with communities. There is therefore no theory or hypothesis to test. Perhaps the most important thing is to tell the story of the learning journey. Ideally, I would have liked to take the reader with me so that he could have had this experience himself. Because in a journey, one does not learn one thing, but ten thousand small interconnected things and it is difficult to focus attention on one without the need to mobilize or relate all the others.

It was through long exposure in the field that I was able to learn that I didn't know, which is something that I couldn't have known otherwise. And during these years of exposure (see in Figure 5 the Timeline of life events comprising academic and research events from Dec. 2010 to Nov. 2019: nine years of volunteering and seven years of research; two years of PhD in India at Amrita School of Business, Bangalore and four years in France at IMT-BS Paris-Evry) , as well as from one case to another, I was no longer the same, since the experience in between also had an impact on me. Experience was gained along the seven years of research, on two continents and in three different countries. On the one hand, this allowed me to gain more legitimacy to propose pilots and implementations (especially at the launching phase of projects, and in the design of the pilot); as well as getting heard more easily, being seen as an expert in the field of sanitation projects, waste separation at source and creation of value through sanitation projects for poor communities. On the other hand, I tried not to be locked in one track, and to be able to adapt and co-design with each new community.

Figure 5 – Timeline: research and projects

LIFE EVENTS

Feb. 2015 ARRIVAL IN FLORIANOPOLIS (BRAZIL) Pr. UNIO c. RIO DOCE (BRAZIL) Dec. 2010 ARRIVAL IN INDIA DARSHAN Pr. Rev. dos Balduinhos/ Florianopolis (BRAZIL) AMMA PhD/Waste

VOLUNTEERING INDIA Pr. Comcap and Prefeitura de Florianopolis: Pilot (BRAZIL)

2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

PhD ASB (INDIA) Transfer PhD to Doctorate at Paris Saclay university (FRANCE)

Pb. France/Brazil Young Researchers Pr. SSR + AB (INDIA) Pr. BARIO LIMPO Oc. Tomas Balduino (BRAZIL) day, Brasilia (BRAZIL) [2] ACADEMIC CBWM Pilot (INDIA) Pr. BARRIO LIMPIO San Antonio (BOLIVIA) Pb. Entreprendre & Innover (french journal) [3] & ISEP Conference SD (BRAZIL) RESEARCH Conf. speaker SBCMAC, Belem (BRAZIL) Pb. Book chapter [4] EVENTS Pb. Book chapter [5] Pb. EURAM Conference, Paris (FRANCE) [1]

Abbrevations: Pr. = Project Pb. = Publication 87

[1] Author (2016, june). An empirical approach to a Community Based Integrated Waste Management system: a case study for an implementation and a start of community engagement model for municipal waste in Bolivia. EURAM Conference, Paris.

[2] Author (2018, sept.). Collaboration et contribution à travers innovation et entrepreneuriat social. Le cas d’une recherche participative dans une occupation au Brésil et ses opportunités. Journées Jeunes chercheurs en SHS : regards croisés France-Brésil. Brasilia.

[3] Author & Moriceau, J-L. (2019). Quand l’engagement communautaire favorise la réussite d’un projet d’innovation sociale. Entreprendre & Innover, 2019/2 n° 41.

[4] Author & Moriceau, J-L. (2019). Include and contribute, some of the challenges of community-based participatory research. in Moriceau, J-L. & Soparnot, R. (eds.). Qualitative social science research: Exposure, walking, thinking or the art of composing your method. EMS Editions.

[5] Author, Moriceau, J-L, & Paes, I. (2019). Sobre viver. in Pessoa, S. C. ; Marques, Â. S.; Mendonça, C. M. C. (eds.). Afetos: Pesquisas, reflexões e experiências em 4 encontros com Jean-Luc Moriceau. Belo Horizonte: PPGCOM UFMG.

Table 3 shows the main characteristics of the three cases that have been chosen for this research.

Table 3 next page

Table 3 - Main characteristics of the three cases.

AMRITAPURI NAME (place SAN ANTONIO TOMAS BALDUINO projeto project Student Social and project) projeto Barrio Limpio Bairo Limpo Responsibility SSR INDIA, KERALA, BRAZIL, MINAS GERAIS, LOCATION BOLIVIA, PUERTO SUAREZ VALLIKAVU RIBERAO DAS NEVES

Universidade Federal de Minas Partners Fundacion Trabajo Empresal FTE Gerais (UFMG), Brigadas Populares

3000 in the ashram, 5000 in the village of Vallikavu 1500 in Barrio San Antonio, 1500 in Ocupação Tomas Balduíno, Size of (est. by author), 25,336 in 24,030 in Puerto Suarez city (est. 331,045 Riber ão das Neves (est. Community Karunagappally city by census; 2019) census 2018) (census)

Only a few students directly FTE team: 3 part time; myself UFMG/ Brigadas Pop: 5 + myself; Project involved and a few sevites: full time; community: directly community: directly involved: 10, members max. 40 people involved: 10, indirectly: 20 indirectly 20

from 31 Dec. 2010 to April From 18 August 2014 to 24 Sept. From 31st October to 5th December Dates of project 2014: SSR from mid 2012 2014 2014 to end 2013

1 month for the project, 1 month Few weeks: 1.5 years of Time of 2 months from May 2014 to with Italian university colleagues volunteering before start of preparation August 2014 for the project itself for the surveys: 2 professors from U SSR project of Roma and U of Bologna

Time in situ 4 years 1.5 months 1 month + 3 further visits

Francisco Antunes da Lima, Started as a volunteering Started by an encounter with professor at UFMG got interested in project, while I was Rene Salomon, director of FTE in the project of waste separation in Start of project studying recycling, Santa Cruz Bolivia and fellow Bolivia and proposed participation composting and valuation alumnus from the Insead Social in a project UFGM was running process. Entrepreneurship Program. with ocupação Tomás Balduíno,

I want here to repeat that the three case studies were stand-alone projects. My aim was not to make comparisons between them. Each case brought different take-aways, and each benefited from the previous experiences. The purpose was not to seek a general law. The objectives were to go along with the learning process and see afterwards what had worked, what had not, and see what could serve as an example, and what lessons could be learnt for future projects. Of course, in my mind, I was thinking or dreaming of replicating and scaling up, but I already knew that what I had obtained was hints rather than rules for further implementation of such projects in similar cases.

2.3.1 Entry in each case

The experience in India started with a volunteering project in a monastery. I was there in a very specific and unique setting, where I benefited from the special opportunity to be completely emerged in an Indian context, in a poor region plagued with serious waste-related problems (pollution of all water supplies, plastic pollution everywhere, hygiene problems, diseases caused by lack of hygiene). There was also an opportunity to interact with local people, be it at the ashram level or in the nearby villages. The case built up from opportunities and the reaction of the people themselves. For example, the Community Based Waste Management Center that emerged from three years of volunteering work derived from the collaboration I had with local volunteers at each waste management center in the monastery, local people and especially the ashram people responsible for the whole chain of waste, from collection to disposal and treatment. My unplanned collaboration with an American architect who was also very strongly involved made a huge difference in my special understanding of the integration of most of the categories / steps needed to build a fully operating center dealing with most of the steps and categories of waste produced by the ashram and the University. This center would serve as a basis for possible replication in the nearby communities, and as a starting project to be taken on by students of the Amrita University.

The second experience in Bolivia, as I mentioned earlier, started with a kind of bet. It came with opportunities afforded by a local Bolivian foundation. It gave me a complementary perspective, which was more institutional with the implications of an NGO. The social impact and scale were way smaller than the one in India as measured by the scale of the project itself, the means allocated to it, and the possibilities of replication and scaling. But the implementation was 92 deeper and more thorough than the Indian one, being more focused on waste separation at source and the creation of a local team for collection and recycling.

The last ground project in Brazil stemmed from my meeting with a university professor, who was recommended to me. I was not fully convinced about the project, but when I saw a small stream bubbling with foam and the welcome by the inhabitants, the engagement of my colleague from the Popular Brigades, I felt it was imperative to get involved as best I could. I then found myself in a very tough and specific environment: an illegal occupation with very poor local people, alongside very strong leadership by drug dealers.

The project was born as a kind of replication of the Bolivian experience, but it led to a very strong community engagement, and later empowerment and structuring of the community through waste management, quite far from the results that came out of the Bolivian pilot. In many aspects these results were unforeseen and unpredictable. Four years after, when I returned, I could see that the project was still alive.

2.3.2 Learning by contributing

At the risk of repeating myself, I would like to make it clear that the thesis was a learning journey, and that my main source of teaching is reflection on these experiences. I will say a little later that I supplemented this main source with interviews and surveys, but these were only additional tools.

Being there, getting to grips with problems and issues, observing reactions, talking with people, having to manage without a guide, imagining projects, experimenting, trying to convince, discovering unimagined aspects, admiring the actions and commitments of others, individually and collectively, thinking about how to contribute, wanting to empower people, seeing certain elements being done, being rebuilt, undone - this is what taught me the most about waste management in these communities, about other ways of looking at solutions, about other relationships to waste, to community service, to engagement.

For more than four years, I was thus exposed to these other ways in India, two months in Bolivia, more than two months in the Brazilian occupation, not to mention the regular returns to the area. 93

The whole thesis is therefore not the description of one or more experiments on cases, but rather a reflection based on almost ten years of volunteering, practice, of personal growth, inventiveness and discoveries. Table 4 shows some additional activities carried out with the communities:

Table 4 - Additional activities carried out with the communities

NAME AMRITAPURI SAN ANTONIO TOMAS BALDUINO (place and project) project Student Social projeto Barrio Limpio projeto Bairo Limpo Responsibility SSR INDIA, KERALA, BOLIVIA, PUERTO BRAZIL, MINAS GERAIS, LOCATION VALLIKAVU SUAREZ RIBERAO DAS NEVES Teaching BA and MBA Teaching MBA programs in Participating in workshops programs in the ASB the local University, leading on permaculture, leading University, leading workshops on Social meetings on spin-off workshops on Social entrepreneurships, projects, social entrepreneurships, presentations to local entrepreneurial perspectives: Organizing renewable enterprises on recycling and sawing, community energies practical cases, local schools kitchen… participating in conferences

Other activities on waste management all with the community over India, visiting dump fills and successful waste management policies in various municipalities (Coimbatore, Chenai, Surat, Hydrabad)

Setting up a pilot (No Freight for Waste) in Andaman Islands.

Another way of promoting my research, and the implementation of various projects, was the way we started to document them with videos each time after the project in Bolivia. Meeting Kiyu and her local TV team in Puerto Suarez provided us with the opportunity to get good footage and have people helping us to put together short videos that could then serve as promotion tools for such projects with local communities.

This is what happened in Brazil after the Bolivian project. Here are the various videos that we have been produced in seven years and that served as basis of the research process in South America as well as promotion of the evolution of the solutions:

1 - “Saniamento decentralizado: Barrio Limpio”: from August 2014 to September 2014

This is the second project used for this research: Barrio Limpio, waste separation at source implemented in 30 days, 5 weeks, 5 phases, with the example of the CBWM (Community Based Waste Management) center designed in India, Bolivia, Santa Cruz, Puerto Suarez, Barrio San Antonio

Sept. 2014, short English:https://youtu.be/HhCg_hbFuLk

2 - “Projeto Bairo Limpo, Ocupação Tomás Balduíno”: From Nov 2014-jan2015

This is the third project used in this research: Bairo Limpo, waste separation at source implemented in 30 days, 5 weeks, 5 phases, full sanitation project for self-sustainability of a full community, Ocupação Tomás Balduíno”:

Jan. 2015- and further visits : https://youtu.be/mZq5RFlKf4I

Other community empowerment projects were implemented in Brazil on the basis of these two community empowerment experiences, like Unio com Rio Doce, aiming at providing alternative sources of drinking water after the toxic landslide, with the collapse of two dams, that devasted the whole region of Rio Doce (1500 kilometers inland and more than 3000kms in the sea were affected), and polluted the whole river, which served as sole source of water for the region.

3 - “Projeto UNIAO COM RIO DOCE”: this project was not chosen for this research but was also pivotal for the community approach we are developing

Global video in English, April 16: https://youtu.be/uPcZVVSFOvot

2.3.3 Assessing results

When you contribute, you try to do the best you can. We are oriented towards what seems to be the most appropriate, the most just, the most urgent. But to learn, it is also necessary at times to evaluate the results. Of course, part of my contribution goes well beyond the health or environmental results themselves, but it was necessary to measure whether or not the contribution had improved the situation. Knowledge for myself, as a fair return to the participants and to learn lessons beyond each experience.

Since this whole research and PhD journey started from volunteering, field and grassroots level experiences my first aim was always to participate to finding solutions, to implement them with the local communities. My willingness to work with very poor and outcast communities was inducing me to try to do something, to act more than observe, to try to improve the situation that I had in front of me.

Key results dimensions are shows in

Table 5. One of the key indicators I have chosen to fit in with the focuses of my research is value creation, measured by the number of direct jobs created. The level of job creation in each project, be it direct or indirect, is important. Another indicator is the level of cleanliness in the communities where the projects have been implemented: improvement is a good sign of how, in the local context, communities have been able to take on board the co-designed sanitation solutions.

Table 5 – Approaches and results for the 3 cases

NAME AMRITAPURI SAN ANTONIO TOMAS BALDUINO (place and project Student Social projeto Barrio Limpio projeto Bairo Limpo project) Responsibility SSR

INDIA, KERALA, BOLIVIA, PUERTO BRAZIL, MINAS GERAIS, LOCATION VALLIKAVU SUAREZ RIBERAO DAS NEVES

Empirical measures of levels Projects included in BA and Approach before of waste, number of Meetings with UFMG MBA curriculum and participatory participants measured in professors presented to Amma for research community meetings, with approval the list of supermarket rebates

Empirical measures of levels Projects included in BA and Methodology for of waste, number of MBA curriculum and 122 semi-structured interviews, results participants measured in presented to Amma for 7 unstructured evaluation community meetings, with approval the list of supermarket rebates

3 new visits: 1/ two weeks in 2015 with 122 semi-directive Return to site Interviews + 4 non directive after project None None interviews with key people of completion the community 2/ 2nd visit: one day in 2017, 3/3rd visit one day in 2018

35 projects were created, recycling rates in the A team of 4 local people ashram went from 40% to integrated in a local project of A team of 4 local people 70%, creation of a model of waste cleaning and separation created: 2 “catadores”, 2 Results Community Based Waste at source: mostly plastic and composters, in a local project indicators Management (CBWM) organic: from no separation created from scratch: local center to be implemented in to 60% of families design and vote on project. the University (4000 participating (est. author) students)

Recycling rates in the Recycling rates went from 0 Recycling rates went from 0 to ashram went from 40% to to 30% (measured by author 60% (measured by author 70%, creation of a model of % recycling during the time of the project, during the time of the project, 1 Community Based Waste 1.5 months and 3 weeks of month, 2 weeks of collection Management (CBWM) collection). and further visits) center

At the beginning mostly separation of organics and Mostly separation of organics Mostly separation of organics non-organics (dry and wet) and non-organics (dry and and non-organics (dry and wet) Typology of going into compost and wet) going into compost and going into compost and recycling separation of plastics, separation of cans (aluminum separation of cans (aluminum cardboard, then more of highest value), plastics, of highest value), plastics, precise separation of cardboard cardboard plastics, cans, glass

Mostly sevite activities by volunteers and people During the project 4 direct jobs already employed in the During the project 4 direct Number of jobs were created and sustained in university: impossible to jobs were created: team for created the following years, up to date, measure, only student collection 4 years later enrolment could be

quantified

2.3.4 Unexpected outcomes

In the three projects studied in this thesis little was planned in advance. The key lessons learnt come in fact from what had not been planned and foreseen. The indicators mentioned in table 3 correspond primarily to what was planned in the project. Other take-aways, often more surprising and thought-provoking, which have been at the heart of reflexivity and therefore of what I have learned, come from unexpected outcomes.

In the first project in India, it is difficult to properly speak of unpredictable outcomes to the extent that all the directions were given by Amma, from the volunteering in recycling to the “PhD and Waste” darshan (embrace by the Master). Nevertheless, I did not plan to go from a 99 student cleaning campaign to green-renewable-waste management projects incorporated in Amma’s University syllabus. I did not plan to see the student campaign Amala Bharatam taken on board by the Prime Minister Modi… but all of this was source of amazement and further learning. The two major surprises came from both the Bolivian and Brazilian projects:

1. Replication of the model by FTE as a CSR project as well as by the nearby municipality

The project ‘Barrio Limpio’ in Barrio San Antonio, Puerto Suarez, Santa Cruz, Bolivia, had been a success in the sense that in 1.5 months a project of collection, composting and recycling had been built up from scratch, and had run in the barrio for 3 weeks. Nevertheless, the sustainability aspect failed and the project stopped shortly after the salaries of the collection teams could no longer be sustained by FTE, just a few weeks after I left.

So when Rene told me that one year later, the pilot of a Barrio Limpio, the community- based sanitation program had been selected by a Brazilian mining company moving into the region, as a CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) project for them, I was surprised and delighted.

The project had already raised the attention of nearby municipalities like Puerto Quijaro, but no evidence had been given to me of real replication, which was a key objective and indicator of the sustainability of the pilot.

This outcome of having an external corporate take on a local project as a CSR project was a huge accomplishment in terms of the positive influence of the project, way stronger in my view than a consulting report. Projects from earlier years had never been implemented, even less replicated.

2. Exemplarity of the project with the Occupation: example used by an architect and town planner from the municipality of Riberão das Neves at a meeting of Greater Belo Horizonte

When we visited the project of ‘Barrio Limpo’ in Oc. Tomas Balduíno, Riberão das Neves, Gran Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil more than two years later, in November 2017, it was an immense surprise to hear that the Bairo Tomàs Balduíno had been cited as an example of self- 100 sustainability and virtuous management of waste, without any help from the municipality of Riberão das Neves, for reasons explained further in the case-study description (Chapter 5). That this example should be given by an urbanist architect from the municipality of Riberão das Neves at a meeting of Gran Belo Horizonte was even a further surprise and symbol of a great success. The outcome was clearly a recognition of the work done at all levels to set up this sanitation project and the structure for running it. The outcome amounts to respect for the work done, and for its continuity with and by the community. Dignity has been achieved through self-sustainability. And there is a strong sense that the whole community has contributed to something that could lead them to legitimacy, and even potentially to legalization.

2.3.5 Writing

Finding the right writing style was one of the major difficulties of the case studies. Since the focal point is learning, I have tried to tell the story so that the reader can partly live the experiences. This is not an investigation directly into “folds of thinking”. The stories retrace how a community organizes itself and eventually structures itself around waste management. Rather than statements or (re)presentations of self that would be made to a stranger, it was better to see and study how – in action and in collaboration – solutions are invented. The issue of “folds of thinking” will only be addressed in the discussion.

The writing had to find a balance between a presentation excessively focused on the author, which could not sufficiently show others, learning something foreign, and would monopolize the voice, and the criticized postcolonial habit of wanting to speak for others. Despite my knowledge of these contexts, it could not be possible for me to represent Indians, Bolivians or Brazilians. We thus decided to start to tell the stories from an “I” perspective to do justice to the subjective experience of such a research project. A delicate position, being at the same time at the center of the project and on the side of the community, listening and hoping to empower the local people in the implementation team. So, I first tried auto-ethnography to transcribe the case studies from the perspective of the researcher, from an “I” posture and statement.

But I then realized that this perspective was lacking the voice of the community, of the people, of the local participants. So, we started to use more “verbatim” material from unstructured

101 interviews, especially for the last case of Brazil, where the major result of the research turned out to be the internalization of waste and the hybridity of solutions.

The mix of auto-ethnography, or at least auto-biography with verbatim and results of interviews seems to work well for the last case study. For the first two case studies, there is also the element of collaborative learning, and learning in the course of the projects. We tried there to describe every time what we learned with the community and what we wanted to study further.

But, by attempting to give the other greater presence, and a voice thanks to verbatim, there was a danger of claiming to speak for others. The first project took place in India, and in a context where the “others” were the ashram community, which was completely guided by Amma, and eminent spiritual members of her organization (swamis who were working at the recycling sites…).

I noted though that there was a need for bridges to be built between the monastery side and the university side, in terms of views of waste, more traditionally Indian on the university side (the vast majority of the students and faculties are Indians), and breaking Indian stigmas and taboos on waste, with Amma’s strong messages on waste: Holiness is cleanliness…

I listened to Amma, and then to the different ‘communities’ involved- Western sevites, spiritual seekers, spiritual heads (swamis), and university people- was the way to get to know them better. But I did not claim to express their voice. Just to reproduce how they behave and speak.

In the case of Brazil, the voices of others are more present. I found it very important to reproduce more of what the participants told me, and how they appeared to me. But I cannot claim to have got inside their minds, or that what they told me represented their voice.

2.3.6 Discussion building

Most of the analyses of each case were made a posteriori. Interpretation was a long process for me, involving a lot of work. I was confronting the evolving solutions and results with the different communities and elements of academic theory: through literature reviews for waste management, for the Circular Economy, and for community empowerment for example.

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Participating in the call for papers and Special Issues on waste management was an opportunity to be more precise and to narrow down the theoretical framings.

This is how the idea of internalization came in, analyzing the last case study of Brazil in the light of articles/papers referring to externalization factors of waste management. Later on, by looking into our anti-colonial posture, and looking at the concept of hybridity, and in the light of Peredo’s other collaborative examples, I worked out more precisely the reality of hybridity in waste management solutions, at the level of very poor communities from the south, and maybe a need to integrate in a different way solutions from the north, and to integrate the contrary approach with more decentralized solutions from the south, using more basic technologies, and based on ancient local knowledge and cultures…

2.4 Conclusion on the research method

It may be asked whether this method was the most appropriate. I have simply described how it gradually took shape in the course of my experiences and the project I got involved in, throughout the seven years of volunteering and field projects. In any case, it seems to me to be the one that allows me to respect the principles I hold dear above all. In particular, not only to come to study, which is a way of taking something but also to contribute – which is itself contradictory.

Of course, it also has weaknesses. But if I take up the three fundamental movements of developing a qualitative research method as suggested by Moriceau and Soparnot (2019), I see that it is likely to teach us three things:

1. The period of “exposure” to the field has been extended, by creating together, by having long periods of discussion, without excessively limiting a priori the viewpoint because of a fixed theory or method. 2. The “journey” was also extended, and this learning journey took me far away from where I had started. I never imagined I would have reached the point of completion when I started my research.

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3. Reflexivity has led me to change my outlook, my thoughts, and my ways of relating. I became aware of the limitations of a postcolonial approach and tried to reflect on my contribution to communities and research. Of course, I am aware that this reflexivity must be extended much further in the future, but I can only say at this point that I feel I have learned a lot.

What I found most invaluable in Moriceau and Soparnot's book is undoubtedly a deep desire “to be in search”. Not a disposition to follow steps, but a way of being, orientated to learning and a will to understand.

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Chapter 3 First case study: Indian lessons, the tremendous power of community engagement in fighting the plague of waste

Economist, professor, Social Entrepreneur Muhammad Yunus, founder of Micro Credit and Peace Nobel Price (2006,) visiting Amirta University in 2013

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Chapter 3: First case study: Indian lessons, the tremendous power of community engagement in fighting the plague of waste

We start here by a summary table (Table 6) of the project, with the key information needed to position and understand the context.

Table 6 - First case study: general information

PROJECT NAME ABC Integrated Waste Management center

CITY, REGION, COUNTRY Vallikavu, Kerala, INDIA

DATES Dec. 2010 to Jan. 2015

NUMBER OF PHASES From volunteering to ABC project and SSR projects, to PhD research at Amrita ASB University

NUMBER OF COMMUNITIES 1: Ashram of Amma, 2: University, 3: village of Vallikavu

NUMBER OF PEOPLE 2: Ashram between 3000 and 10,000; Village 5000 (est. by scholar)

AREA COVERED 5 km by 6 km (est. by scholar)

“My son, my son, my son”. Amma (Figure 6) was whispering in my ear for the first time in my life while she was hugging me against her breast, in a master chair, in front of 10,000 people. It seemed surreal to me, like a dream, or a nightmare. I could not tell at the time.

Figure 6 - Mat Amritanandamayi (Amma) giving darshan

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3.1 My engagement (how waste and waste management came to my life)

A few months earlier, I had come to the end of a four-year experience in London, drowning in the deep end of a swimming pool of overwork and growing disillusionment with the charity bank sector. I had left the cozy surfing environment of Biarritz in 2006 to spend four years of my life in two major roles in London’s NGO sector: firstly, as a senior consultant in a consultancy firm carrying out capacity-building mainly in large NGOs, and secondly as a senior advisory consultant at one of the biggest charity banks in the industry: Charities Aid Foundation (CAF).

I had been exposed to some amazing learning experiences in the Third Sector, from grant- making to fundraising, to restructuring, organization and even coaching. Each project involved major UK third sector charities or NGOs. I was enthralled by the visions and missions involved – but less so by the people and problems encountered, which frankly kept on reminding me of the hard-core corporate capitalist world, minus the honest admission that the purposes of being there were to make money, and to be visible. At the end of those four years in London I felt completely washed out: by the hypocrisy I sensed in the system of charity banking, and by the draining London life style - very expensive and always imposing pressure on everyone to produce, to deliver, accompanied by lots of deceit and backstabbing.

On top of everything London’s famously inclement weather was not helping me. I felt like a tropical bird, born in the Caribbean and lost in a northern country lacking light and sun. I experienced the weirdest symptoms during my second winter in Fulham Broadway. One doctor I consulted thought I had contracted the H1N1 bird flu fever that had spread from Hong Kong and had just started to hit London. A second doctor talked to me a bit more and suggested I could be suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder (S.A.D). Whatever the cause, the sadness kept on getting worse. I ended up packing everything in and headed to the south of France two years later.

A friend of mine, Jo - with whom I had worked closely on some memorable consulting projects, proposing charity strategies to the likes of Goldman Sachs and Macquarie - took me one day to a spiritual gathering of an Indian master she was following. I cannot say that at the time the experience left a great impression on me, but some of it rang a bell and something in me was touched.

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Jo said to me at the time: “Diego, you are going back to the South of France in the middle of the winter. You are not going to be able to surf and you do not have a job… You are going to crack up the same way. Just go to India, to Amma’s ashram, and do some volunteering work at grassroots level”. I was exhausted and felt it deep inside: “There is no way I could travel far right now and especially not in India”. Two weeks later I felt I was literally watching myself (as in an out-of-body experience) buy air tickets from Biarritz to Kochi in Kerala, embarking on a trip to a country I did not know, to visit a spiritual master I had never met.

This was the path I took: moving from a highly professional environment of expertise in London’s third sector at the highest levels of consulting, complete with black suits and well paid, to grassroots level projects and volunteering in a very poor village in the south of India. I arrived in Amritapuri, the village where the ashram of Mat Amritanandamayi (Amma) is situated, on 30 December 2010. On 31 December, I was lining up for a darshan with Amma… and was soon hugged by her very closely but gently… hearing as an echo: “my son, my son” … her rose perfume filling my head and reminding me of the natural soaps my own grandmother used. Amma was a little black woman with typical features from the south of India, from Kerala. A very dark skin, a round face filled with love. The roundness of a master, the sort of physical roundness that exhales kindness and welcoming love. Her eyes and her gaze embraced everything and everyone as much as her embrace itself, which had over the years become her way of soothing the cares of other people. She was, and is, for so many people the embodiment of unconditional love, of a God of Love, one of the most prominent spiritual masters in India.

This was the start of a spiritual, volunteering and academic journey I could never have planned or even dreamed of. I was soon engaging in the “Seva” program (“seva” is a selfless volunteering service for the community of the ashram) and was assigned to recycling.

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Figure 7 – Volunteering in Waste management, project 1

It seems to me today that all this happened for a reason, even if that reason was not apparent at the time. Indians term this spiritual concept “synchronicity”.

The “sevite” who welcomed me on my first day told me that many intellectual workers, researchers and PhDs were ending up providing this service of recycling, as a sort of divine push which makes them deal with their own issues and take the opportunity to clean up their lives.

And yes, this first Seva (see Figure 7) would set the pattern for the rest of my Indian journey and indeed the journey I am still on today. I started on my first week of arrival to attend the recycling Seva every day, for three to four hours per day.

The first year I got involved in the recycling and composting sections, the system in place was dealing with the whole waste of the ashram, with 3000 regular year-round inhabitants, and peaks of up to 15,000 visitors per day during special events. A very large amount of mostly household waste was thus produced (97.5 tons in 2012 for example). Most of the waste was being recycled manually and composted. I was amazed by the organization that had been put in place and that feeling only grew over the four years I spent there. Thanks to equipment ranging from hand carts to small Maruti trucks to transport the heavy loads, recycled products were sold to the local recycling market and the compost was either used for local gardening or sold. The aspect of generating value from the chain of waste was what started to interest me most. And especially the fact that this could all be done locally. Plastics were one of the major issues, and I started to look into this also, with solutions like plastic-to-oil machines which at the time in 2011-2012 were not 109 yet well developed. I had been assigned to sort waste on tables for sorting in the pounding heat, as I arrived in the summertime (December through May). The heat, together with the gloves, masks and long sleeves, in addition to the smells of the waste, combined to make me feel at times that I was in purgatory!

When I entered, for the first time, the big hall where Amma usually gives darshan inside the ashram I must say it made a powerful impression on me. Everyone was dressed in white, and everyone faced towards Amma, a very small black lady who is as wide as she is tall. Chubby, welcoming and loving, with such a beautiful smile on her face, exuding so much love, she is also energetic, and with her glance she controls every detail of the ceremony, giving commands here and there, and instructions (sometimes even by phone). She hugged everyone who came up to her, sometimes for a second, sometimes for a few minutes. Sometimes she laughed with them, sometimes she cried with them and comforted them. She is always listening and caring, always giving them something, a sweet or a fruit, which in Indian culture is prasaad, holy food. She was the head and leader of activities that seemed to me to constitute an empire: five major campuses in the south of India, with a total of more than 40,000 students, in very diverse fields of management, biosciences, medicine, social sciences and engineering. A huge NGO called “Embrace the world”, with ashrams in every large city in India, and in major countries in Europe (two in France) and in the USA. A huge organization attracting very substantial funding, from local, national and international sources. In my view, the financial structure has always been very secretive, and that may explain why the organization has attracted a great deal of jealousy and criticism, and many detractors, both in India and internationally. I have never managed for example to find out what proportion of poor people are treated free of charge in the AIMS hospital, or the proportion of scholars who are studying free of charge. Information of this kind would have been an important indicator of social impact, as health and education are crucial when it comes to poverty alleviation.

I went to each of the campuses and I experienced very different environments; some are in rural areas like Amrita Coimbatore, and others in urban areas like Kochi and Bangalore. I also saw the hospitals, including AIMS in Kochi, which is renowned and is ranked among the best in south India. I also came to know many political and business contacts and influences.

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At the beginning I was of course completely lost. If it had not been for Diana, one of Jo’s close friends from London, I might have given up and left right away. You need adaptation skills, to adapt to the systems, the local culture, the Seva, the diversity of people, the heat, the blaring loudspeakers of the temples, and the astonished looks of the villagers, especially when I swam to a faraway beach, attracted by inviting waves. And the size of the organization was enormous! Everything I did required adaptation; every second thinking and positioning were necessary. At the start I found it all completely exhausting. I did not have the energy to think about where I was, who these people were, and who I was! And without realizing it I had started my journey into communities that would mark me and influence me for the rest of my life. The very important step of Seva, selfless service, so far from anything I had seen in my previous Western, capitalistic life, was plunging me into a collaborative community and in fact into unconditional love. Replacing the idea, image, feeling, of work in the new dimension of something bigger than money, bigger than fiduciary compensation. I would later identify how this led me to embrace the ideas of respect (of local cultures) and contribution (to the life of the community) at local level.

For the time being I was just swimming with the flow, a huge flow of people dressed in white, singing bhajans, holy songs in Sanskrit, and praying at times as though they were going mad (with people in a trance). I was trying my best not to judge, just to feel and experiment… I came to understand later that I was learning, without noticing. The point was exactly that: I would understand later, and for now understanding did not matter, just feeling and experience.

The first month in the ashram went by at lightning speed. I was caught up in the rhythm of a very well-organized spiritual center where everything was organized by and for Amma. She is the spiritual master of the community and the guide of one of the biggest NGOs in India, ‘Embrace the World”, actively involved in almost all humanitarian fields in India and in the world (for example in Japan after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, and the hurricane in Haiti and the resulting humanitarian disaster). I soon realized why Jo had suggested I should come and volunteer in India, far away from the bankers of London. And far from the cold winters of Europe, especially the fog and snow of London! I was soon embracing some of the values I was coming into contact with here: unconditional love from Amma, one of the only embodiments of God being a woman in India. Together with selflessness, doing a job without being paid, just as an exchange of time, 111 competence, knowledge, and in the end a contribution to a community I was starting to belong to. Karma yoga as the start of a regular spiritual practice, intemporality, accepting… and so many more subtle values, tricks, and guides for life. Most of them were familiar to me, either from my religious education (I was a practicing Catholic until my late twenties), or as a universal nature lover through shamanic experiences (I spent months in the ‘selva peruana’ in 2000-2001, volunteering in a center of rehabilitation for drug-addicted youngsters devastated by the local Peruvian ‘Senteros luminosos’ guerilla movement).

A trip of 2 weeks to the Maldives – to surf with friends from Biarritz in February 2011 - saved me from thinking too much or sinking too deeply into this new environment that was taking me alive… or dead. After a month, I was faced with a choice between two possibilities. The first was to take a bus to follow Amma on a tour of South India, with a couple of thousand devotees, working 10 to 14 hours a day, and travelling in tiny buses. The other opportunity came when my friend Marco told me that there was a spot still available on a surfing boat trip in the south islands of Maldives. Faced with the idea of joining five friends from Biarritz on a surf trip to the Maldives (an hour and a half from Trivandrum in Kerala), my decision was made immediately: I asked my friend to pack an extra surfboard and a few surf trucks and there I was, flying to the Maldives to surf beautiful waves and (as I thought at the time) escaping from the madness and hardships of my first month in the ashram.

I never imagined what would happen in reality. The waves arrived in two great swells of 6 to 8 feet, and I did not feel at ease in the group. The friends (some of whom came from rugby backgrounds like my own in the past) put me on edge with their crude jokes… I was realizing that I had already changed in those few weeks at the ashram. I could not show my ass to the native on our cruise boat without feeling out of place, ashamed, and disrespectful. I had found a deeper purpose in my life, which was simple but deep and fulfilling. The surf was filling me up inside. The challenge of big, fat, powerful waves (sometimes close to 9 feet high) was taking my body to its limits. A body that had been tired out by all the night-time partying in London. It was almost like a test of where I stood. And I was soon to realize how each step of this internal exploration became pivotal for me.

I even went on my way back to visit Osho’s ashram in Pune, looking to confront reality with my fantasies of sex (the upscale ashram had a reputation for group sex). Back ‘home’ at the 112 end of February marked the start of a real inner journey that was both deep and painful: from March to the end of May 2011. It was then that I started to establish a deeper practice, quite different from the times I fell on my knees with my friends from Biarritz, or in Pune, imagining a false avenue to spirituality. I felt safe arriving by train at Karunagappalli after a 2-day journey.

The chuk-chuk taking me to the ashram very early in the morning made me rediscover why I was feeling so good here: tropical nature with amazing flowers and fruits, the simplicity of the people in the streets in each little village on the way to the bridge (built by Amma after so many people were trapped by flooding following the tsunami that hit the region in 2004). I slept soundly and deeply that evening, something I had not done for months, feeling safe and where I needed to be.

This was for me the start of a period of integration and internalization of the work of the ashram: internally in me through sadhana (spiritual practices to evolve towards more awareness, how you act for example in an ashram to grow, your framework and daily practices as a seeker of spiritual awareness) and externally as someone getting increasingly involved in waste management. Firstly, as a mere worker and then gradually by looking at the global processes and reviewing possibilities for improvement. Given that I was arriving in a new culture, a new religion, so far from what I knew, and my frames of reference, I could not resist the urge to see a swami. He was a high-ranking swami, a softly spoken and mild mannered man, dressed in orange, the symbol of holiness. I asked him how I could help in Amma’s organization with fundraising, with organizational aspects in her NGO Embracing the World. He kindly looked at me, probably seeing that there was no real arrogance in my posture, only a reflex caused by cultural differences he had experienced many times before. With a gentle smile, he said: “Dear Diego, here we do not help, it is Amma that helps us. She is the one that makes the strategy and the organization. We only serve her, serve her plans”.

The truth of his words only dawned on me later: Who was I to think I could work on the strategy of ‘Embracing the World’ which Amma had built up over 30 years? Hailing from a very poor fishing family in the south west of Kerala, she had progressed from being a little Black slave girl for her family (her aunt in fact) to becoming a Saint, and singing holy songs in Sanskrit, a language she had never learned as she had never set foot in school.

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I saw Modi before he became India’s Prime Minister, paying his respects to Amma for her 67th birthday, and being embraced by her (he seemed to be devoted to her). A few months later he became PM and has remained so ever since. He is said to speak to her regularly and to take advice from her on specific social topics. Amma is often seen alongside the Pope in many ecumenical ceremonies worldwide, spreading words of love and acting pragmatically by building hospitals for the poor, or housing for refugees.

After coming back to what now felt inside me to be home, this individual and internal feeling slowly evolved into a more general observation of the actions Amma was achieving around her, in the world. As I witnessed the actions, the associated values turned into daily practices, and I was starting to become aware of the time I would need to spend here, respecting these new values growing in me, as well as participating as much as possible, contributing my very best efforts. Giving what I have without expecting a fiduciary return, sometimes just competences, or even just energy, a smile, a hug, a conversation, cutting vegetables for the soup. Some days all I could give was a grudge, when in so much pain I could not even leave my room, barely opening my eyes to my roommates feeding me and helping out. These cleansing processes are famous in Amma’s ashram. Cleaning the ‘shit of others’ is cleaning your own shit, cleaning yourself.

This is how waste and waste management came into my life (see examples of volunteering projects in Figure 8).

Figure 8 – Project Waste separation and Vermi-Compost

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But I was not ready to agree to becoming a ragpicker yet, so I looked for a cover-up, something more formal, more ‘acceptable’ like being a volunteer, a teacher at the local Amma’s University and a volunteer in a Social Innovation and Social Entrepreneur incubator. In April 2012, Amma took me in her arms after a week of deep sorrow. I stayed in my room unable to move, not knowing what to do: jump from the window of the 12th floor of the A building, let myself starve, or return to France with no prospect in mind? Suddenly, I sprang up, and walked 12 floors down the stairs, as I did not want to see or run into anyone. I was not shaven or showered. I got myself close to where Amma was giving darshan, jumped the queue and broke the rules of protocol… When the assessors of the darshan process looked at my face they knew I had to be there and get to Mother quickly. In no time I was close to Amma, and she welcomed me with a beautiful smile as if she knew and was waiting for me. She took me in her arms, put my head on her chest. The same chubby mother as my second mother Rosette in Guadeloupe, who did the same thing when I was a kid. I started to sob and cry silently, and she let me do so for several minutes. I asked her: “Amma, what should I do? I am not accepted on the university side, I do not have a role on the recycling side, what should I do? Should I go back to France?”

She first looked at me and caressed my face, my tears, in silence just as a mother would do. Then she took my face in her hand and looked at me deeply, gazing inside me for seconds that seemed to last for minutes. She smiled again and said: “Waste, PhD”. Then she called the dean of the University and asked him (in Malayalam which I understand way too poorly to translate) to organize my stay in one of the Universities and start my PhD in the field of waste management. The next day everything was lined up. I was clean-shaven, and crossing the bridge again to face a new start in my life: a life with a purpose, a seva for life, a sadhana for the universe, a volunteering action to contribute to better waste management worldwide, and especially in what I was familiar with: the islands of the south.

Many years later I feel I understand what had just happened there: I had done my part in hanging on to the cleansing process, hard, painful, terrifying, to leave my preconceived ideas behind, my White middle-class education, and my colonial and post-colonial influences. To jump into the unknown dimension of a spiritual life, where unconditional love, intemporality, awareness, collaboration, cooperation, contribution, equanimity and so much more, were now part of my life.

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I would realize later on, three years later, that this had maybe saved my life. Sitting on a surgeon’s table at AIMS (Amma’s hospital) in Kochi fearing a gall bladder cancer I was trying to make sense of the analogy between these three years of healing in India, with the life I had lead in London. It would probably have got the better of me if I had stayed there instead of following the call of Amma. One old lady there once told me: “I have never seen anyone pulled by the ear like Amma did with you, son! She saved you” and this old woman did not know anything about the gallbladder precancer I was threatened with. At the end of five months of volunteering in various activities related to waste management, I was offered an opportunity to participate in university activities to develop social innovation projects along with teaching activities. In May 2011, all was set to start my next year’s mission in Amritapuri, ashram and University: working in the incubator of social innovation (SI) and social entrepreneurship (SE) projects with Krishnashree Achutan and starting my PhD with Amal, a professor from ASB Bangalore.

I came back at the end 2011 after a few months home and travelling, back to Kerala, back to Amritapuri, ashram and university. I was coming to stay, to settle down... But with two surfboards, loads of bags, not at all detached, a typical Westerner still obsessed with his consumerist culture.

That “trait de pensée” described earlier in Jullien here is still there through a necessity of being surrounded by my tools, my way of thinking, of having fun… not yet embracing the local habits and accepting them as my full life.

3.2 Fostering engagement from within the university

I started to teach at Amrita University in the Bachelor of Arts (BA) Social Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship program. I had some experience in the field that I used to make it lively and interactive. I started to teach by the book a class of 80 to 120 BA students, girls on the left side, boys on the right side, almost like in a bus in Kerala, all very conservative. I was observing the different interactions, between the group, individual personalities and ingrained cultural and religious precepts. And step by step I was discussing ways of evolving to a more interactive and participative class. What about building together Social Innovation projects that could help in the

116 ashram, or even back in their own communities? What were the topics and societal difficulties that touched them, that they would like to work on, to find solutions for?

So we started to learn about social innovation with projects dealing with saving water, and making energy from renewable sources. They asked me if they could relate these questions to their own homes and villages. SSR was born: Student Social Responsibility. Each student on the BA course, and particularly those on the engineering program, had a project to deliver over several years, and we suggested that the projects should be conducted in the framework of SSR, to serve local communities, and even the students’ own families. A presentation of the slides and ideas was welcomed by a delighted smile from Amma at the end of the student year. But the phase of application and implementation looked to be a tough challenge. At about the same time, a student movement called Amala Bharatam (Amala means clean, pure and Bharatam India) had been created by a volunteering students’ initiative to clean public and spiritual places for India’s Independence Day in September 2010, and this was shortly followed by a pledge from Amma as the spiritual leader of the whole organization for respecting nature and cleaning. The Amala Bharatam Campaign (ABC) was launched across the whole Kerala region one month later.

I was assisting the movement and observed the rising motivation shortly after I arrived. The structure was growing organically, almost magically, gently guided by Amma. The social innovation consisted of the simplicity of the process and its implementation. Each 4th Sunday of the month, a cleaning initiative was carried out with following basic principles: installing bins on the streets and roads, installing toilets in public places, enforcing the use of handkerchiefs and banning spitting. Later very basic technology was introduced, such as simple mechanical processes improving very efficiently the flow of waste to be recycled or composted to a Community Based Waste Management center including most of the treatment aspects needed: recycling, composting, water treatment and wet garden, incineration, shredding and compacting. All these simple steps were a great surprise to me. It was the first time I had witnessed basic technology and social innovation in action, at grassroots level, pushed by young students. What is more, I was teaching some of the students the same topics of social innovation and basic technology.

Many of my friends from the ashram had participated in a huge cleaning campaign of an important temple at Sabarimala in November 2011 (Akilesh, Figure 9, being one of the strong men of the ABC center to lead the cleaning campaign). I was amazed that such a cleaning campaign 117 had started informally from a students’ initiative and spread so fast. And after one year it did not seem to be losing any momentum. I met some of the students that initiated the project a few days before the birthday of Amma. I was surprised by their passion and strong enthusiasm, an expression of faith and pride in their land. Most of them were Keralite and proud of ‘God’s own country” (the slogan of Kerala). Certainly, Kerala is one of the most beautiful regions I have visited in India.

Figure 9 – Waste separation at University level (with my friend Akilesh, the Olympic “Waste” Champion), and separated collection

This was what was happening in front of my eyes: a cleaning initiative following basic principles (installing bins on the streets and roads, installing toilets in public places, enforcing the use of handkerchiefs and banning spitting). Waste separation at source, bins and proper separated collection like in Figure 9 has proven very efficient waste management processes in every Amrita university campuses I visited. I was witnessing all this, surprised and just learning by watching, speaking to people and continuing my seva, letting all these images and pragmatic solutions grow inside me, connecting up with the theoretical concepts I knew all too well! The project evolved into a study of existing systems for recycling and composting (implementation) in Kerala and developing sustainable models for waste recycling that were the replicable and scalable. What I was witnessing matched up with what I was teaching, but it would be dishonest to claim any authorship or paternity. There was a feeling of wonder. Wow, something was happening there that was going far beyond my expectation, control, and reach. 118

After Amma’s birthday, where I saw the Prime Minister pay his respects to Amma, before being elected, in a new visit of Modi to Amma, Amala Bharatan was described to the Prime Minister. He decided to launch afterwards the general cleaning campaign called the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM).

I do not have anything but an intuition that Amala Bharatam and Amma have been a pivotal influence to that nationwide campaign. Indeed, the Government of India beginning of April 2000, put in place a Comprehensive Rural Sanitation Program and launched the Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) which was later (in April 2012) renamed “Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan” by then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (SBA) or Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) is a nation-wide campaign in India that has been in place since 2014 and that aims to clean up the streets, roads and infrastructure of India's cities, and rural areas. The campaign's name means “Clean India Mission”. Swachh Bharat among others has the objective of eliminating open defecation which with the construction of household-owned and community-owned toilets as well as accountable mechanisms monitoring the use of such facilities should help the implementation of this measure. The mission aims to achieve an “open-defecation free” (ODF) India by October 2019 which coincides to the 150th anniversary of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi. This implies the construction of 90 million toilets in rural India (projected cost of US$30 billion). This should help India comply with Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG 6), in the 2015 UN program.9

The campaign was officially launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in October 2014 at Rajghat, New Delhi. It is India's largest cleanliness drive to date with three million government employees and students from all parts of India participating in 4,043 cities, and rural areas. Modi

9 https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/?menu=1300

119 has called the campaign Satyagrah se Swachhagrahin in a reference to Gandhi's Champaran Satyagraha launched on 10 April 1917.

The mission has two thrusts: Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (“gramin” or “rural”), which operates under the supervision of the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation; and Swachh Bharat Abhiyan ('urban'), which operates under the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs.

As part of the campaign, volunteers, known as Swachhagrahis, or “Ambassadors of cleanliness”, have promoted indoor plumbing and community approaches to sanitation (CAS) at the village level. Other non-governmental activities include national real-time monitoring and updates from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as The Ugly Indian, Waste Warriors, and SWaCH Pune (Solid Waste Collection and Handling) that are striving to achieve the same aims as Swachh Bharat.

The government has constructed 86 million toilets since 2014, reducing the number of open defecations from 550 million to less than 150 million in 2018, yet many people continue not to use toilets. The campaign has been criticized for using coercive approaches (Pathak & Chakravarty, 2019).

In line with the desire expressed by Gandhi, “I want clean India first and independence later”, Modi’s program of cleaning the Ganges is definitely a very strong message sent to a country suffering so much from waste generation. The 10 biggest rivers in the world are responsible for most of the plastic that ends up in the oceans. If in India the Ganges in sacred and we can here sumise that Modi’s initiative has a spiritual inspiration, one can only hope that such initiatives will be fully implemented, and inspire other regions impacted by similar pollutions.

3.2.1 Getting involved

From witnessing the growth of a student cleaning movement – with initiatives taking place every month and going viral among the students’ communities and across various campuses – I started to get involved in the co-design of a Community Based Waste Management center (CBWM), see Figure 10. The design of the center originated first from devotees, i.e. Westerners actively involved in the recycling organization of the ashram. Villagers and students of the University were not included in the design process. 120

Figure 10 - Photograph of Amrita CBWM, Amrita Kerala India ABC EcoVillage Center; on 22.12.2012

It took a lot of discussion between the various worlds of the ashram, especially the ABC center, the recycling center of the ashram and the university side (focused more on providing university services rather than sanitation programs). I was here building bridges between the worlds I was myself involved in: the ashram and my devotee friends, most of them managing the ABC center of the ashram, dealing with all the waste generated in the ashram; my colleagues at the Social Innovation Incubator on the University side; and my University colleagues, most of them teachers and friends in charge of student programs (engineering programs in particular). Plenty of egos were involved, and the slightest discussion always became very heated, making it virtually impossible to reach common ground and thus take decisions. I was always daunted by those negotiations and felt frustrated that the common good of all could not form the basis of the co-design of solutions. We had all the capacities needed to find the right solutions: technically experienced people from Western countries specializing in composting and in recycling, and local people from the ashram used to dealing with the local recycling markets. But I came to realize that 121 putting broader solutions in place needed something else: the kind of motivation and purpose that had infused the student campaign and was maintaining it. In the three cases we chose from Peredo mentioned in Chapter 1 she describes the capacity for local people to be collectively entrepreneurial, to develop collaborative, cooperative schemes that will both serve local and individual entrepreneurship but more importantly collective processes that serve the whole community, the “commons”.

Admittedly, a general cleaning campaign is not the same thing, as these cooperatives, nor as sanitation solutions that are being set up in a long-term perspective.

In September 2012, 34 students’ projects were presented to Amma. The pilot project CBWM being developed at Amritapuri, Kollam was an integrated waste management system (embedded in an Eco Village) that could deal with the waste generated from 1000 to 5000 people, roughly the population of a medium to large village or small town. Here waste is collected at all levels of the ashram and university (3000 to 5000 people on the ashram side, 4000 to 5000 people on the university side, visitors up to 15,000 people a day on the ashram side), segregated and treated in sheds dedicated to recycling, composting and reuse (Details of the flows and waste management functions involved in Fig.9). From 1 to 2 tons of waste per day collected, some segregated at source, but not door-to-door, some wet, some biodegradable. Up to 60% of the waste is recycled and treated; the rest is burned in an incinerator. Previously (just a few years ago) most of that waste was thrown into the backwaters, or completely burned, something I had witnessed, in my first year at ashram and that was infuriating me, when I started to need to get involved, to find solutions for that specific plague of waste. In terms of resources and sustainability, the system was relying mostly on volunteers, mostly western ‘sevites’, i.e. ashram visitors engaged in selfless service.

Now I had a problem to solve for my PhD:

How to create better systems and value creation models to move beyond the “volunteer power driving” aspects of this system into a fully embedded economically viable solution for poor and smaller scale communities?

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Particularly, rural or ideally peri-urban, small scale solutions for small to middle size cities.

At the time I was sharing my ashram room with Peter Ash, one of the experts in the ashram on composting and land recovery. He had achieved miracles reclaiming heavily polluted land near the hospital of Kochi, AIMS, one of Amma’s most advanced hospitals. He was rightly respected and recognized as legitimate in his mission of land recovery. But once again I saw how much ego was involved. Each meeting was difficult, and decisions were very hard to take to achieve the replication and scaling up of composting and recycling solutions. I remember sitting in my room just next to the AIMS Hospital, wanting to give it all up after yet another meeting of ego inflation, where Peter was being filmed and wanted things be done only his way.

As far as I can tell, Peter had all the best intentions at heart, and a long track record of amazing selfless service and projects serving Amma’s important nature preservation visions, but I could not help but feel an element here of an example of global North foreigners with big ego's coming to the South. And I had a feeling that in that video and in the self-image presented, what was actually best for the community could become less important than doing things for ego/status purposes. And I was myself feeling just as much caught up in the same tendencies, or “plis de pensées”.

Waste management was still very dirty, inside and outside. In our example the waste management integrated system was part of an Eco-Village where recycling and composting become the center, the core of a larger purpose. All possible green practices are included: from local collection, local employment and empowerment, local fabrication and usage of manure, compost, organic community farming, and restoration of dignity to cleanliness, and the direct and indirect creation of value/jobs. This example showed how, starting out from a cleaning campaign initiated by students at University level, recycling systems have improved at both ashram and University level, on both the students and community sides, raising awareness, competences and the use of integrated systems. It is one of the core factors of its success: having good results (percentage of waste treated as opposed to burned or dumped, level of cleanliness of the premises) in dealing with waste with the ashram community and spreading the good practices across the many campuses of Amritapuri.

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This phase at the ashram became pivotal in a very unexpected and strange manner: learning from every moment at the ashram and my life as a spiritual seeker and being a university teacher, proud of my work, but at the same time not completely aware of the amazing work being done in me by Amma, healing, cleansing me, and getting me to where I needed to be: serving the community instead of trying to be in control. These were core elements of what would soon become my passion for community empowerment projects.

But I was also left facing an enigma: where was this energy, good will and organization coming from?

3.2.2 Volunteering

Figure 11 - Volunteering at Amrita University

As described earlier, my involvement in this project started as a volunteer (examples in Figure 11). From a strong interest in environmental topics, such as renewable energy, my experience with recycling, then composting combined with management and humanitarian background grew a willingness to participate to grow solutions, replication, and the scaling of such social innovations, from basic technologies. The core factors that determined the growth of the collaborative process were diverse: the legitimacy of developing waste management solutions from the ashram came from a strong will, message and guidance from Amma (the master’s message aimed to free Western people in India from any Postcolonial diversions or colonial postures); the infrastructures of a well-developed community of almost 3000 people living 124 regularly in the ashram to which the University of 4000 students and all technical capacities was adding to the capacities to do something about waste; and lastly the volunteering process stemming from the spiritual side of the community where I was living.

Volunteering was and still is the main fuel sustaining activity in the ashram of Amma and all its activities (humanitarian, academic, spiritual). To translate this motivation and volunteering experience into academic research with a very empirical approach opened up a new perspective for me: to continue the implementation of a project in waste management with a strong focus on social innovation and value creation, and on factors influencing collaboration. The “How to do it” from Huizingh (2011), based on an empirical approach with grassroots case studies, brought a new perspective on the paradoxes that open-source, collaborative and shared innovation raise in SME or even large corporates (Castro Gonçalves et al., 2018 ; Corbel & Simoni, 2012). The implementation of a Community Based Waste Management Center (CBWM) in a spiritual community, replicated in its university, in the very poor area it is embedded in, in south western India was for me the objective of my PhD, and its purpose.

The problem of waste management in India was staring me in the face wherever I went, whether at the ashram in Amritapuri, in the nearby village or travelling in India: a plague aggravated by new consumerism habits; a pragmatic collaborative model centring on sustainability via a culture of volunteering; and strong elements of success with spiritual practices enforcing cleanliness and basic technology as a local survival mechanism. But I was starting my journey, and full of doubts. Would I have enough expertise to bring anything to the communities I was engaging with? Would I be a liar and a charlatan, raising hopes and enthusiasm for community engagement, building capacity for sanitation when I myself had not tested completely any of those solutions? I was still a Western-minded person with big dreams of changing the world. But after two years in the ashram of Amma and working at the University I was starting to realize, and to sense, that the objective was not to find the best technical solution, but that there was something deeper, more subtle to learn. Things were surprising me and making me wonder. I needed to understand better, and study further.

How could I hope for a better case for thinking about such questions? I was assisting social innovation projects using collaborative innovation in a social context aiming at social impacts that correspond to the needs of those in the different community layers and networks involved: the 125 ashram volunteers, imagining, developing solutions to deal with waste, with the 5 Rs (Rethink/Redesign, Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle), with land cleaning and rehabilitation of heavily polluted land parcels (composting methods); and the academic body thinking up innovative solutions including student involvement to foster students’ social skills and their creative and pragmatic innovation solutions.

In six months straddling 2012 and 2013, no less than 34 projects were created at Amrita School of Engineering level in the areas of renewable energies and sustainability (see Table 7). They ranged from solar panels on the ashram side to the Amala Bharatam Campaign (ABC) and the CBWM center, Biogas technological and community-oriented solutions, Eco building, and solutions for dirty plastics.

Table 7 next page

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Table 7 - 34 SSR projects developed and showed to Amma in 2013

Category N° Project short description Details Building an electric or manual barge transporting/transfering anything up to a small car from ashram Electric/manual barge Valekau bridge: 1 side to Valekau side: built along bridge (with a pole traction…) using flux an d reflux back waters to ELECTRICAL/ alternative to boat transfers produce electricity with a specific turbine. ELECTRONICS 2 Solar panels Ashram side Installing new solar panels Ashram and Campus side to reach 50% NRJ usage. (4) 3 Windmills Ashram side Installing windmills meditation beach side for ABC and Compost centers. 4 Electricity from wastewater Generating electricity from wastewater, ashram side. 5 Robust / light bicycle for waste pickup Robust and light bicycle with trailer to pick up waste in rural areas Machinery: Machines for ABC and list and analyse needs for composting and recycling: process and or machines to improve current 6 MECHANICAL compost efficiency and flow of material

(5) 7 Plastic compressor: simple and cheap Plastic compressor: simple and cheap compressing different kinds of plastics 8 Shreder for compost Shreder for compost: cheap and efficient solution, replicable 9 Sorting machine for ABC and compost Sorting machine for ABC and compost: cheap and efficient solution, replicable 10 BioGas for private houses (espc poor villages): best technical solution, cheapest and easiest to implement Waste management PILOT for BoP 11 off grid solutions to make recycling, composting centers self sustained: energy, water… Communties

12 AB units for rainwater harvesting Find easy snd cheap solutions to collect and redistribute rainwater BioGas plant for new kitchen in Study oppurtunity of best renewable energy for new kitchen in ashram (solar cooker, bio gas what is 13 ashram the best solution??)

BioGas plant Amritapuri campus side Study opportunity of best renewable energy for all kitchens in Amrita campus (solar cooker, bio gas 14 to reactivate what is the best solution??) Study opportunity of best renewable energy for all kitchens in Ayurveda campus (solar cooker, bio 15 BioGas plant for ayurveda college RENEWABLE gas what is the best solution??) ENERGY No water toilets for ashram (AB units 16 Best technical solutions for clean and non- wet toilets in priority) (12) 17 Cellulose waste into Fuel Study solution to transform some cellulose waste into fuel 18 Planters using styrofoam waste Using styrofoam waste for each garden of Amritapuri, AIMS (composting garden), Tulasi garden. 19 Using banana fiber to make paper Using banana fiber to make paper

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20 Plastic to oil solutions Plastic to oil solutions Soft plastic solutions: compressing, 21 Best technical solutions to dispose of soft plastic either by selling or compacting etc… melting…? Waste management PILOT for BoP Process management: from big scale efficient processes to small scale piloting, for 1000 to 5000 22 Communties: process management people, especially in rural and remote areas. Waste management PILOT for BoP All in renewable construction materials, recuperation will be piloted ashram and university side for 23 Communties: building aspects: recycling and compost centers as well as community gardens. 24 Data Base for optimised water syst Collecting data for optimized water mgt in different aspects of ashram and university lives. 25 Knowledge transfer: community crafts Plastic bags made by communities, fabrication processes to make simple and cheap. EM and other organic solutions to clean plastic with a waste market study on soft plastic market in 26 Cleaning solutions for Dirty Plastic India, where, list of prices… Better organic waste processing/ 27 Better organic waste processing/ compost improved system. compost improved system INDUSTRIALIS Plastic bins to make out of recycled ATION / 28 find a system to use curent recycled soft plastic and transform it into items especially bins. plastic in ashram MANAGEMENT Study best and cheapest industrial solution to start to produce Amritapuri's own plastic out of 29 Recycled plastic production unit PROCESS recycled plastic. Reusing recycled plastic into local craft (13) 30 Reusing plastic projects: fabric of local crafting, using bottles for walls… through self helped groups 1 Distribution center for recycled craft 31 1 Distribution center: reusing things at campus level. products University or ashram paper recycling Study best and cheapest industrial solution to start to produce Amritapuri's own paper out of recycled 32 Unit paper. Build a network of local community Set Communication and training system for communities: 1 Cleaning representative every 2 kms: 33 people representing cleanliness: 1 how to train them, keep them informed, easy simple way: 1 presentation table ashram side for visitor trainning table to be trained in latest wste management technologies and take them beack to their communities. build a network of local community Set Communication and training system for communities: 1 Cleaning representative every 2 kms: 34 people representing cleanliness: 1 how to train them, them informed, easy simple way: 1 communication system to keep people communication system informed trained and motivated.

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The involvement of the younger generation in technological solutions (renewable technologies in this case study) in an effort to treat waste in an inclusive, environmentally friendly sustainable manner, was a key condition for cross-generational collaboration. The younger generation conceived the idea of a project and implemented it, an older generation (parents) was empowered to replicate and scale up where needed, and the oldest generations (grandparents) benefitted from the social innovations and advocated to others (from the sanitation hygiene project to mobility).

A major impact was observed on various networks and in communities: in monasteries and university campuses, on students and spiritual seekers, on public minds (seeing students and foreign volunteers cleaning places around India), inspiring every layer of society, from public figures (politicians and media stars) to ordinary people, establishing best practices, and education about recycling and composting. My impression was that the whole consciousness of society shifted to create new paradigms, new ways of living together, and new consumerism habits, especially for Below the Poverty Line (BTL) communities. Firstly, adapting to a rapidly changing, more individualistic, consumerist and capitalistic society, as well as changing it, inspired by strong roots in volunteering, spiritual purpose and technical creativity. There is a growing awareness of the need to get back to more selfless service to communities, and to environmental and spiritual concerns. Core technologies were implemented and replicated: waste picking (hand-picking, machinery to improve collection and picking favoring human work), waste sorting (tables for waste classification, and machinery to sort waste more efficiently and more safely), composting (key elements: sawdust composting, composting with earthworms, vermi-compost, for small scale operations, thermophilic composting for larger scale operations, used at the ashram, AIMS, the University hospital, the most modern and efficient of south India, and other campuses, organic farming using the results of composting).

The loop of research was a virtuous circle: a volunteering, participatory project transformed into an academic research exercise serving a social purpose with innovative processes that could be modeled for possible replication or scaling up. The core of collaborative innovation lay in understanding the drivers of collaboration and innovation in the local context of a spiritual community, an embedded university on a large scale, with very strong cultural elements (spirituality, volunteering, technology and Jugaad, scale of the BoP group, BTL).

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In the pilot of the CBWM center designed by Jaganad - an American architect and devotee of Amma who worked at the ABC center of the ashram in 2012-2013 – we can see (see photograph p xxx) the layout of of the visual flow of process of material, i.e. waste, in a treatment center that can serve a community of around 5000 people. The flow is very important in this case, ensuring that the vast majority of waste produced in the community is treated in the most efficient, flexible and simple manner, and at the lowest possible cost.

However, to my surprise when I started to speak about replication and scaling up to commercial level, Jaganad and others from the ashram started to “freeze” and to resist any further collaboration. All the work I was doing and intending to do was not meant for one-offs but instead for scaling up to address the largest possible quantities of waste and as many communities as possible. I felt really shocked by this reaction from an architect who himself came from a very commercial background, who I thought would understand the purpose of making it commercial, and of creating value that could be redistributed.

That was the first time I really grasped the complexity of mixing volunteering with fiduciary valuation. These were elements that I would add in the model of the wheel of community empowerment later on. Here basic technologies in the treatment of waste with simple machineries for shredding and compacting, as well as sorting were associated with water filtration: a wet garden in the middle of the shed recuperating all the water falling on the roof, and filtering it in the wet garden, preventing it from going further towards the back waters, as well as saving it in tanks to use it to clean some parts. We all brought some of our visions but here again the sum of all egos did not lead to a pragmatic decision for implementation.

I do not believe such a CBWM center has ever been implemented outside of the ashram, though I do believe it had all the potential for replication and scaling-up.

3.2.3 Evaluating achievements

Evaluation is a delicate matter. It can be conducted from many perspectives, and with very different sets of values. Initially I was inclined to evaluate the experience with my Western project manager mindset. However, I then realized that I had to take into account what the project did and showed to the community, and what I had learned in the process.

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First of all, the ashram reached a level of 60% of recycled waste over the time frame of four years (the time of my India journey), with a growing level of reuse internally and locally (mostly as compost), and 36% burned in a local incinerator. These are impressive figures. The ABC campaign initiated by students was a success, with 34 renewable waste management projects. In other words, a high degree of success was achieved in terms of concrete implementation, speed and efficiency of waste treatment (through the creation of a pragmatic solution dealing with the original problem). Although I was involved in these projects at various levels - volunteering, teaching and/or developing social innovative projects - these specific activities were primarily designed, implemented and promoted by Sevites, devotees of Amma, most of them from the ashram, and some of them from the University.

Results were not exceptional however in terms of creating fiduciary value. Initially I was satisfied with what was achieved in terms of project management. First, I had managed to collaborate with other key persons in the spiritual community, some with very different backgrounds. In addition, we were gaining know-how that could be used for replication and broadening of such sanitary experiences. Especially I was starting to modelize local pragmatic social innovation solutions, like the co-design of the CBWM, for direct management of waste (simple use of machines for sorting, shredding, compacting), for reclaiming polluted land (simple filtration through permaculture technics and composting), and for finding markets for recycled products (compost, aluminum, plastics, paper…) in local or at least regional markets. What I really wanted to achieve was the widest range of replication and scaling up possibilities. I wanted affordable and easily replicable solutions, based on simple processes that are easier to scale up. That is why the pilot project of waste separation at source on the university side, CBWM with some elements of replication of the one on the ashram side, with differentiated collection and treatment, was co-designed with the use of combined basic technologies: light and strong handcarts, easy to push to get to the collection and treatment center, a few roofs and treatment centers, serving the flow of incoming waste: dry items recycling, wet organic items composting, incinerator for dangerous non-recyclable items (sanitary mostly) and a water treatment center. Technologies were combined to serve various goals: sanitation, sustainable and decentralized solutions, capable of coping with a center for 4,000 to 10,000 people.

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In terms of impact however, the most important aspect was probably raising awareness of the importance of waste management locally. Waste management came to be seen as linked to a way of saving on community budgets for waste collection and treatment, and for sanitation. Involving a broader range of students in collaboration in innovative solutions to tackle the plague of waste not only changed the situation at their university, but also meant that many of the students would convey and spread information about this experience and achievement to their own home communities. I hope that this raising of awareness can create a willingness to act, a consciousness of the need to participate, and trigger an awareness-raising effort to influence the students’ own families, peers and friends.

And yet clearly, I already had the feeling that something deeper and more fundamental had been gained by this experience. Beyond immediate waste handling, and a gain in know-how, and replication and scaling-up possibilities, other lessons were learned, on a very different level, and I would now like to present some of them.

3.2.4 Learning collaboratively, participatively

With hindsight, when later I was wondering what I had learnt from the experience, the realization came as a shock: all this was so far from my perception of waste management in Europe and in any developed country I had visited. In many aspects, all this was very far from any model we are used to in the global North. Here it was not a small team of specialized Western spiritual seekers moved by a purpose given by Amma that had achieved success. Achievements were brought about by a whole community taking charge of its waste management. The groups involved in the process of waste management were very diverse: from the volunteering group managing the waste on the ashram side to the university side with officials and an academic body for technical solutions (i.e. engineering solutions for carts, machinery for compacting, shredding, tables for recycling…) to students themselves as volunteers and or technical/service developers and innovators. The SSR had developed a collaborative model integrating a further level of contribution to society, and economics. There was no one manager, designer, or technical engineer in charge of planning, organizing and coordinating. Still thinking with my usual mindset, I tried to pinpoint the elements of collective impact, as mapped on the list of Hanleybrown et al. (2012). We could cite: a common agenda (implementing a sustainable waste management system for the 132 university and the local community), shared measurement, mutually reinforcing activities, continuous communication, and backbone support. This was not the work of an expert, an academic, a facilitator, but came from multiple projects and multiple sources. More than the work of a person heading or guiding the project, the community seemed to have become aware of the seriousness and importance of the situation, then set itself in motion and acted. A collective group, a community agency. Yet, the whole engagement and how it unfolded remained a mystery to me. How did this happen with such synchronicity to grow ultimately into a national cleaning campaign movement?

All this for sure played a role, but it appeared an inadequate explanation to even start to encompass what had happened there. A first lesson concerned my research, and especially, how to learn about waste management from such community-based experiences.

On one hand, the limits of action research - even participatory - for my project seemed clear to me. It was in that spirit that I had imagined it. But this required controlling a large part of the project, being at least the initiator of most developments, even if they could be carried out by others. But here, what seemed most interesting was what I was missing. These were ways of doing things and succeeding that were not my own. It was to venture outside, or at least away from, the northern model of waste management, both in terms of project management methods and waste concepts, in the relationships between stakeholders, in the links with other dimensions of the community. And I felt uncomfortable with the idea of configuring my intervention within constraints that the method could impose. My first goal was to make the project a success, for the community members and for the planet, and to learn by doing so, not to conduct a research project, which may prove useful to the community. On the other hand, I didn't just want to investigate an exemplary project that I had been told about. It was a matter of learning by doing, contributing, and making myself useful. Seeing the waste, seeing the problems, made it imperative for me to act. I was convinced, which was more than confirmed by experience, that it was by dealing with, and by living situations, that I would be able to understand what still appeared to be mysteries, enigmas, shocks and surprises. That I would be able to hybridize.

Thus, I decided that my aim would not be to test or observe some predetermined results. It would not be to plan, implement, and look for correspondences between expectations ad outcomes. My aim was to search with the community for solutions and knowledge that would be valuable for 133 the community’s needs and expectations, with the strong conviction that such knowledge would also be academically valuable (see Anadón, 2013, for a discussion of this issue). My aim would not be just to describe, but to contribute to changes at personal and community levels. And potentially beyond (Maguire, 1987).

I tried to remain as open and receptive to any events or ideas as possible. My roles and positions would probably need to be reinvented depending on the project, and indeed in the course of one single project (see Chambers, 1996). My endeavor was to contribute, not to ‘use’ the participants. My decision was to go and experiment with the project, trying hard with community members to find the best solutions to the plague of waste. To reach together an environmentally efficient and sustainable/autonomous stage of organization that they would appreciate and that would remain in place after my departure. So, my aim was to describe what I would experience, giving a voice to unheard people, bearing witness to what happened without trying to speak for them.

It took me six months (over a period of two years) to try to unlearn many of my Northern mindsets, and learn local ways of doing, thinking, and relating.

I was contributing to the community by working and learning with local people with the opportunity to discuss with all layers of the community, hearing their stories, concerns, and objectives. This was taking place at the ashram site, with devotees, at the spiritual level and at the local community level, about sanitary necessities, waste management solutions and later on social innovative projects and renewable energy. At the university level both academic and project oriented/education participation objectives would be related to students’ local communities.

I did not become a native, but after those six months of building projects together, I had the feeling that I had acquired something that was worth relating to academia.

3.2.5 Learning to territorialize

Similarly, we are used to thinking in terms of ideal, abstract models, that we then try to implement and adapt to local situations. That’s what I for example started, when teaching at the university, and requiring from the students that they develop projects to concretize and apply what we saw in class. The problem with this is that situations and waste are not abstract, and solutions 134 are often born from specificities of the case and affordances from the situation. That does not mean that we should look for “pure Indian” solutions. “Pure India” is an idea that is gradually dying out. But waste management has to be thought about from “within the territory”.

In this case, project and pilot implementation started as a volunteering experience in a spiritual community in south India, in Kerala, in the village of Amritapuri, with an estimated population of 15,000 people (7000 from the ashram and the university nearby). What was possible there might probably work in many other places. Selfless service (Seva) is embedded in the Indian culture as a spiritual practice, a spirit of collaboration that has evolved in fact in non-religious spheres. Hence volunteering is a very common practice, creating participation, collaboration in both areas I was involved in: the spiritual sector (the ashram, monastery) and the university created by the spiritual master heading this community: Amma. Seva, rather than technology, had clearly to be at the core of the organization.

The very notion of waste also had to be territorialized. Waste, in India, has a very specific image: something fallen to the ground cannot be picked up, except by the untouchables. It is easy to grasp the very difficult task, with such an image, of raising consciousness about or improving waste management practices such as waste separation at source, recycling at household level, reutilization of discarded products, and in general reduction of waste. As in the North, waste is associated with impurity, but this leads to different social behaviors and consequences.

Waste generation is aggravated by new consumerism practices in India. The BoP (Bottom of the Pyramid) population had been targeted over recent decades by the big corporates’ marketing strategies (Unilever, L’Oréal, etc.). This results in individual packages, inducing very poor people to buy in very small quantities. The direct impact of this approach was a lot more waste, which is very hard to recycle (mix of plastic and aluminum). One striking example: polystyrene boxes for lunch replacing banana leaves, that people would dispose of immediately after use as they had always done. Whereas before, throwing banana leaves or wooden plates was only creating compost, or fast decomposing organic material at worst, the new boxes are contributing to the non- biodegradable plague.

Most of the time I was crossing the backwaters between the ashram and I was appalled by the level of waste on the shore, in the water that the villagers were fishing from. Despite the work

135 and the improvements made by the incredibly hard-working team of ABC (Amala Bharatam Composting) in the ashram, and their dedication and competences, the overall task seemed overwhelming. Everywhere, plastic mounted up, with small packages in every corner, people throwing away their lunch packs out of the train windows, and students regularly leaving trash around their rooms, without the help of their mother to clean up!

But on the other hand, some local specificities were very instrumental. The ability to cope, to do many things with the few means available. I would refer to it as a passion for technology. The passion of local people for Do It Yourself (DIY) and of student ‘tech geeks’. They combine green technologies with an increasing eagerness to make a contribution to the community. The DIY culture leads to inventions of new machines, innovative processes, simplifications, which are hugely useful for local community empowerment and replication to other places. This is partially symbolized by a local specificity: Jugaad. “The term refers to the widespread practice in rural India of jury-rigging and customizing vehicles using only available resources and know-how” (Birtchnell, 2011). Basically, it is the capacity of local people to adjust to little or no fiduciary resources and investments with very creative, technological solutions, by building mechanical construction projects. The combination of local students very eager to contribute to their communities (knowing and defining the needs, capable of choosing innovative solutions and piloting and implementing them), their own families, local communities, the urge of a spiritual purpose, volunteerism as a huge sustainable collaboration resource, together with the academic capacity to embed this into student projects led to the concept of Students Social Responsibility (SSR), where students are set university assignments to implement pragmatic solutions tackling unaddressed societal challenges within their own communities.

It is not a matter of adapting solutions to suit local realities. Solutions had to be invented in the middle of such a situation. And they have to fit in with the values and desires of the population. And they have to raise awareness amongst all the relevant partners, who must be willing to contribute.

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3.2.6 Beyond capabilities

Amartya Sen is an excellent example of gap thinking. The gap theory of Jullien (2012) introduced in chapter 1 presented the principles of this approach, based on hindsight and a change of perspective. Born in India, it was on Indian soil that Amartya Sen first thought about development issues and social choices. Gap thinking’s emphasis on capabilities reverses our traditional way of thinking about development. There is no 'level of development' on a single line with which we can classify economies. The purpose of development is to produce well-being. Well-being is not measured in terms of production or consumption, but in the ability to access essential resources, including health and education. Thinking in terms of capability is not about asking what I have or what is valuable to us that they do not have and that I can bring to them. It requires thinking in the host context, being aware of some of the limitations felt by local people and finding ways to make them more able to overcome those limitations, to access new resources that can increase well-being.

Thus Amartya Sen’s capability approach rests on two essential premises: first, that the freedom to achieve well-being is of primary moral importance, and second, that freedom to achieve well-being should be understood in terms of people's capabilities, that is, through providing real opportunities for people to do and be what they have reason to value. It is about enabling local people to know what will increase their well-being, how to achieve it, and providing them with a sense of responsibility to address their needs by using and growing their own capabilities to create opportunities with what is around them. We clearly see here the ‘écart’ – the gap – with the way that development aid is normally understood in the global North, where someone with a superior answer imposes their solution everywhere.

Wanting to increase capacity was an ever-present desire during my four years in India. Here, each devotee and sevite, at his or her own humble level, aims to improve their own capacities. Both as a teacher and a member of a spiritual community, my activity was nearly always about increasing capacities. The notion of people being capable of improving and learning was key to all the projects I have been involved in, both in India and ever since I first became dedicated to the field of sanitation in very poor communities. This did not come about without some anxiety: was I mistaken to think I could bring solutions to poor communities around sanitation, to enhance capacities in this field? Was I myself capable of learning enough to understand their context, to 137 adjust and implement co-designed solutions? Did I have the ability to bring solutions that would improve their living conditions?

Amartya Sen’s approach is about linking the capabilities of people to their needs wherever they find themselves, as opposed to a Northern capitalist vision in which access to capability and infrastructure is determined by income and wealth. Here, well-being is defined by what people are able to do and to be, and thus the kind of life they are effectively able to lead. In some very poor countries (by GDP standards) a reasonable level of infrastructure allows many people to access the medical care, education and basic services that are necessary for well-being; this being the case for example in Cuba. By contrast, in capitalist countries where access to infrastructure is based on individual wealth – the USA for example – access to healthcare is determined by the ability to pay for very expensive health insurance. Capability is something that is felt individually but that needs to be harnessed collectively in order for social action to succeed.

The project increased the use of basic technologies like separating waste at source and separating organic from inorganic waste in households. This included, for example, using all organic waste either as food for domestic animals, which was already the case in rural areas, and/or for composting. Here, the project was only reviving ancient Indian knowledge and well-established practices (something called Jugaad), such as wet gardens to filter water or even biogas use at household levels. What emerged was a collective capability to recycle, be it plastic (by compacting it with local and decentralized solutions: simple compactors and links to local markets), paper or cardboard.

One of the great appeals of capability thinking is its ability to move the question from what people have to what people have access to, what they have the ability to have or do. Thinking in terms of capabilities is more concerned with potential than reality. But what I witnessed here seemed to raise in me a question that would make my head spin. Indeed, the project had succeeded in giving the population the capacity to have a healthier environment, compost resources, etc. And this question would have two levels:

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1. What the project showed above all is that if everyone gets involved, rolls up their sleeves and engages in a collective project, then the whole community increases its global capacity. Of course, a state of capability can be assessed at any time, and projects such as those described above can increase the capability of individuals. Yet, what is key here is the potential that a community can bring to light together. The question is therefore less about measuring a state of capability at a given time, such as a static measure that seems difficult to change, but about how, if many people are mobilized, the level and scale of capability can be significantly altered.

2. The concept of capability seems to me to be focused at an individual level. It refers to what individuals have access to. But in the project, the actor is less the individual than the collective. What this case shows is what a community is capable of doing. It shows the capacity of a community, the transformation of a potential capacity into a reality.

For me, these two points, which are of course related, raise a central question. What could have given the community agency? What is it that leads to so many participants being involved? How and why does what was potentially possible, probably for a long time, become a reality at a given time? Of course, I would like to answer that it was my actions, my courses, the series of projects I had initiated. Or perhaps all the credit should be given to Amma. I could mobilize numerous theories of leadership. But it seems to me that all of these answers would be missing out on what the case can teach us. Why such a riddle?

What this case made me want to understand thus went beyond or ran parallel to the question of capabilities as I understood it with Sen (and of course Sen was asking himself very different questions to mine). But here I was maybe proposing a gap between my take on Sen’s capabilities theory and this thinker of the gap. The question concerned the commitment to a collective enterprise (waste management) and the agency of a community, which thus found within itself the capability to achieve extraordinary things, to convert what was once only a potential, into a reality.

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3.2.7 Lessons about engagement [or the enigma of engagement]

While, for most northern, developed countries waste and its management are considered dirty and impure, it is in a monastery, a sacred place, in the land of the untouchables, that we witnessed a striking commitment around waste. The achievement did not come from the deployment of an extraordinary technology, but from the commitment of everyone.

There is a riddle, a mystery here, something that made me think. And it is something I continued to investigate in the following cases in Bolivia and Brazil.

It was not the work of a designer, but multiple projects, multiple sources that build the conditions of a community engagement, building capacities that create the possibility of empowerment and of a self-sustained sanitary process. More than the work of a guiding person, it is the community that seemed to have moved and acted. A collective whole, an agency of the community.

I witnessed here – in the context of the ashram of Amritapuri – that elements of motivation along with external motivation factors and technical help can change mentalities and can thus improve sanitation in our example. The freedom to improve well-being in our case study in India has been enhanced by a strong will, a faith even, that goes beyond a capacity or capability. A faith that is to be seen at individual level between the devotee and his/her spiritual guide, as well as guidance at group level, through the sadhana, a way of living together, striving to achieve a higher level of conscience. One of the core elements observed enabling people to give and to participate was volunteering, by a spiritual aim, and by the teachings of Amma.

But was volunteering the key to such a success at Amma’s ashrams and University campuses levels? What were the factors necessary to realize human potential, to replicate such waste management solutions? From capabilities to potential to actions, what were the processes involved?

I believe that the capabilities described by Amartya Sen as a choice, a freedom to achieve well-being do not take into account the power of faith and positive peer-pressure, a “group change” capacity driven by a purpose, following the guidance of a Master. This is for me one of the main reasons that explains the growth and reach of the NGO ‘Embracing the World’ as well as the actions of a poor black illiterate woman considered as an untouchable in south of India, who now 140 speaks to and advises presidents and world leaders, and has inspired the Prime Minister of India to initiate key political and societal actions. Of course, spirituality and volunteering cannot be the source of all changes and increase in capability, but a key question is: how can we lead masses of people towards such changes, and get them to engage, not only to enhance their capacities, but also to instigate widespread large-scale changes?

This experience of waste management through the piloting of a CBWM center relied heavily on understanding and integrating local needs and factors . These local factors embracing local contexts, be they cultural or historical, has been described in Peredo’s CBE (Community Based Entrepreneurship) and are included in the 10 propositions of CBE.

On another level there is the social image of waste in India as something dirty and untouchable. A very similar perception of dirt is described deeply by Douglas, and referred to by Hird as going beyond our control (Hird, 2016). Why is this social concept imposed through ancient caste beliefs and social segregation - only those in the so-called untouchable caste are to work with waste, touching and handling it - still so strongly active when laws have banned it since 1949? What is this cultural ‘fold in thinking’, and caste system, imposing a habit of thinking that prevents people from seeing other, better possibilities?

This untouchable caste in India is called the Dalits. A lot of sanitation tasks still rely on them heavily, performed in degrading and hazardous conditions. Last year’s New Delhi metro tragedy, incidents where manual scavengers died while fixing and cleaning sewers and cleaning septic tanks in hotels shed a light on these working conditions and undignified traditions. Dalit women typically collect waste from private homes, while the men do the more physically demanding, and hazardous, maintenance of septic tanks and public sewers. These inhuman practices of forcing low-caste people communities to remove accumulated human waste from latrines is carried on despite legal prohibitions. Just like the cast system these traditions are so strongly rooted in the Indian culture that they have survived and even become stronger in some parts of India (Furedy et al., 1999), in spite of new sets of laws banning them.

“The manual carrying of human feces is not a form of employment, but an injustice akin to slavery”, says Ashif Shaikh, founder of Rashtriya Garima Abhiyan, a grassroots campaign to

141 end manual scavenging. “It is one of the most prominent forms of discrimination against Dalits, and it is central to the violation of their human rights.” (Bob, 2007 p. 170)

“People work as manual scavengers because their caste is expected to fulfill this role and are typically unable to get any other work” says Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch (HRW). “This practice is considered one of the worst surviving symbols of untouchability because it reinforces the social stigma that these castes are untouchable and perpetuates discrimination and social exclusion.”

HRW called on the administration of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to enforce existing legislation aimed at assisting manual scavengers to find alternative, sustainable livelihoods. “Successive Indian government attempts to end caste-based cleaning of excrement have been derailed by discrimination and local complicity,” adds Ganguly. “The government needs to get serious about putting laws banning manual scavenging into practice and assisting the affected caste communities.”

Another example: for many Indians, it is impossible to wear secondhand clothes, recycled items, like shoes, because of beliefs rooted in strong religious traditions. For example, that it is bad Karma to wear shoes that have been worn by someone else. Another fold in thinking that limits these people from seeing other possibilities, and in the case of waste management, limits recycling and repair possibilities (in the hierarchy of waste).

3.2.8 Volunteering engagement

Another core factor in this experience was the act of volunteering in the spiritual context, which attracted foreign volunteers, with high levels of technical competence in various dimensions of waste management.

The necessity of dealing with waste in an affordable, sustainable, inclusive and environmentally friendly manner adapted to local communities’ needs meant that it should take into account the local tendency to reject discarded items, very strong spiritual beliefs enforcing cleanliness, the impact of local DIY (‘Jugaad’) and a volunteering and very collaborative culture.

Volunteering as an element of spiritual practice was an important factor in motivating younger locals to overcome the stigma around waste in their own culture in order to participate, 142 and to strengthen willingness to give something back to their own communities. All these efforts were guided by Amma as a spiritual leader and her call for more respect of nature, of natural resources, a holistic consciousness called Karma Yoga in our context. It became central to bring external competences and forces together to implement and run such a project.

New consumerism habits with higher level of non-bio-degradable materials, higher levels of packaging, shorter life cycles of products have also been integrated in the discarding habits, especially in local isolated communities.

Our example of the CBWM (Community Based Waste Management) center showed the strong implication of western volunteers for the design, spiritual seekers often passing by and embracing the seva of recycling as a purpose for some time. Learning by doing, letting the learning take place on each side was as well a very important aspect. And finally, just letting that learning on both sides - the Westerners, volunteers visiting the ashram, the university for diverse period of times and the local community, of monks, faculty as well as local communities around those Amma centers, spiritual (ashram) and academic (university) and institutional (hospitals, housing centers etc.) - became the key. A key to a legitimacy of external people doing with, bringing their own experience and expertise but more importantly willingness to participate, find solutions and humbly accept as well to learn from the other side. A key to belonging to the communities by “doing things with them”.

Letting social impact unfold and being able to readjust the project with that flow, without blocking it by planned targets and KPIs. What this project showed us was the notion that a planned, measurable project did not exist per se in social innovation. The border of the project was undefined and very rooted in the local context. Its consequences were multiple, unexpected, and non-measurable. The contribution of each layer of stakeholders was made of each one’s capacity and implication. The project was not manageable. Each element is a contributor and the dynamics emerge at the intersections of collaborations, contributions and context. Yet the results have often been impressive, given that the means are very limited.

The co-creation process between very different stakeholders - foreigners, spiritual seekers, highly educated students, very poor local fishermen - in a chain of collaboration reflected a high level of engagement and community empowerment, geared around co-creation. Fostering a sense

143 of dignity, to clean, to transform waste, to work together beyond castes or class and even religion, towards a common societal goal.

3.2.9 Community engagement

This step in India has been pivotal to build the bridges described in previous sections. The engagement of the spiritual community was quite obvious, leading to principles based on awareness.

Apart from the spiritual side which is less present in the three field cases Peredo’s research is presenting, the element of community cohesion to achieve common goals, in a decentralized manner, managed by the community and for the community can probably be a good comparison to what we witnessed and participated in. Success of waste management is not about technology, as is claimed by some politicians in India. Not about huge investments, recycling plants, incinerators, disconnected from the communities. As experienced it during almost five years of volunteering in India and two years of research, it is about the capacities of people and households to separate waste at source, to act for recycling, composting, in their homes, locally.

What were the first motivating factors that initiated the move, broke the inertia? Did it come first at local levels, in the ashram, from the devotees, Westerners? Or the local Indian devotees, monks (including bramachari, swamis), under the guidance of Amma of course, overcoming their own reluctances, their own ingrained cultural precepts? And what made this community gel, producing collaborative actions that are still going on today?

Many of the people we met and especially at municipality levels (in Trivandrum, Chennai, Kochi, Surat) have shared with us their hopes to deal with waste, treat waste more efficiently with machines and factories, even sanitary landfills. Nevertheless, this research has proven the capacity of poor local communities to handle their waste themselves, in a decentralized manner, avoiding linking themselves to big centralized, very expensive waste management logistics and supply chains.

The attempt in Delhi in 2014 to set up incinerators at Narela-Bawana (West Delhi), Ghazipur (East Delhi) and Sukhdev Vihar is probably one of the most striking examples of centralized and very heavy investments in technical solutions that failed. None of them ever 144 functioned properly. The imported technology employed at the plant has been used successfully in Europe. But incinerators need waste with a high proportion of paper, cardboard and plastic. Indian waste, on the other hand, contains mostly non-recyclable, organic material with high water content. This means it burns poorly, generating little energy. And if plants fail to install proper devices to capture toxic substances released by the small proportion of plastic and other combustible materials there are, the ash or flue gas released by incineration would still carry pollutants. My reading of the story was the lack of community engagement as well as the technical complexity of emissions filtration, inducing huge costs. Very few countries in the world manage to deal with these problems, Germany being one of the more successful ones. But the very important difference is the economic models that are involved in Europe or North America: the tax system bulks large in the economy (households cannot evade tax, as they do in some developing countries), which leads to very substantial institutional investments, very centralized solutions sustained by budgets, and the implementation of very highly technical, expensive solutions.

In such solutions, very little consideration is given to community engagement and empowerment to participate in and contribute to a more efficient sanitation system.

In some developing countries such solutions are economically non-viable (sometimes the level of waste recycling potential cannot justify heavy investments), and in any case separations at source would need to be carried out far more widely.

3.2.10 What is still missing and what I will look for in the implementation of further projects

In our research, we aimed at participating in social innovation projects, taking responsibility to contribute, to co-create with local community, not in a ‘neutral’ observation role but in a facilitating active capacity. The aim was not to plan ahead for results, but to learn at each step and to manage “knowledge” for both sides: the academic side (the researchers), and the community side, at each level.

The case study of a waste management project and further community engagement pilots tested in Kerala have shown various interesting interactions between motivation for collaboration,

145 results, dynamics and success factors. Direct and indirect successes have been achieved in the framework of social innovation, with different actors, perceived in different contexts: time scale, economic or social, individual or collective, human or technical. The successes can be seen in the various levels of participation. In the ashram, first in the Westerner part, with devotees doing their seva and getting very strongly involved, physically, intellectually, emotionally, socially, in what became a movement. This stemmed from consciousness of a need to act, a real willingness to clean up and to follow Amma’s guidance (cleanliness is holiness). In parallel, and although there was no apparent connection (even though one can see a great synchronicity in the events), students started up an amazing cleaning campaign, Amala Bharatam, that would take lots of people, places and layers of society by storm. It led ultimately to Amma discussing the movement with PM Modi, who as a result reactivated a program that had previously achieved little efficiency and success, leading to a new program of cleanliness for India: Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (SBA) or Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM). But the mystery still remains. What really triggered the decision made by these people and these communities to act, to move from awareness of the problem of waste to a willingness to do something, to clean their surroundings, to clean holy temples, to clean their country? From awareness to action to contribution and finally to a sense of belonging, by being an active part of a selfless action that does good at environmental and social/societal levels?

All these factors – involving different processes in the private and social sectors, brought results showing hopeful collective and sometimes collaborative schemes. Social and collaborative innovation brought, in our case research, results that establish a new perspective.

In Peru, the communities studied by Peredo have a deep sense of the common good, from property levels to working activities, mining, agriculture, structure and run by community assemblies voting and making decisions representing the whole community.

Further research could address the flaws of value creation assessment. Looking at collaborative social impact from a quantitative perspective as well as links to corporate and institutional contexts could help show the contribution of social innovation to society. Further research showing the great social potential that arose from the project but placing it in a different context than the spiritual one of the ashrams of Amma could also bring useful results. By disconnecting the willingness to clean observed in this project it should be possible to discover new factors for awareness, action and contribution in sanitation programs of this type. 146

Chapter 4

Second case study in BOLIVIA. The first pilot implementation of waste separation at source in a poor neighbourhood: local incentives and respect

Wall of prayers in Rishikesh, North India

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Chapter 4: Second case study in BOLIVIA: the first pilot implementation of waste separation at source in a poor neighbourhood: local incentives and respect

Table 8 - Second case study: general information

PROJECT NAME/ CARACTERISTICS BARRIO LIMPIO, PILOT ON Waste Separation at Source OF THE PROJECT

CITY, REGION, COUNTRY PUERTO SUAREZ, PATANAL SUR, BOLIVIA

DATES AUGUST and SEPTEMBER 2014

NUMBER OF PHASES OF PROJECT 7, from getting to know the people and choosing the project to the 6 phases IMPLEMENTATION of the Wheel of Community Engagement (4 weeks of running project)

NUMBER OF COMMUNITIES 1 : Barrio San Antonio 2: Puerto Suarez and Puerto Quijaro

NUMBER OF PEOPLE 1800 to 2000 habitants at the time of the project

AREA COVERED 3kms by 5kms

4.1 Placing the researcher at the center of the chosen neighbourhood, co-designing the pilot and implementation process with and for the local community from a biographic position

Figure 12 – Bins in Puerto Suarez and FTE collection team

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“How much can you lose?” was my question to Rene. Meaning: “How much money can you invest in a social project without being sure of any return?”, i.e. financial ROI in this case.

We had been sitting together, Rene and I, for a whole week in May 2014, at a conference in São Paolo, Brazil, on social impact investment organized by the Insead Social Entrepreneurship Program (ISEP), important Brazilian, and South American finance organizations, and social institutions, NGOs.

A Bolivian from Santa Cruz, a city in the south west of the country, Rene Salomon was a chubby man, powerfully built, with a cheerful face that automatically drew people to him. He was of Spanish roots, with very fair skin and features, and he told me about his father, famous as a pilot in Bolivia. One could not trace any indigenous mix in him. We exchanged animated conversations during the conference, the workshops, on social impact, social entrepreneurship, economic development through local entrepreneurship as well as during the fraternization weekend organized afterwards.

– “You are an expert on waste management, right, Diego? I dare you to do something about waste in Bolivia, in a place where we are running a project at the border with Brazil!” he said to me with an impish smile.

– “My foundation, FTE (Fundacion Trabajo Empresa) based in Santa Cruz, is acting in Bolivia, developing tools for social impact, including a model for social responsibility for long-term sustainability, building synergies between the interests of institutions, the private sector, civil society and universities.”

– “I am your man!” Right away I took the bait, thinking to myself:

“Hold on, can you really implement anything just on the basis of volunteering in India and a pilot on Community Based Waste Management?”

4.1.1 A challenge to implement a first pilot of Community Based Waste Management (CBWM) center

I was torn between the excitement of the opportunity and an honest assessment of my shortcomings and my doubts. In a way I was making a huge leap of faith to further the experiments

149 tested in India in the ashram recycling center and in recovering areas near AIMS (Amma’s hospital) in Kochi. That meant some basic recycling techniques and basic-tech machines, as well as composting and permaculture land recovery, that had worked, and that I had experienced and witnessed while volunteering.

I thought to myself:

“I am confident it can work. I have learned major lessons from those years spent in India, in poor communities in Kerala: people did get together to tackle their problems of waste starting with separation at source. There is a way to create a whole community movement of cleanliness.”

“Most of the people, put in the right setting, want to solve their problem of waste, want to clean their habitat and surroundings.”

“But this is now a whole new level by taking the lead and management of a full-blown project in a new geographic zone, a new community with a completely new set of challenges.”

“I can learn fast, I can communicate well, speaking the language, the main one being Spanish there, and I can work hard. I know enough about social innovation having as well the back-up of a strong local organization, and a very friendly director, that I was getting along with very well, inspiring and with a positive energy I could strive on.”

“Ok, that’s enough! Let’s go for it!”

4.1.2 A hellish local context

It was hot as hell! The smell was burning my nostrils. Toxic, chemical effluents. I had been on open-air landfills before, gigantic ones like in India – Chennai, Tamilnadu, or in Trivandrum, Kerala – but never to an illegal one like this one. It felt like a lunar spectacle. I was in front of a mountain… of waste! Nobody around, no signs of life, not even birds or rats. The level of decomposition of most of the stuff here must have been toxic to attain such a foul smell and heat, and repulse any kind of natural life. I did my best to keep up appearances in front of the others. Of course, I was accustomed to landfills, but I must admit that seeing no structure, nobody around was shocking me maybe more than its size (probably a few kilometers along the main road between Puerto Quijaro and Puerto Suarez). I was starting to panic slightly, faced with the scale of the 150 thing! “What the hell am doing here? What on earth is it possible to do here, what kind of solutions are there for such a plague? And what could “I”… do… here?”

Then a truck arrived and tipped out its load! Two guys came down to greet us, with their mouths covered. We spoke a bit about this place and its connection to the ground waters of both city and to the lake of the Pantanal, not too far away. I turned away, to conceal my sadness and disgust.

I saw two guys arriving from afar. They were all covered up, and looked like astronauts. Juan told me they were “catadores”. They arrived right after each load was dumped, to find the “filet” (the best bits to pick and resell later on). Juan Alex got a bit dizzy like me with the saturation of the air.

Juan Alex was the person representing FTE in Puerto Suarez, and in charge of the implementation of various projects in the region including Matto Grosso Sin Fronteiras, a social project involving Bolivia and Brazil in South Pantanal. Of medium height, he was very unlike Rene, and had indigenous origins that one noticed right away. He was also a very funny guy, frequently cracking tongue-in-cheek jokes. He was in his early 30s and knew everybody there was to know in the town and nearby.

We headed back to Puerto Suarez by motorbike. I was holding on to the luggage rail at the back, scared to fall off if I fainted.

A huge portrait of Evo Morales stood at the side of the road, like a visible expression of political incapacity or unwillingness to deal with any of this.

4.1.3 Setting the project

A few weeks after our conversation at the conference in Brazil, Rene and I had started to set out the practicalities of a waste management project of this kind. Rene had sent me information about what had been achieved so far by his foundation: “Here you go, we have those 4 reports in 5 years, reports nicely written by consultants making recommendations, never anything done, or pragmatically implemented.”

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I was shaking my head (in a way sometimes seen in India, which does not let people know if your feeling is positive or not), too familiar with these kinds of situations of money spent to justify the inaction of people lost between trying to understand the problem and needing excuses for their inactions: “These kind of things make me so angry, Rene. When I see the state of pollution here, the illegal open-air dumping (a dumpsite of 5-6 kilometers used by both municipalities parallel to the main road linking them) and burning, both practices strongly polluting ground waters, affecting general hygiene and health…. I feel angry, sad and powerless at the same time”.

The main problem of this pilot project was that it would not generate a return (i.e. a financial return). But it would contribute to local solutions that could tackle pollution and societal problems (see Figure 12 for examples of bins and the start of collection from the team of Barrio Limpio).

I proposed a pragmatic initiative to Rene: how about trying to implement a sanitation pilot, to see what would happen if we started to set up a unit in Puerto Suarez, the city where FTE was undertaking the big Matto Grosso Sin Fronteiras project? A pilot with a chosen community, to test waste management solutions in-vivo and learn from the experience. There was no way to build an action-plan beforehand not knowing the context, and not having the possibility of choosing the community and neighbourhood for the implementation.

“Don’t worry, I have some ideas. I feel confident about separation at source, as well as a team built from the community itself and based on local engagement.”

We decided to set the cost of “Barrio Limpio”, the sanitation pilot in Puerto Suarez at 7000U$ for two months (more or less ten times less than the consulting fees of the previous years).

The project would take place in 2 communities on the Bolivian side of the border with Brazil: Puerto Suarez and Puerto Quijarro. Puerto Suarez would be the implementation city. It is an important inland river port and municipality in Santa Cruz Department, Bolivia, located 10 kms west of the border with Brazil, with a population of 12,546 (2007 estimate). Puerto Quijarro is an inland river port and municipality situated on the Tamengo Canal in Bolivia by the border with Brazil. It is part of the province of Germán Busch in the Santa Cruz Department. The Tamengo Canal connects it to the important Paraguay/Paraná waterway (the only Bolivian waterway that leads to the ocean). Officially, Porto Quijarro’s population was 12,903 (2001). The Project would

152 be in collaboration with Brazilian authorities and especially Corumba (SEBRAE) and of course local and national Bolivian institutions. It would last more or less two months, focusing on a process of six steps that would evolve to adapt to the local situation, acceptance and engagement.

One of the key points that had persuaded me to accept Rene’s challenge was the presence of FTE in Puerto Suarez, with co-workers running social and entrepreneurial projects, including Matto Grosso Sin Fronteiras. Rene intended to establish core factors of engagement, related to education, lean SCM processes, management of the whole valuation of the waste chain, and the involvement of key local teams, with diversity of profiles and influences, as well as motivations.

Involvement of local industries was also pivotal: Food-Farmers perspective, food industry perspective (especially as an end market for most recyclables), compost, and dry recyclables.

I was confident about what I had learned in India based on an integrated waste management System, the development of community engagement in six-seven weeks with six steps, including a clear deadline, a clear start and a clear end (with KPIs to measure success, impact and replication possibilities). But I was also scared of failing, of the unknown, of disappointing all the people that had put their trust in me, starting with Rene, and letting the community down; I had never implemented such a project in vivo. Furthermore, the context of the area was making it a lot harder: difficult climate (very hot and dusty), a border region, frequented by the Brazilian richer side for cheaper shopping (supermarkets or tires for example, a hard-to-recycle form of waste which was having a huge impact), and for easy and cheap access to prohibited substances, drugs and local women prostitutes. Communities of indigenous populations migrating from the center of Bolivia had ended up in this desolate area in search of jobs and a better future and were often kept on the outskirts of the cities, as the outcasts of the deprived.

The choice of basic technologies was making it a lot easier to present the project to the local people, to teach them how to implement it, as well as to envisage its sustainability and replication. Basic technologies like simple composting (with simple layers, if possible individual gardens), the use of handcarts, manual collection and separation, and in further steps, simple machines like compactors, shredders. The essential characteristics of basic tech are low cost, low maintenance, and very simple processes easily empowering local communities and facilitating replications (and possibly scaling up opportunities).

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4.1.4 Positioning myself as a researcher

As a researcher I was gaining legitimacy by suggesting precise steps in waste management and showing expertise and experiences of similar contexts as well as by the way I was engaging with the community itself, placing the process of empowerment at the center of the project’s implementation. With no expectations and in fact no visibility on how the project would grow. Letting it unfold, adapting to its course, adjusting rapidly and collaboratively to its changes. The fact that the project was favoring social entrepreneurship was positive, as at the time FTE was organizing a big event in Santa Cruz to nurture social projects by local young people.

“Hello, are you Diego? You had a good trip?” Juan Alex came to get me on the Brazilian side, in Corumba, as this was more convenient. He received me with kindness but without being obsequious. I was arriving by bus from Belo Horizonte. A long journey covering a large portion of Brazil (600 kms, more than 8 hours) and crossing the border with Bolivia at Corumba. The bus was always my favorite means of transport, affording me many hours to observe local landscapes, urbanization details, the transformation of regions, and the faces of people in the bus and at the stops. I had visited Corumba fifteen years ago, staying in a hostel on the Brazilian side of the Pantanal and discovering (as a volunteer multi-lingual guide) the richness of one of the most diverse biosystems in the world.

I spent a few days meeting and talking with the people of FTE, especially Juan Alex based in Puerto Suarez and the local head of the major Matto Grosso Sin Fronteiras project. He took me around to visit the city: “We will start with the open-air dump between Puerto Suarez and Puerto Quijaro, a parallel road to the main one linking the two cities: a few kilometers where all the waste collected by the two cities is dumped without any type of treatment or care.”

The view was the same as in any illegal dump: a chaos of waste of all kind. In the case of this Bolivian border city, there were lots of tires of all kinds and forms. “The tire market on the Bolivian side attracts Brazilians on a massive scale, as they are almost half price. And of course, there is no reverse logistic or legal framework that forces the tire dealers to recycle properly, hence the cheap prices. A tire’s recycling time in nature is about100 years. This is one of the main specificities of local waste management, and a very serious one! Used tires are of very poor market value and are very hard to resell. Recycling factories for products like tires are very expensive as

154 they require pyrolysis systems with very high temperatures to separate the rubber part from the metal armature of the tire. Plus of course the open-air pollution and the degradation of the whole dump, slowly but surely polluting the ground waters of both cities, and soon the Pantanal itself.”

I sensed that here too a mission was needed. A purpose of participating in solutions to protect and restore where possible one of the most amazing ecosystems I had seen in my life. The Bolivian project of Barrio Limpio was feeling like a direct extension of the CBWM (Community Based Waste Management) center designed in India over the previous 3 years.

4.1.5 First visits of the communities

The following day Juan Alex started to take me around to visit communities, to get a feel for what could be the implementation of a pilot scheme in Puerto Suarez. One very poor community was at the outskirts of the city. It was a settlement of indigenous people from the center of Peru. They were complete outcasts, living in self-sufficiency in very poor conditions. This was my favorite settlement, but it was not without problems. The representation was a very complex process, and the decision process would also be far more complicated. I was feeling that a project like this one would take a lot more time to get into, to set up the framework for a co-designed solution and for the engagement and involvement of the community.

“Here are the farms just outside of Puerto Suarez. They could use compost, which could be made from the project itself like you were telling me yesterday.” I was happy to hear the excitement in Juan Alex’s voice! “Look at this water tank, all made with recyclable tires, wood and other bricks recovered from around here”.

That perspective of linking the dots of value creation within the supply chain of waste in the local context was exciting and seemed to offer great opportunities. We continued our investigation in the Puerto Suarez area for possible communities for the implementation of the pilot of “Barrio Limpio”. We had conversations about experiences on both sides: Juan Alex talked about local communities’ experiences, and I spoke about waste management. “Juan Alex, I am starting to have a feel for the community that would have some elements favoring the implementation of our sanitation project: a poor community with no or little system of sanitation, quite disconnected from the city’s services, with a majority of poor inhabitants, and with some

155 community member representatives that could engage with the project, support it, and infuse it with their own ideas and energies.”

Despite my waste management experience, the choice of the community depended primarily on Juan Alex. Without his perfect knowledge of the region and the people, and his legitimacy to act anywhere in the area, nothing of the project would be possible. We decided to select the suburb of San Antonio because of the engagement of the OTB (Organizaciones Territoriales de Base) and of the local administration head, Marian Saucedo, as well as the mix of local population and the presence of indigenous migrant families in very precarious situations, that this project would hopefully directly help.

Marian was a local woman, with a strong personality that exuded determination, but she was at the same time very open and easy to talk to. Her house was very lively, sometimes with small children shouting and charging around. She is a grandmother in her late 40s, and her children share the house with her. She had recently been elected OTB of the barrio San Antonio and was taking that very seriously.

The area was small and manageable (five by three kilometers, 2000 people), with a core of motivated local people, and a community eager to improve its situation. It was not the poorest or most disconnected part of Puerto Suarez, which I had been pushing for, but the local people were motivated and that was very important.

“What a great idea. As soon as I got elected, I wanted to organize a cleaning campaign. But this project goes way beyond what I had in mind. I am fully with you in this. I will give you all the support I can, starting by meeting with the people from the barrio and engaging them.”

4.1.6 Involvement of local representatives of San Antonio

We had decided with Rene and Juan Alex that the first two weeks would be focused on information gathering, finding markets for recyclable waste and identifying potential project ‘champions’ in the local community. We went walking around together, accompanied and led by Marian and her team of local families, to check out the local homes of very different areas of the ‘Barrio’, from quite comfortable houses to very poor precarious huts.

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There were three women and one of their daughters walking with us through the streets of San Antonio. With brightly colored umbrellas to protect us from the heat, smiling and laughing, each time we were warmly welcomed by the local people.

Figure 13 – Women team of the OTB of Barrio San Antonio and Community meeting with kids drawing bins for their parents

The visits started (Figure 13) to create a flow of information as well as an interest in the community, through direct discussions with local people about their needs, their wishes as regards sanitation, their views and perspectives. Juan Alex on his side started to pass the message that we were looking to employ a local waste management team for this pilot project. To create value through waste management it was necessary to link the project to the market aspects.

“Let’s go and visit a local recycling company, here in Puerto Suarez. A house with a compactor, compacting mostly cardboard, plastic. They are transporting loads by truck to the city of Santa Cruz where they can resell the recyclable goods, in bulk. The prices are higher there. Of course, adding an intermediary in the process means a reduction in face value for each recyclable category.”

We started, Juan Alex and I, to establish a list of local prices which was quite different from the prices I had seen in Brazil. In fact, the prices were too low and not generating enough revenue to justify starting up a social enterprise for this recycling activity. I even looked into selling to the nearby city of Corumba, and visited one recycling dealer, but a law prohibiting the entrance of waste into Brazil closed off this possibility. The visit to the recycling company in Puerto Suarez 157 depressed me: the people did not seem to be interested in the idea of a new team of people collecting waste, seeing it as competition (which in a way it was).

As I summed things up for Juan Alex: “The main difference with the project “Bairro limpo” – whose main objective is to clean up a community and set up a process for sanitation and waste management programs – is that the principal objective is not the resale of recycled goods. The state of the recycling company is in fact shocking very dirty, with plastics flying everywhere.” That is when something struck me: a recycling company focusses on making a profit by selling the best valuable recyclable products, what is called the “filet” by the catadores in Brazil. It does not have the objective of cleaning. Not at all! And every “catador’s” place, i.e. the local recycling house, I have visited tended to confirm that impression. That is where I saw clearly the differentiator between “catadores” and a sanitation team: setting up a cleaning process had to be broader than just recycling, be it dry or wet waste. Identifying potential local waste markets (where/what/how different kinds of recyclables are sold), and any other potential revenue sources (transformation of recyclables to be sold in categories at local level) was a key to the sustainability of the project, to the creation of local fiduciary value: whether by local direct/indirect jobs, by growing the recycling market, or by collateral jobs with artisanal recycling. It was an important link to market and fiduciary value creation that was missing in the other community engagement models I had seen. But this was only one element, and not the main objective of our sanitation pilot.

4.1.7 FTE, a local Social Entrepreneurship driver

FTE was organizing an event, a workshop on local entrepreneurship in Santa Cruz and wanted me to present the Social Innovative project of Puerto Suarez. Entrepreneurship is a central aspect of FTE’s mission and vision. I was happy to get to escape from Puerto Suarez after the first two weeks. It had been a strenuous task at times, and the visits, project ideas and planning made the schedule very intense. Trying to adjust to the local context was not as easy as I had thought. At times I felt overwhelmed by the task, especially after the visit to the open-air dumping site.

Rene and his team pumped me up. We visited the sites of some local social entrepreneurs who were doing really well with local community gardens and schools, and Bolivia had

158 implemented a national policy to introduce community gardening in schools and embed it in communities. To me this was an amazing step forward: permaculture education that was starting at the youngest age, and had a huge potential to influence parents, families and neighbours, to spread a habit of composting.

I came back from Santa Cruz revitalized by the positive energy of Rene and his team and the local social entrepreneurship projects I had witnessed and that were clearly showing at least the potential of willingness to change in the region.

4.1.8 Involving the local community in the co-design of a pilot

Engaging the community meant creating interest, then trust, and defining local needs. The team was building up, identifying solutions that locals saw as most profitable for the community (based on local incentives, local governance and control, with no large budgets that could become targets for corruption). At the same time, we were visiting schools in the area and I was getting the same feeling I had experienced in Santa Cruz: there was really fertile ground here to implement something in terms of cleaning and self-sustained sanitation solutions. We started to explain the project to the whole community in the “barrio” and raise awareness step by step. Initially, I sensed there was only polite interest, but not really a substantial commitment to participate. As a matter of fact, the recruitment of the local waste management team was turning out to be harder than I had expected. The stigma with waste here too, like in India, seemed to be strong enough to stop most people from engaging with the project. Yet with the efforts of Juan Alex and a woman working in the same building (in what was the equivalent of the local chamber of commerce), we started to advertise participation in the project from a perspective of a regular salary with some job sustainability. This resulted in a lot more applications for the four jobs than I had expected.

During our third week we initiated group work in the community based on the legitimacy and acceptance of a local team consisting of members of the community. The local team started off with outcasts: a young drug dealer just out of prison, an unemployed teenage mother, a returning migrant who had worked in Spain, an ex-alcoholic older woman who herself lived in the neighbourhood. These stigmas started to be overcome by the courage they showed: pride in their work of transforming waste, in transforming themselves, and in doing something worthwhile for

159 their own community. The transformation effects when waste is placed at the center of the community were something I had also witnessed in India.

Yet this project was completely different: here in Puerto Suarez there was no ‘ashram, monasterio’ and no spiritual leader motivating, launching, pushing for a cleaning movement. There was a beautiful church, in the middle of the main plaza, but it was attended by chic people from the city, who were doing their religious duty with no particular engagement. The clear motivation came first from the FTE team and Marian, the OTB from the ‘barrio’.

The pilot in Puerto Suarez was starting to take shape in Barrio San Antonio: 450 families, 2000 people, 5kms by 3 kms, and six-seven weeks of a cleaning campaign setting up practices for a self-sustained sanitation process designed with the community. I was excited by the simplicity of the process the project was setting up and boosted by the courage of the people around me. Their determination grew as every day new ideas seemed to spring up!

4.1.9 Process and objectives

The process was aiming at taking the community from awareness to responsibility and action. But we had no specific goals, just ideas about a possible flow, about technical steps. The community engagement would guide the project, each step inducing the next one. We organized three evening meetings in the first two weeks with the families, where kids were making drawings of waste solutions (see Figure 13), and teaching their parents how to separate waste into three basic categories: organic, non-organic and sanitary waste. I was so excited and moved to see kids enthusiastic about waste and the way they dealt with it, showing to their parents which bins should be used for what kind of waste, pressing ahead to achieve cleanliness. They were quick and easy going. There were no stigmas, and no pre-conceived ideas. We started to discuss the objectives of the project: cleaning up the ‘barrio’ and setting up healthy and sustainable sanitation practices, stopping the burning and the dumping in the streets. The project was based on a small, flexible budget and small teams, availability of an area to collect/recycle/compost and the setting up of a community space: a community garden run by volunteers, playgrounds created for local children out of recyclables, and new housing made using eco-building technologies. The OTB found a shed she knew was not used. It took us a few days to

160 manage to meet with the owner and convinced him to let us use his shed for free in return for the cleaning of the space and the surrounding area. That was for me the biggest step so far in the community and a great sign. The owner did not want rent but asked for his place to be cleaned in return. After contacts with the radio and the local TV channel, Marian was once again proving her central role: finding and negotiating the place for recycling.

4.1.10 Starting waste management

Collection started, first with bags carried by hand, and the bags started to accumulate around the shed. We also started as well to design the cart together, with the collection team and FTE in Santa Cruz. We used a recycled bicycle, that a local bike repair shop offered to fix, and a local ironworker offered to contribute by building the cart structure. The carriage would be ready during the following week. But the head of the FTE waste management team left his job. Without a word, and not answering the phone when I called his home. I got really upset and felt very discouraged. He had a really good profile and the capacity to take this project forward to make it into a social enterprise. I felt that his silence showed a lack of respect for the team, the project and the community. A team that was hard to build, a social enterprise that was hard to imagine.

I finally managed to speak to him, and I realized during our conversation the amount of shame this job with waste had generated for him. He had spent years working in Spain and coming back to his own country to collect waste was very shameful for him, and I could understand that, even relate to it. As presented in chapter 1 with Hird and Douglas more specifically the shame associated with waste is a very strong negative stigma – even in countries with no apparent class system like Bolivia, the structure in society still sees waste workers at the bottom of society. I knew this element would raise its head and would always be a threat for the sustainability of our project.

Juan Alex activated his contacts, and in all probability offered higher pay for this tough and potentially demeaning job. At the weekend I went swimming in the Pantanal with kids which cleared my head. We were jumping from a pier with kids and had lots of fun on Sunday. An old man watching us told me in a Spanish with a very strong accent, probably from an indigenous language like Quechua: “Last month an anaconda ate a cow near that place, that lake is full of

161 snakes, you should be careful…”. It shocked me. Even that part of my life here was tough. There was not one thing in this little town that was hospitable!

I went back to my room, petrified, and called my girlfriend in Brazil. She was giggling and happy, while I was still thinking about the anaconda!

The next day I went to pick up the cart from the ironworker. It was not ready until late afternoon, and I had to wait in his workshop for a few hours. In real life its dimensions seemed larger than I had expected from the designs. Now I had to take it from one side of the city to the other, where Marian Saucedo lived. I had to push the cart for a few kilometers through the city. At first people were smiling at me, pushing around the big structure. Then night fell and dogs started to bark at me and, in some cases, chase me. Then I heard ironic laughter. I was pushing that cart across a hostile city, mocking me, while I was exhausted, feeling down and demotivated by the head of the team that had left.

4.1.11 An incentive from the local entrepreneurial ecosystem

I did not sleep too well that night, silent, not knowing how to escape the sense of failure that seemed to be weighing me down.

But the next day Juan Alex took me for a good coffee and laughed with me at the image of the dogs chasing me, pushing the cart throughout the city. Nothing is better for morale than being able to laugh about oneself. That same week Juan Alex took me to meet the owners of a local supermarket where he knew we would have some chance to get some support, through sponsoring. The owner, one of the Tocale brothers, received me very politely, listened with interest to my description of the waste management project and showed me his own recycling system, which to my surprise was quite evolved. He agreed to participate by giving a rebate of 20% to inhabitants of San Antonio participating in the project. 20% per month with a cap of a maximum of 200Bs was not enormous, but to the poor people of the barrio it seemed a lot. I was regaining hope in being able to build something with the community. This incentive was not expected, I did not see it coming. But the engagement of a local corporate network was a very positive sign for the sustainability of the project. Tocale was not a fool. He knew we were starting to get attention from the media, and that all this was good for his business.

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4.1.12 Presenting the project to people outside, other communities

We had just done an interview on the local radio and were making contacts with the local TV. Tocale also asked me to come and give a presentation on waste to his employees to mobilize them for waste separation in his supermarket. Of course, all this was going in the direction we wanted (FTE, Juan Alex, Marian and myself), so I gladly accepted. The presentation with more than 30 employees went well. I intentionally made it a bit dramatic with “hardcore” pictures of appalling waste situations, and questions were asked about kids playing in the garden after the burning of plastic. I showed some pictures I had taken in the communities of Puerto Suarez, which everyone recognized. The people were a little shocked, and their faces remained impassive, but the pictures seemed to impact the population and convey the message I wished to get over. To close the session I asked the audience to fill in a paper with what they would like to change regarding hygiene and the cleanliness of their homes, their neighbourhood, their town. I could see that they were getting really involved. Some of them talked about actions that they could take today or tomorrow, and the others present nodded in approval.

“Diego it would be good to take this presentation to the local university as well” said Juan Alex.

The days were not easy going, with the heat reaching at times 40 degrees Celsius, with the dust, everywhere, and especially in my nostrils, the dryness of the air. I found myself sometimes falling asleep at dinner time. I agreed to take the presentation to the university of course, not only as a way of raising the profile of our project and FTE projects, but also to show respect for Juan Alex’s actions in his own community.

The local shed was the HQ for Santo Antonio’s recycling center. We started to organize the shed that would receive the waste and serve as a waste separation place. We started as well to look at the space to build the local community garden. Two weeks of collection helped us establish the routes that were the most efficient, and to get to know the community better. We were following 3 routes that were allowing us in 3 collections per week to cover the entire ‘barrio’. The days were Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and the time from 6 a.m. to no later than 10 a.m. After that time the sun, dust and dryness in the air was unbearable, walking around. The task was not easy, especially with the team being one person short. But at the end of week 5 another young man

163 from the ‘barrio’ joined the team, and that made a 5-person team, including me. It seemed to me that more and more contacts were being made with local people as each day went by.

The job was not only to collect waste dumped in the streets, and in the various houses where we would be welcomed, but also to explain whenever we could what the project was (what separation at source was, and what were the categories of waste). I was really happy to work door to door, as for me it was the only way to get to know the community, to get to speak to the people in their daily lives, to gather their concerns and their ideas. The positive impact of the Supermercado Tocale rebate for homes and families participating in the project was unexpectedly strong. Starting from zero, we were starting to note strong participation. People could get a 20B rebate just by cleaning and by sorting their waste, and this was a significant benefit for many families. It seemed feasible, so people started to do so, while not of couse forgetting to ask for the supermarket rebate. By the end of the week after the meeting, 140 families had already registered for the incentive discount with ‘Tocale Supermercados’. People were really pleased to see their names on the rebate list. Of course, the meetings with the OTB Marian had helped spread the word, and the 2 radios broadcasts as well. In the sixth week I met the director of the local TV channel (Canal 12). Kiyu seemed to be very interested in the project and assured us there would be a TV crew to interview people about the project and show the team on TV. By the Friday we had our first interview and broadcast on Canal 12. The team was very proud, and the local people were starting to call out to us on the street to congratulate and thank us.

4.1.13 A wave of generosity: by nature, collective need or peer pressure?

A process of generosity started in the community. The first donation was soon followed by many others: the cart made of recycled parts was assembled for free by a local small business, a blacksmith from another ‘barrio’, and was regularly maintained as well for free in ‘San Antonio’. An old man came out of his house as we were passing by with the cart and asked us what we needed. He could help with some soil for the community garden. And he mentioned a friend of his who could provide us with water for free and a connection in a few days’ time. It seemed like an avalanche to me, coming from nowhere. But I soon realized that the media had played a role in that sudden popularity of our project. More importantly we were starting to feel something that we had not planned, not measured so far: respect, a deep respect for that team of 5 persons cleaning 164 their neighbourhood, working under the sun, in tough conditions, to pick up waste most of the population was discarding anywhere they wished. A deep respect for Marian, the OTB who was constantly out in the streets of San Antonio, and spreading the good word about the project. For Juan Alex, giving him more legitimacy for this community actions, and of course for FTE, even though it was an organization from a city far away. I could feel it more and more in the way people were greeting us in the streets, offering us a glass of water, a piece of cake. That respect gave dignity to the team, a process that was unplanned and unpredictable. I could hear it in the way the team members were talking about their work.

4.1.14 Education and repetition processes

We put in place simple processes for education and repetition, and a sustainable business model. The process was kept simple by restricting waste collection to two segregation categories (organic/inorganic). We were setting simple education objectives (one flyer distributed every day in the initial phase door-to-door, with a concise explanation of the waste categories, incentives, and duties of neighbours living together). The waste management process was designed to be as simple as possible with one pick-up round every three days of a third of the area (4 hours from 6 am to 10am), with one pick-up per house per week. A simple uncomplicated model allowed us to make minor adjustments according to difficulties or successes encountered. We went for one day to a college. The head of the college – who had that had been contacted by Juan Alex – received us and presented us to the whole of the teaching staff. They thought I was coming to do a presentation, in an academic way and that would be it. So I did a 10-minute presentation. At the end, I then asked them: How about trying something new, like spending a few hours cleaning the college and then setting up new ways to deal with waste?

I drew a map of the main flows of waste with the director, placing new bins for the paper that could be recycled and would be sold. A new place for burning using a concrete pipe, intended to burn as little as possible, a long way from the classrooms and away from the garden where it had been. We handed out gloves to each teacher and off we went!

It is hard to describe the expressions on the faces of the different teachers: some were surprised, some were shocked, and some indignant, draping themselves in their academic pride.

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But the head went along with the idea and set an example, starting to clean up with us. Since he had described my academic pedigree, and was leading the pack, nobody dared to refuse.

In three hours, we had cleaned the whole college and put new bins in place, while setting out new ways of dealing with the key issues: burning waste a long way from the children, and from the gardens they were taking care of. Bins where they could easily collect valuable recyclables like paper, cardboard, cans. The smile on the face of the director by the end of the day was more revealing than the long speech he gave, to comply with Bolivian tradition and his rank as head of the college!

4.1.15 And finally, the full implementation of the project

This was all happening simultaneously was the full implementation of the project. The project team started work, collection, recycling and working in the community garden every day. The full cycle of collection and waste transformation was in place. The beginning of a circular process in which people were truly engaged, and which was helping to deal with social issues. The links to the market led us to investigate the higher value of the recycling market in the city of Santa Cruz. The problem was the transportation of recyclables some 650 kilometers north west of Puerto Suarez, in the direction of the capital La Paz. I mentioned a project I had designed in India which involved free freight for waste with the train system between big cities that had a market that could absorb and treat more easily bigger quantities of recyclables. Rene floated the idea with some local train executive friends of his, and we started to design a process whereby we would load compacted categories of valuable recyclables like aluminum (mostly compacted cans), compacted cardboard, and sorted plastic. We looked at a similar system with the nearby city of Corumba but Brazilian laws prohibited the entry of any waste into Brazil.

4.1.16 And some mafia threats to spice it up

“If you don’t stop to see K., something really bad will happen to you, you understand?!” I called the Director of TV12 in the process to ask for explanations. She was getting divorced from a wealthy local man, involved in mafia activities, and he was very jealous. Having spent some time with her I had now got into his sights. Rene advised me to be very careful from now on, and maybe

166 to send a letter to the French embassy in La Paz, which I did, mentioning the situation, my family in France, and my girlfriend in Brazil. My girlfriend asked me to come back to Belo Horizonte by the next bus. But I could not leave the project unfinished. So I stayed, looking left and right when setting foot out of my room, and crossing the street. I also went to the local police with my letter to the French Embassy, explaining clearly the project I was doing here, and that I was almost married in Brazil. This information probably reached the mafioso and may have calmed him down a little.

4.1.17 Celebrating a project, a pilot, a team, a community

In the final week of the project we held a celebration. We invited the whole community to the recycling shed to celebrate the project, enjoy a community party and receive the supermarket discount vouchers for their participation. On a Saturday afternoon after working hours the implementation team presented the work that had been done and what had been achieved, as an inspiration to continue or further the volunteering effort. They were surprised at the way the community acclaimed their contribution. Up to now, the project only provided minimum wages. But the potential of the willingness of the community could translate into WTP (Willingness to Pay), a fiduciary contribution to a community collaborative service. A few entrepreneurial activities were planned: collection for a fee, recyclable sales, composting delivered to small scale agriculture on the outskirts, all with local jobs, both direct and indirect (community kitchen, community vegetables, community artisanal activities with recycled material) and lots of factors corresponding to the intention-based model.

The project unfolded in an unforeseen manner: it grew out of very strong involvement of the OTB and her charisma to become to a wave of generosity from the community, and a willingness to participate in the movement. But the core remained that the respect we had gained was a strong element dignifying our work.

If I had tried to start such a project on my own, I would have never managed to get even close to these local communities, nor to the problem of waste management at this level. If Rene had tried to set up a sanitary project on his own, even with the great team at FTE, it is very unlikely he would have ever got close to implementing a pilot scheme of this type. If the OTB had tried to

167 implement a cleaning project of this type on her own, she would probably have not gotten further than a mere one-day cleaning session, something quite superficial. Each one individually would never have got far with such a venture. Thanks to the combined efforts, the “Barrio Limpio” project became a success, inspiring nearby barrios and cities to try the same approach, with unexpected collateral positive impacts.

I was sitting in the bus in the bus station of Corumba, about to travel back to Belo Horizonte. Back to my girlfriend far away from the heat, the dust, the craziness of the jealous chief of the local mob. I was reflecting on the past two months: the anacondas, the blue araras I had seen flying free in the sky of an early morning and collecting waste.

The director of Canal 12 had picked me up very early at my hotel, with a friend of hers. This may have been a provocation for her jealous ex, who thought, she explained, that she was his property, even after divorcing her. She was clearly stating her willingness to take her own destiny into her hands. Perhaps she was just like so many peaceful inhabitants of this region, in an atmosphere of mafia crimes. Their lives not only depended on surviving in an atmosphere of drugs, money and prostitution, but also on respect and dignity, I had discovered.

4.2 Tools, models and data

Table 9 summarizes some of the key outcomes and impacts for the 400 local families involved in this project, Barrio Limpio, conducted in August and September 2014, in Puerto Suarez, Bolivia.

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Table 9 - Summary of pilot project outcomes and impacts

Outcome/impact type Change observed immediately after intervention 400 local families, local supermarket Stakeholder participation Local radio/TV station, 2 local colleges Families participating for reward 149 out of 400 families (supermarket voucher) Families participating without reward 180 out of 400 families

4 persons: team of local people (collection of Numbers of jobs directly created waste, recycling, ‘horta communitaria’)

Total Weight of refuse collected 2740 Kilograms Value of separated waste 9152 Bolivianos (approx.. €1200)

The project was designed as a social entrepreneurship endeavor, with its economic model of value creation, with the selling prices of collected items. The discount in the local supermarket ensured a minimum level of participation. But soon the project developed beyond our reach and individuated as a far broader system.

First it individuated itself: more and more participants decided to join the project and add their own contribution and initiatives, making it gain momentum, alter and become different to what was expected.

Second, it was not hylomorphic: this individuation was not designed and controlled by an entrepreneur or a politician. There were a lot of emergences, affordances, and above all collective dynamics.

Third, it was transductive: the project led to several replications, re-appropriations and later developments.

4.2.1 An individuating project

Of the 400 families who were engaged verbally and presented with a rationale for cleaning and separating waste more effectively, together with an information flyer and an offer of a

169 supermarket voucher reward from the project team during a home visit, 37.25% of these families immediately agreed to participate. Following commencement of the waste collection activity, an additional 180 families (some outside of the pilot area) subsequently volunteered to participate even though they did not receive any extra reward such as a supermarket voucher. The total participation rate of local families in the waste collection initiative was 82.25%.

Various stakeholders became involved as it individuated. Starting with the local foundation, Fundación Trabajo Empresal (FTE), based in Santa Cruz, a nearby Bolivian city, which funded the project, including it in Matto Grosso Sin Fronteiras, a social project involving Bolivia and Brazil in south Pantanal. After the Barrio San Antonio was selected to host the project, local communities got involved over the subsequent 5-week period. This was achieved through contact made by Barrio San Antonio representatives, especially the Grassroots Territorial Organisation (OTB), represented by Marian Saucedo and her team, promoting the project door to door with the community and the core elements for its start: negotiating with local owners a location to recycle and start the community garden, and a recycling roof. Finally, the local education institutions became involved, hosting our presentations and a cleaning trial in two local colleges of 800 students, and in the local university.

In addition, other community stakeholders who were not initially approached by the project team asked to become involved as community interest grew. This included unexpected generosity from the local bicycle shop, which offered to repair a waste cart three times for free and a local carpenter who provided improvements to the carriage for free. One influential individual in the community delivered two tons of free compost to the community garden we were starting to build, and called the head of the water council to arrange free access to water for that garden. Local media also started to actively broadcast our various community events, as well as the results of the cleaning campaign: the two major local radio channels and the local TV channel, Canal 12. The channel aired coverage of the project three times (at prime time) and provided images, interviews and videos that were later used to create a short project video.

While the local municipality did not get directly involved, the nearby mayor of Puerto Quijaro showed strong interest in the project, replicating the project in his neighbouring municipality. Independent community leaders such as the director of the Water Council supported a request for free water for the community garden. The local Chamber of commerce provided 170 support to motivate local people to seek employment in the recycling team. However, the strongest incentive for participation came in the form of a purchase rebate from the local ‘Tocale Supermarket’ that offered to provide a discount of 10 % on a monthly purchase for food and house supplies capped at 200 BOB (approximately €25) to each family participating in the cleaning and separation of waste campaign. This rebate was equivalent to just under 15% of the minimum local average monthly salary of 1400 BOB (approximately €182).

Table 10 - Typology of waste collection

Typology of waste collected; Prices in Price total in Categories/qties, in 2.5 weeks, team % Waste SC: BOB/ BOB (Bolivian of 4 people collected Kgs Kg Boliviano)

Organic 35 959 5 4795

Cans 5 137 7.5 1027.5

PET 15 411 2.2 904.2

Plastic (black & Colors) 10 274 2.2 602.8

Plastic (White and transparent) 5 137 1.6 219.2

Metal 10 274 4.5 1233

Glass 5 137 0 0

Sanitary Waste 5 137 0 0

Paper 5 137 2.25 308.25

Cardboard 5 137 0.45 61.65

TOTAL 100 2740 9151.6

One can see in Table 10 that the highest part of waste collected, and thus organic easily compostable. These are called the ‘low hanging fruits’ in terms of waste reduction, or basic waste treatment. Transforming waste into compost is technically the easiest step in the classification of waste, in the 7R’s presented in the Introduction. 171

Because of their market value cans and metal can more easily be sold. But plastics still represents 30 % and are harder to sell in the local recycling markets. They sometimes need to be cleaned, and not many studies compare the impact of plastic recycling with the energy and water usage.

Table 11 shows the specificities of waste of the area chosen for implementation. The richness of the waste is its potential value, in terms of market and economic factors. In our case in Quijaro the waste value was considered as quite poor.

It is arguable that this project is a model for collective action in the way it was set up (see the “wheel of community engagement” model Fig. 13 ) involving as many grass roots stakeholders as possible, with community leaders buying into the project at various stages, but particularly in the way local people embraced participation in the actual collection of waste, recycling, community garden, and engagement with local schools and colleges.

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Table 11 - Incentives and motivations of local communities in the Project ‘Barrio Limpio en 30 dias

TYPES OF INCENTIVES Description Impact Community motivation

Discount with local supermarket for 140 families signed in the 1st 2 weeks - at the families participating in the project: Interest and attention raised in each end of the 2nd week, some families were 10% over 1 purchase of 200Bs per household with the discount starting to give sorted waste to the waste family per month management cart' Fiduciary Direct jobs: 4 jobs created, 2 persons Seeing people from their own neigborhood Jobs created, based on the minimum from the 'barrio' themselves, 2 from working on the project was a great influence salary in Bolivia: 1440 Bs/month other places in the same city: large and motivation influence on replication cases

Separation in only 2 categories in Easy to explain from team to their Separating in 2 bins or 2 bags seemed a households 'neighbours', from kids to parents simple and realistic goal

Cleaning each house and 2 meters in Simple message and clear impact: Visual immediate changes that influenced Simplicity front cleaned in one week step by step the global neighbourhood

1 cart to collect, made of recyclables easy to train, to set up, to motivate the too: 3 bicycle wheels, cheap and low Easy to get around, to replicate too team maintenance

Cleanliness, health for kids At individual level: feeling better, Influence at individual level by direct especially, community values (help, more healthy education: flyers, explanations collaboration, generosity)

at family level: taking better care of Family willingness to improve household

Values kids conditions

At community level: feeling good together, more solidarity, generosity, Peer pressure positive: influence of 2 colleges involved at the outskirts of neighbours following the project, or shame the ‘Barrio”, 80 teachers and 1600 of not cleaning like the neighbours kids

Involving key people from the community at the initiation of the Buy in from the others seeing the Legitimacy project, as well as the team working, changes in the behaviors the volunteers

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4.2.2 Collective entrepreneurship

These developments were not designed and not controlled by an entrepreneur or politicians. The process was not hylomorphic, with a designer imposing a form on a matter. Although a starting element was the social entrepreneurship initiative and the negotiation of a discount with the local supermarket, the community then experiences a kind of phase shift and globally it started to behave differently. The decision makers and subproject initiators were numerous, so that it is possible to speak of the project becoming collective entrepreneurship.

This community-driven development approach proved more effective than existing centralized solutions for waste collection and recycling in the area it was implemented in. This project stands in stark contrast to centralized, big scale, high technology solutions to waste management – particularly in poorer regions that in many cases cannot afford to even implement them. The participatory, community-driven process allowed the community to determine their own priorities and undertake projects that meet their needs.

Decision-making was distributed. In poor rural villages, knowledge among the populace is typically limited to immediate surroundings, so decision-making tends to be top-down and subject to capture by elites at the village level. Furthermore, there is a high level of superstition, and a high degree of marginalization of women, youth, children, ex-combatants, internally displaced people, and those with physical and mental challenges. Given this context, the most disadvantaged and marginalized people often do not participate in decision-making processes. A social assessment study by the National Social Action Project suggests that this occurs because there is not enough social capital to effectively empower and enable community development in such poor communities. Yet this project showed the possibility of empowerment even among the most disadvantaged communities. The economic aspect is not sufficient to explain all the developments. Other human factors had a very strong impact, like peer pressure, willingness to pay for cleanliness, generosity, dignity of work with waste, cleaning, and impact on the health of families’ children. Those soft indicators are yet a lot harder to measure and to balance with the direct economical ones but are necessary for a full understanding of what happened.

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However, this collective entrepreneurship dynamic should not be evaluated solely on its efficacy for waste management and the created value. It induced or inspired other projects, with in turn their own individuations. The dynamics were transductive.

It has to be noted that the project stopped at the end of the funding. Another phase shift arose. But this was not really the end of the project’s effects. Only two weeks after the researcher had left, interesting consequences emerged: the mayor of the nearby town of Puerto Quijaro invited us to a meeting on sanitation with his team. One year later FTE was asked to present a CSR project to a Brazilian mining company interested in setting up operations in Puerto Suarez. They were interested in the idea of carrying on the sanitation project.

The positive influence of this project is evident in its inspiration for two other municipalities (Puerto Suarez and Puerto Quijaro) which subsequently took action to make waste management a priority issue, while private companies also added similar programs to their CSR campaigns (like Empresa Botarentin, which included this project when they arrived in the region).

We then started two replications of similar projects in very different environments: one in a land occupation by a very Low-Income community in Ribeirao das Neves in the municipality of Belo Horizonte in Minas Gerais, Brazil, and another one in Rio Doce, Minas Gerais, Brazil implementing in another very low-Income community a system of water harvesting, following the mud slide disaster of November 2015. In both cases, similar collective dynamics took place and proved to be far more sustainable, with the initial phase shift still working.

4.3 Lessons learned

The successful development of the integrated waste management system by a community of 2000 people, in three weeks of collection, shows the potential of decentralized solutions, especially in the context of low-income communities where municipal services are poor or non- existent. Overall, the project had a direct impact on 2500 people, and created four new jobs – together with an indirect impact on a further 15,000 people constituting the audience of local TV for three live TV interviews. In total, 2.74 tons of household waste were processed under the pilot scheme over five weeks (2.5 weeks of real collection out of the five weeks of the project duration).

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The value of the separated waste was 9151 BOB (equivalent to €1190). This represented a significant gain for the community given that the local average wage in the region is 1400 BOB per month and the cost of basic staples such as a loaf of bread is 0.50 BOB, where local statistics show that food represents more than 40% of families’ spending.

4.3.1 Local champions

In this case things happened more pragmatically, through a combination of factors. One of the main factors was the capacity to engage key people in the local communities who were directly or indirectly involved. This applies in particular to the representatives of the community where the project was implemented. These local champions were instrumental in finding solutions, advocating for the project and educating others throughout the project.

4.3.2 Start of an empirical model of community engagement based on community motivation and a mixed market approach

Here we are describing a model that we started to build arriving in Brazil (at the Insead conference where I met with Rene Salomon, director of FTE (Fundacion Trabajo Empresal), and ISEP alumnus and Bolivian social entrepreneur). I was looking at models of community engagement / empowerment and could not find any model encompassing all the dimensions I had experienced as key in my first sanitation experience in India: local community involvement in the full process, buy-in process, economic and financial processes, and incentives for participation.

The model we are describing hereafter is not a model to be replicated per se, but a model combining experiences and existing work on community empowerment. We understand the dangers of speaking about models when our approach is based on a non-postcolonial posture, and on not imposing any model on local communities. We are here more thinking along the lines of recommendations, and topics to keep in mind. As much as we believe that each case will be specific, we believe that the accumulation of experience can lead to a set of principles and guidance that can help further work with deprived communities in the global South.

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4.3.3 Building the Wheel of Community Engagement framework

In the end we chose those latest 3 models to build the “wheel of community engagement” and to best serve the pragmatic implementation of this project, and the definition of the pilot to be implemented and adapted, and to bridge some gaps in the theory and modelization fields with experience at grassroots level.

The first model we chose is the link to a market approach providing a model of valuation, a possibility of creating value (direct and indirect jobs in our case). But we also wanted a link to fiduciary valuation, in the supply chain of waste to social values, like dignity, generosity (see Table 3, page 59); and how these factors in the end play very different roles and have different weights in the success and sustainability of such sanitation community bottom-up approaches and self- empowerment processes. Self-empowerment is defined here as an authority or power owned, earned by someone in order to do something, the process of becoming stronger and more confident, especially in controlling one's life and claiming one's rights.

The second model is a Brazilian approach of volunteering with low-income communities in favelas throughout Brazil. The Elios method is based on interpersonal relations, and individual perceptions and how these perceptions can create transformations (it is defined by six steps).

The third model is used by Will Allen to address sustainability issues, with six ways to influence behavior change. Through 7 steps - Liking, Reciprocity, Authority, Commitment, Consistency, Social proof and Scarcity - Will Allen defines the major steps needed in social marketing.

The main objectives of this project were to be able to implement a pilot of integrated waste management practices for a selected Low-Income community, to be able to learn in situ, from positive or negative experiences, and report on them. The experience proved to be such a success that we managed to develop our own model of Low-Income Community empowerment through Waste Valuation: the wheel of community engagement.

With the problem at hand we chose some factors developed in each case to match the core difficulties we were facing in the preparation of the implementation of the waste management project in Bolivia and later its proper piloting and life in situ. And we also looked for the possibility of replicating the pilot on the basis of a modelized case-study approach. 177

4.3.4 An empirical framework: the “Wheel of Community Engagement”

The various steps we followed, while learning at each step, incrementally, from each other, in what I call collaborative learning, from the community side as well as from the researcher and external side, indicate how community engagement and motivation to participate built up in the example of the Bolivian project. I have translated my experience of collaborative learning into a “wheel of positive virtues” approach, based on a posteriori observations (see Figure 14 p.179).

In short, the overall concept rests on a clear definition of needs and objectives set by a core implementation team, composed of as many layers as possible from the local community and external people taking part in the implementation of the project. They drive quick simple actions over a relatively short period (in this case in Bolivia of 5 weeks, i.e. 30 days). From the models studied and presented in the previous we thought of 5 weeks as a good trial time, defined empirically: seeking to make a high impact in a short time, keeping momentum, over a small well- defined area, through engaging with local people, and linking waste processing outputs to the wider market for waste management in order to create additional value for local participants.

The first step focused on information gathering, choosing the community for implementation with FTE, discussing the local needs and identifying areas well-suited for for such a project. It is necessary to first understand the quantities and typology of waste produced and the limitations of current collection and treatment systems. We started identifying the current policies and waste management practices, and what was really needed, identifying gaps, like separation of waste at source and either treatment of organic waste in households or locally in each area considered (decentralizing the steps of the waste management chain: from collection to treatment). We then looked into markets for recyclable waste and identified potential project ‘champions’ in the local community.

The second step focused on both economic and waste information , which were correlated so as to identify opportunities: to create value through waste management it is necessary to identify potential local waste markets (where/what/how different kinds of recyclables are sold), and any other potential revenue sources (transformation of recyclables to be sold in categories at local level). We visited the only local waste dealer of Puerto Suarez as well as three local catadores. In this project, the current local market was already dealing with aluminum cans, cardboard, PTE

178 bottles (full-size or compacted) and several categories of paper. A potential was identified in creating a recycling market for different types of compost and verifying with local organic producers their needs/prices/types of compost (windrow, vermicomposting etc), as well as the potential for creating artisanal products based on local demand, like shopping bags made out of recycled cloth, and other basic-tech solutions like converting plastic to oil, and reusing tires in the making of water tanks and play grounds. The main objectives at this stage were to engage with a clear and consistent market for recyclables, to identify where and how to sell, reuse, and transform as secondhand products, local artisanal products, or even fuels (plastic to oil). Basic-tech solutions operated and initiated by local teams, when possible using local self-empowered solutions (like the Juggad concept in India). We confirmed the scenarios of the value chain (current flow of waste, disposal sites, local markets for compost, for recyclables) with local people and with field visits.

The third significant step involved engaging the community to create trust and interest, define local needs and to identify teams for implementation. We defined the parameters of the pilot strictly to ensure it remained manageable, i.e. maximum of 2000 local participants, living in close proximity to each other, in an area no more than 5 by 5 kms, and who have expressed an interest in cleaning up their local area and in recycling generally. We sought to build a cohesive local team through the identification of community needs in partnership with locals from the community. This identified solutions that locals saw as most profitable for the community (based on local incentives, like the rebate at Supermercado Tocale, local governance and control, no high budgets that could be targeted for corruption purposes).

Our fourth step initiated group work in the community based on the legitimacy and acceptance of a local team undertaking the pilot project together with members of their community. A local collection and recycling team was started up. The area was selected for its small / manageable scale, its local core of motivated people, and a community willing to change their situation. The process was aiming at taking the community from awareness to responsibility and action: local people received training on best waste management practices and the dangers of local current practices (illegal dump fills between the two cities of Puerto Suarez and Puerto Quijaro, burning, sand road watering to avoid dust), and simple waste management processing (2 pick-ups door to door per week were defined with the collection team and the local representants of San Antonio). Based on a flexible small budget and small teams, availability of a space to

179 collect/recycle/compost and the setting up of a community space: a community garden managed by volunteers, games areas created for local children out of recyclables, and new housing using eco-building technologies. The pilot design aimed at putting in place simple processes for education and repetition, and a sustainable business model. The process was kept simple by restricting waste to 2 segregation categories (organic/inorganic), which we were presenting in community meetings, grouping families where kids were showing their parents how it could work. We set simple education objectives (one flyer distributed every day in the start phase, with a concise explanation of the waste categories, incentives, and duties of neighbors living together). The waste management process was created to be as simple as possible with 1 pick up round per day of a third of the area (4 hours from 6 to 10am), i.e. 2 pick-ups per house per week. The simple uncomplicated model meant we could make minor adjustments in the light of difficulties or successes encountered. An important consequence of a genuine community engagement process consisted of the many donations and other goods that began arriving after the first week of collection and promotion of the project: free use of a recycling area (roofed construction with 2 separate rooms, area for a l garden, and for composting), 2 tons of composted soil, free services from local businesses (cycle shop, carpenter). Most importantly, we negotiated and finalized an agreement with the local Tocale Supermarket to offer a rebate per month to project participants.

During the fifth step the full implementation of the project took place. The project team started work, collecting, recycling and building in the community garden every day. By the end of the second week, 140 families had registered for the cleaning incentive discount scheme with the Tocale Supermarket. Continual adjustments were made in the collection process and practices to improve efficiency where necessary, and the process was simplified wherever possible.

The sixth and final step during the final week of the project saw the whole community invited to the recycling spot to enjoy a community party and receive the supermarket discount vouchers for their participation. On a Saturday afternoon after working hours the implementation team presented the work that had been done and what had been achieved, providing inspiration to continue and extend the volunteering effort. This was also a time to encourage new people to participate, to identify replication opportunities, and let the local team of four people from San Antonio and nearby neighbourhoods take the project fully in hand.

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Figure 14 - Wheel of Community Engagement, elaborated during the Bolivian Project Barrio Limpio, August-September 2014 (source: author)

4.3.5 From a personal perspective

This experience in Bolivia was the start of a real implementation on my own in a completely new community from a totally external perspective. This is where I started to

181 experience the necessity of strong awareness to counter postcolonial and arrogant external postures. The contact with the local communities has been amazing, and some very tough experiences have tested my limits: threats on my life by the local mafia leader, tough climatic conditions, etc.

4.3.6 What is still missing and that I will look for in further project implementation

At the outset of this text, we sounded a warning against two possible dangers of fostering entrepreneurship as a route to help the most disadvantaged people out of their condition. If the social entrepreneur comes from the most advantaged part of the population, the process, while bringing much needed services, may disempower populations by manifesting that they indeed cannot manage to thrive without such outside support. If entrepreneurship is advocated for individuals to improve their own situations, the others or those who decline to participate might be designated as guilty or undeserving.

We have here explored an alternative way. Or rather a third way occurred to us, based on a social entrepreneurship project. In our experience, helping the disadvantaged does not originate from the genius and dedication of a social entrepreneur, nor from the entrepreneur emerging from amongst fragile individuals, but from communal empowerment. Entrepreneurship was seen instead as a collective agency. Instead of making something for the people, or having the people make it individually, the alternative consists of making something with the people, aiming at accompanying the community to gain more empowerment. Here actions mainly were initiated on the context and first steps, but soon the project evolved and individuated itself. The community felt empowered, and subsequent replication showed that help from an outsider was no longer necessary. Change did not come as a new form imposed on a matter. If one of the authors provided a kick-off intervention, the germ of the idea was planted. As Gilbert Simondon would say the project individuated itself.

Simondon (1958) was valuable with his conception of social innovation which is not led by a designing and controlling individual. The community experienced a phase shift and started functioning in a more sustainable way. Firstly, change did not come from an outside force, which is more empowering for the community. Secondly, change was collective. There was no difference

182 made between individuals of merit and others to be blamed. The project did not bring about guilt or stigmatization. What is more important, everyone involved experienced transformation during the project, including the researchers. The project itself evolved with new contributions and new affordances.

We are fully aware of the limitations of an experience of this kind, yet we are convinced that helping the most disadvantaged should not trigger a feeling of lack of self-power on one’s own fate and on the collective fate or come with guilt and stigmatization. Among the limitations it needs to be recognized that our assertion is based on only one case, and that much reflection is still needed about this kind of community-based social innovation and entrepreneurship. Other similar experiments need to be tried in other areas, and more participation in the research should be sought from community members.

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Chapter 5 Third case study in BRAZIL: a sanitation project in an illegal land occupation, very poor neighbourhood of Belo Horizonte, the first pilot implementation on the full waste management chain

View of Ocupacão Tomás Balduíno

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Chapter 5: Third case study in BRAZIL: a sanitation project in an illegal land occupation, very poor neighbourhood of Belo Horizonte, the first pilot implementation on the full waste management chain

Table 12 - Third case study: general information

PROJECT NAME/ CARACTERISTICS OF THE BAIRRO LIMPO PROJECT

CITY, REGION, COUNTRY RIBEIRAO DAS NEVES, MINAS GERAIS, BRAZIL

DATES NOVEMBER 2014 TO JANUARY 2015 (and 2 further visits in 2016 and 2018)

NUMBER OF PHASES 7, from getting to know the people and choosing the project to the 6 phases of the Wheel of Community Engagement (4 weeks of running project)

NUMBER OF COMMUNITIES 1 : Ocupação Tomás Balduíno 2: Ribeirao das Neves

NUMBER OF PEOPLE Tomás Balduíno: 1500 to 2000 habitants (from 150 families in 2014 to 300 families in 2019)

AREA COVERED 3,5kms by 2,5kms

Exchange rate euro/reis in Dec. 2014 1 euro= 3,21 reis

Minimum Salary 2014 in Brazil; Decreto 8.166/2013, Per month= R$ 724,00, per day= R$ 24,13, per hour= R$3,29 24.12.2013

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5.1 ‘Bairro Limpo’, Tomás Balduíno: a story placing the researcher at the center of the community and the implementation process

Figure 15 – View of upper end of Tomás Balduíno, and pollution of the stream at the lower end

Francisco is the creator and coordinator of the UFMG aid project for the Ocupação Tomás Balduíno. Francisco's office at the UFMG was a room with a few tables, computers, and meeting tables. It was all very spartan, with post-WW2 Russian-style iron tables and chairs.

– “Is Francisco here today?”

– “Yes, he's in class and should be back soon” replied a young woman who was most probably working with him.

On the entrance was a plaque in Portuguese: Ergonomics and Work Organization Laboratory, Production Engineering Department.

I didn't know much about ergonomics but imagined that it was about organizing and optimizing work, and in this case from an engineering, technical perspective, nothing like organizational topics such as OB, in my field. I didn't see the connection with the sanitation project in a favela that my girlfriend had heard of the day before, telling me that it would probably be interesting if I met this professor. I had pumped myself up to present “Barrio Limpio”, the project from Bolivia to him as soon as possible, to arouse his interest about me joining one of his projects,

186 or even obtain funding to stay in Belo Horizonte, the city of my partner, to stay with her but above all to continue participating in projects such as “Barrio Limpio”.

A tall bearded man entered the room. In his fifties, jovial, with small round glasses, and a big smile illuminating his face. “That's Chico” said the young woman.

– “Boa tarde Francisco! I wrote you an email yesterday and took the risk of coming to meet you without making an appointment.”

– “Yes, I didn't have time to read my emails today. Are you French? We can speak in French then,” he said to me in very good French, smiling with interest.

– “Congratulations on your French, you lived in France?” I commented.

–“Yes, I did my doctorate at CNAM (Paris) and I am going back to Paris for a year to do a post- doc. Actually, I'm leaving in a few days with my family… How can I help you?”

There was no beating around the bush with Chico!

I then began to describe to him the project implemented in Bolivia a few weeks earlier.

– “I think it's going to be more meaningful to show you this with images. We made a video.”

– “Yes, show me that, I don't have much time, with everything there is to prepare for our departure for Paris.”

The face of “Chico” came alive as he saw the images of the community of San Antonio in Puerto Suarez on the Bolivia-Brazil border and heard about the project on the video and its results. Then began a lively conversation on basic community engagement and health treatment solutions. A sanitation project in a squat.

– “We have a project in a favela, an occupation, uma invasāo, are you familiar with that?”

I nodded my head.

– “It is a form of squat, where a whole group of people come to occupy land that is not used but already has an owner. A little bit like those squats that became famous illegally occupying buildings in Paris in the 2000s. Belo Horizonte is one of the places in Brazil where there are many of them, the most famous one being Dandara. We started this project last year with students from my department and an NGO called the “Brigadas Populares” to help them legalize their situation 187 and implement a sanitation policy, dealing with most collective hygiene issues. What you are showing here is spot on!”

What was supposed to be only a quick presentation took the form of a long conversation where Chico told me the story of Brazil and MST (Movimento sem Terra), and pioneering movements in basic waste treatment like the Revolucāo dos Balduìnhos project in Florianópolis.

– “Well, I like your project, I don't have time to organize funds for it, not even an “extensāo” (specific university term for project funding). We can keep in touch by email. I will introduce you to the team, the project so far, my ideas, and if you like, we can do this together.”

The two weeks spent presenting the project to the team, and starting to organize things, ended up being quite frustrating. Very young and inexperienced students, with no means at their disposal, no knowledge of the field, and not always motivated. I was wondering what I was doing there, with sporadic emails from Francisco giving me the context, his ideas for a strategy to set up a sanitation project and his contacts.

5.1.1 Tomás Balduíno, a very special ocupação, with W. as a catalyst

AC's little Fiat Uno Mille was bouncing from one speed bump to the next, with a grinding metal noise that was making me tense. W was driving fast, as he was used to that road to the ocupação. It took us from the center of Belo Horizonte, through the middle-class suburbs and then progressively poorer areas, reaching rock bottom at Ribeirao das Neves. “That Mille is unbreakable” he smiled looking at me, passing the hundredth speed bump scraping the underbody of the car. I was thinking of my girlfriend who would have killed me if she could see how her first car was being treated!

W. (anonymized) was also a tall fellow, built like a rugby player, fair hair with blue eyes, the ones they tend to call “alemão” around here. He spoke a lot, he too was very happy to practice his French, and was proud of his slang expressions, which made him laugh. He had lived in Clermont Ferrand for a one-year “sandwich period” (on an exchange between UFMG and the University of Clermont). He described to me his involvement with the project and with the Brigadas Populares. And what had happened since the beginning (at the end of 2013 and the start of 2014) of the ocupação. 188

As we entered the squat at the end of a street marked as a dead-end, he smiled at the people who greeted him happily, sometimes with a friendly gesture of the hand. He parked the Uno Mille on what seemed to be the main square of the Ocupação Tomás Balduíno: a crossing of two dirt streets, with flying dust, at 9am when the heat was already stifling.

– “Eai W, tudo bom?” Sr J, an old man with a hat and elegant blue shirt greeted W. warmly.

– “Bom dia Sr J... how is business today?”

– “Come have a coffee at home, we'll be better off in the shade”. He led both of us there, and looked at me out of the corner of his eye.

W. was greeted and smiled at each person he met, speaking a few friendly words, a bit like a social worker in his neighborhood or even... a politician. He had an easy, honest, sincere smile that illuminated his face, a natural openness with a good dose of humility and modesty at the same time. His skin and eye color certainly contrasted with the majority of the inhabitants, who tended to be mixed race, or Blacks. In his intimacy with them, he demonstrated no embarrassment, and he made no distinction between them. Some he would take in his arms, and to others he would give a pat on the back. “I'm a communist and my mother's a judge, so you get the idea!”

We continued our tour, and felt that we had given Sr J some comfort and company, in return for the energy his coffee had imparted to us (it was still burning my stomach!). The occupation was only a little more than 3 kilometers long by some 2 kilometers wide. It was easy to go around it, and to reach its limits.

W. pointed to a large hole, a cutting of the earth that fixed the limits of the community. In fact the ditch was like a wall, keeping Tomás Balduíno inside its limits, and preventing it from spreading. The ditch around the local community also made contact with the outside world complicated, especially cutting it off from water and electricity systems, and more insidiously keeping the people prisoners too; there was only one main entrance. This isolation made the community very vulnerable to law enforcement attacks, for the community could be easily surrounded and contained. Another separation was the small watercourse at the end of the squat, with smoking chemical scum... a stream resembling a bubble bath with discharges from all the surrounding areas. It contained a sort of “juice” that was exuded by the uncontrolled landfills that existed nearby. We were still exploring the ocupação, with W. As we were passing by, continuing 189 our visit, a resident left his house to throw away plastic bags into a dump of already accumulating waste. This was not going to be an easy task.

5.1.2 Painful memories, doubts

I must admit, I had been apprehensive about this visit, these meetings. What was I going to find when I entered the community? It was the first time I was visiting an illegal occupation. I had hardly managed to find anything about it beforehand. I was on my guard. Scared about the unknown but also because of the imprint in me sculpted by the films on the favelas and my own tragic experiences. I was going back to my memory of Puerto Suarez and the jealous, dangerous “dono de droga” who had put a contract on me. I had also had a terrible experience some fifteen years earlier: three of my friends had been killed in the center of Rio, Avenida Nossa Senhora de Copacobana, by a young man from the favela of Bangu with whom we had worked. Some images were coming back as we passed from the suburbs of Belo Horizonte and Riberão das Neves. We kept on getting further away from the center, and in poorer and poorer areas, until we arrived in this neighbourhood which seemed to me to be the most desolate of all those I had seen.

The red earth, the reused bricks, the recycled materials, the huge electricity pylons carrying a high-voltage line past the entrance to the community’s plot, like an electric field. And especially, this pit all around the squat. The occupation was a sort of small surreal hill at the end of the world.

***

We had discussed it with W… We wanted to launch a health project, but I couldn't see how, without a budget, without a trained team, we would be able to contribute to something. I had certainly had experience of implementing pilot projects lasting a few months in India and Bolivia, but I was amazed by the extent of the pollution both of the stream (visibly toxic mosses, dead fish) and of the uncontrolled waste dumps around it. Fear in my stomach was the sign of my raising awareness of the extent of the ecological, social and human context of the site, and of the experience in which I was embarking.

***

“So how was your day?” AC could see my drawn features and my worried look. She smiled at me as she hugged me, reminding me of her friend, a social worker in the region, doing this kind of 190 work, visits, every day. But I was still in shock from everything I had seen. The miserable conditions, the pollution wherever you looked, the sense of being harassed by the police, and the total lack of resources.

“You'll see, it'll be done little by little, step by step. Just like in Bolivia or even like what you managed to do in India.”

5.1.3 Second day of visits

P. (anonymized) was sitting with her mother, a child of the neighbour on her lap, and a neighbour, one of the first to have come to occupy this land. All four sat on small wooden benches, in front of P's house, also under construction, the type of construction which never ends, like all the others, as recycled materials come to hand. P. was a beautiful Metis woman, tall, in the strength and beauty of her thirties, with a smile that seemed to carry all the hope and strength of this community, and somehow exhaling the quilombo soul and part of the history of MSTs, the spirit of mutirão .... that I was discovering is so strong in Brazil. The daughter of a pastor, straightforward and determined, she didn't seem to have learned the paralyzing meaning of the word “no” or “it's impossible”.

– “It started...” P's mother was swinging in her chair proud to tell the story of the place, her story.

– “Nao mae. It started with the young ones, didn’t it, F?” cut in P.

– “In the beginning, there was a group of four young people with me, all in their twenties, who tried to invade here. And it worked. At first...”

– “A lot of fighting, a lot of struggle”, the mother interrupted again.

– “Everything was wasteland, there was nothing here. How can we make a neighbourhood here?” continued F.

– “This is not a favela here, I came from a favela. Here there are few houses, few streets. No security, all open, anyone can enter and exit anywhere, at any time. I live on the second street that goes down.”

– “Me too” continued P. “As F. said, I arrived in the middle of the bush. There was no street, no running water, no electricity. There was nothing there. The first thing that happened here was the 191 phone cable. At the same time a lamp was installed. Everyone was helping each other. We built huts and stayed there during the day. We would bring back cooked dishes, meals with chicken during the day that we put in large pots, and in the evening, we would scrape the bottom of the pot, add water and flower and heat all this together. We were getting everything we could.”

– “We suffered a lot from the beginning,” the mother added.

– “We gathered the first material, like wooden boards, sofas from the “bota fora”, a kind of scrap dealer, located on the opposite side of Tomás Balduíno, in the nearby squat of Gambiara. The first week of the occupation the owner came with the police to evict the people. They were civilians dressed like us, who arrived in a van full of people who started hitting us, setting our huts on fire, until the strong men, M., F., the men on our side, also gathering the fathers of families joined the battle: we're not going to let this happen, let them hit us, our families, if we all get together, they'll have to stop. Everyone started to face them. They did everything to us, cutting our wooden boards, our canvases. It was early January 2014. People suffered a lot, had lots of difficulties. The owner had a lot of power, he was from a family of police officers, he had the background to put a lot of pressure on the people here, to hunt us down. “Gracas a Deus” we won. When we received our first eviction order, we didn't know what to do. That's when we met the “Brigadas Populares”, the family of the Brigadas, the voice of the occupations (squats), and the person who became our lawyer, A. They helped us to postpone this first expulsion order, and we managed to stay here. From this first injunction, the Brigadas told us: come and build, you can build, and open streets. That's when our first tractor arrived. But, my God, the tractor would open a street on one side and the police would come in and we would run to the other side, to the back. We would gather everyone to face the police and give the tractor time to open the streets at the back. There's been a lot of fighting, we've been here for a year already. We're not going to stop, it's growing more and more. Families, children coming... more and more.”

***

The evening was beginning to fall on the small square. On a Tuesday evening, a sunset that set fire to the mountain in front of it, made the earth redder as if that was possible, and gave a new perspective, softening each house, to the few trees, gardens and faces, chiseled with sun and work, hard work, often distant, whatever work it was, which made it possible to bring a minimum to the

192 table. The minimum wage in Brazil was at the time R$724 reis per person and per month (or 226 euros), and most of the families barely managed to scrape together this minimum amount per household.

With W., we decided to speak at the weekly voting meeting organized by and for the community. This meeting had taken place every Tuesday evening around 7pm, since the arrival of the Brigadas at the beginning of 2014.

“People gather every Tuesday evening. We set this up with the Brigadas so that everyone has the opportunity to express themselves, but above all to be informed, to understand, to participate in the struggle, in the life of the community. You've seen the private gardens. As you said this afternoon, we can use this opportunity to propose a compost unit in each household, or a collective compost and reactivate the community garden that existed a few months ago. We'll see how it goes. You present the project we discussed, on waste separation at source, community collection and recycling and we see how the community reacts, what ideas come up, okay, “tranquilo”!” Everything was always “tranquilo” for W. but I was a little scared to have to speak in Brazilian, to explain the whole project, to invite ideas, to respond, to facilitate, and to enable the energy to grow from this sanitation project. This time it was no longer a representative of the community who presented the project, it was me, even if P. was there and her smile combined with W.'s were like a “bossa nova” a soft Brazilian dance, that I could follow without doubting that “tudo vai dar certo” ! Everything was going to be fine.

W. began to talk about the latest news for the community, especially the legal aspects of the occupation. He often punctuated these sentences with “vamo continuar a luta... tamo junto”. Let's continue the fight, we're together. This Communist side, with echoes of Zola, made me smile as much as it touched me. One day towards the end of the implementation of the W. project, he told me:

“At first your French doctor teacher side... When we started collecting together, I thought to myself: in fact, this guy is much more Communist than many of the people I see in the Brigadas. He is here, in the middle of the people, his hands in the shit trying to make things happen”.

And yet I was liberal, in the sense of entrusting market forces to provide substantial support for “sustainability”, while at the same time being categorically against Hard Core Capitalism, the

193 excesses I had seen during the sub-prime crisis, particularly in London, especially in the Big 5. Before Tomás Balduíno I had never seen a place where people had to struggle to keep their houses, even if they were made of junk, to keep the right to live somewhere. It was not a refugee camp, but a piece of land where people who could no longer pay rent came to do something with land that was useless to everybody else. I had never really been around people like that, eating with them, working with them, almost being one of them.

The debates began with an update on legal action, which was at the heart of everyone's concerns, and so the discussions immediately became lively. This was the main reason for holding this meeting: to inform the inhabitants of the community about the actions carried out by the volunteer lawyer of the Brigadas Populares, actions carried out with external parties, with the municipality... Actions carried out to mobilize the inhabitants but specially to give them hope, to fight against depression and fatalism.

W. then began to present the “Bairro Limpo” project: “And tonight I want to talk to you about the collection project. This is Diego, who you have already seen here with us over the last few weeks. He is French, doing studies on waste treatment. He has just done a project on the implementation of waste separation in a poor community in Bolivia, on the border with Corumba. And he would like to help us”. So he gave me the floor.

Why was it that I felt daunted by a project presentation in public and the facilitation of its implementation, in a team, in a process of engagement and common learning. I had presented in prestigious companies and in front of big bosses hundreds of times. I had been an executive with bonuses. I had already facilitated highly complex change processes, and set up two projects on community recycling. Why did I feel I was going to choke, and why were my legs giving way? This time it wasn't the business world, or a bonus that was at stake, but the lives of the people I had been working with for a few weeks. It was P.'s struggle and the struggle of the whole group. I proposed to them that we should continue in another way, again by building together, not streets but sanitary solutions. It was showing respect for Sr R's coffee.

“Boa noite”. Without realizing it, I had put my right hand on my heart as people greet respectfully in India, especially in the ashram where I had lived. Everyone answered me together.

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“I would just like to give you some information about a waste project for here. On the collection, the separation of waste in each house, family, how could we do it?”

I was starting to falter a little bit in pronunciation and vocabulary. Some women started laughing in front of me, and I thought they were mocking me. W. told me after that it was interest in the stranger, a stranger who had never been here before, the likes of whom most of them had never seen. A foreigner they were calling a “dotor” as a mark of respect but also of distance from their lives and education, a difference. I had been immediately embarrassed by this difference as if the collection work I was doing with the team was not enough to be part of this project, to give me a legitimacy to be there, through my hands, my work, not my laptop. “O dotor frances” seemed to me a way to put me at a distance that I didn't want. It also seemed to me a way to devaluate my work, and efforts of integrating everyone, as if I couldn't be simple and accepted. Of course, I was nervous to address this community live and in Brazilian. But also very proud. Work had been done over the past two weeks and a similar project had already been implemented in Bolivia. I explain the project by emphasizing collective participation in the effort to separate waste in homes. Then I propose a vote to confirm this separation at source; it is decided collectively, that it takes place in the houses. A large majority approved by a show of hands. We also identified some people interested in collecting, recycling and composting. We wanted people with a strong recycling experience, a past as “catadores”. One of them even had a “carinho de coleita”, a small hand cart where the items and separated waste could be collected, put away, resold or handed over to municipal sorting/deposit centers.

This beginning of team building was a big step towards the consolidation of the project, towards concrete and rapid implementation. As well as the clear and public vote for participation by a large majority. My two past experiences showed me the influence of the majority, and even of the “tipping point” (more than 10%), which became a positive collective pressure, peer pressure, for individual action. In the tone of the people I met, in their questions, to contribute, to act, I felt hope. I was drawing on the smiles of the people of this community, on their life force! For me it was a relief, a wave of pride and satisfaction. The approach taken with the local university, UFMG, in collaboration with the “Brigadas Populares”, but above all with the community leaders, reinforced my capacity for action and evolution. The aim was to avoid post-colonialism and neo-

195 colonialism, i.e. solutions from the North imposed without taking into consideration the local contexts and the people here.

The dimension of activism, of interventionism here appeared either in political or humanistic action, or in spiritual action (which was my case), that of a commitment to life. What balance could be found between action and reflection?! Only action without thinking? Or reflection without acting? This dichotomy seemed obvious to me in the action of the Brigadas Populares: the volunteers gave everything (W., A.) but were caught between their academic research role and their action as political and humanist activists. They are passionate because they are also activists.

Figure 16 Sign calling for Weekly Assembly in Tomás Balduíno

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The weekly meetings continued. The votes involved the inhabitants in the project. In fact their involvement had already started with simple actions, particularly waste separation into two categories (organic and non-organic) in the houses. The team that pragmatically formed Tomás Balduíno's “catadores” is also a guarantee of the community's progressive freedom of learning, its acquisition of experience and knowledge as well as its willingness to contribute. These points demonstrate that the approach has been freed from neo-colonial flaws.

The people present also responded by participating in the struggle, which united them in their striving for legality, and for freedom from harassment by the police and through the legal system. P. punctuated W.'s interventions with legal details that she explained to everyone. Families had begun to group together: men returning from work in their overalls, mothers with children in their arms, the older ones playing around the circle formed, on the TB plot, at the crossroads of the two main streets. One of the streets bears the name “Rua Esperanca” (Figure 17).

Figure 17 - Rua Esperanca, Tomás Balduíno

Someone pushed the switch at the bottom of a wooden pole bearing the only “public” streetlamp in Tomás Balduíno (see Fig.21 p 292). The light made the atmosphere a little more dramatic. The faces were gaunter, and more distant.

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“So we would like to start an experiment and separate the waste between organic and non-organic. Who is in favor?” W. had just flown to my rescue by taking over from me in addressing the group.

P. continued to explain the process of waste separation at source, and collection in the community and for the community.

“If we have to wait for someone to come and help us, we'll wait a long time”

“Who is for this waste treatment project in the community?”

Voting was done by show of hands. And the people that were there would represented the others. A large majority voted in favor of implementing the project. Topics like hygiene, cleanliness, collection of waste, and end of life products (which tended to be thrown into the street or the stream) were discussed in public. It seemed like waste was becoming a central theme for the community life, for community organization. Sometimes expressed as a element of individual survival.

W. added a vote for separation in or in front of the houses or other suggestions.

Comments on other solutions were exchanged, but in the end the participants also voted for a separation in each house. It was suggested that plastic pots would be used to collect organic material from homes; it would then be collected by a community system and taken to a composting destination, or left in the private gardens. Training would be given for proper composting techniques by a local NGO, and or with the help of a few people who were already experts in that process (e.g. Sr. J).

Similarly, for “other dry waste”, it was suggested that a pot could be used and emptied once or twice a week.

The votes that evening decided on a separation at source, using plastic pots to do that separation at home, as in Chico's example of the Revolução dos balduìnhos, balduìnhos being those pots, large recycled paint pots used as bins. The first community meeting on the Bairro Limpo TB project went rather well. Hygiene and a clean community seemed to be a matter of pride for people here, with waste and end-of-life products being dealt with by the community itself. Individual action for well-being, health and sanitation. Collective pride in making themselves completely independent.

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***

The project had also attracted the attention of professionals: some ’moradores’, inhabitants of TB had been catadores, or waste pickers. This is the profession of the poorest members of society – the untouchables in India, and outcasts here too. I was pleasantly surprised by the virtuous circle that was being set up. W., P. and I exchanged ideas with these inhabitants-catadores, and in the end W. told me: “I think these are the most motivated and capable people. Moreover, F. already has his own ’carinho’ and already sorts some waste for resale here.”

W. was a big black guy, over 1m80, strong as an oak, with a big round face, always smiling and making jokes. He had also been one of the first people to join TB and was very proud to be here. There was no doubt that he wanted to help as much as make a living out of the waste management activities that were nascent in the community. He had no fixed job at the time and that meant the arrival of the sanitation project in the community represented a significant creation of value for him.

F. was from Rio, a lot quieter and more distant. He was called ‘carioca’ in the community. He too was tall, but fairer in complexion. He had a big golden chain on his neck. He was living in the street closest to the stream, in what was considered the lowest part of the community. I learned later that he had just come out of prison for a drugs charge, and that was probably why he was keeping a low profile.

Discussions with the potential TB waste collection and treatment team began the next day. We started to meet at F.’s place, which also happens to be the community’s first bar. Everybody knew F., and nobody talked about his past. He had already in his yard a ‘carinho de mao’, one of these huge carts, heavy, but with lots of room, painted in yellow.

I felt hugely elated to see the project come into being, with a vote, motivation, the involvement of W. and P., the engagement of the inhabitants, and the enthusiasm of the two catadores.

***

The same week we went to check the local recycling market, through the main local companies in this sector: the prices of recycled aluminum, and different types of plastic and

199 cardboard. We needed to estimate the material flows, the “filet” of the most interesting items, and the most profitable materials for the catadores. A company on the main avenue leading from Belo Horizonte and its immediate suburbs to the outskirts of Riberão das Neves was specialized in metals, particularly aluminum. The two catadores, and F. in particular, knew the boss quite well and knew the market prices. The value of the products to be recycled in TB thus came to be known in an official, professional way through three two catadores. Fiduciary value, and the value of the work in recycling, and the valuations of participation, contribution, and even the competence of the catador were visible. The community could earn money by sorting their waste, collecting it, separating it and selling it. And all this, just a few kilometers away. Aluminum is one of the most expensive recycled materials by weight, and also has a very good weight/volume ratio (the cans are compactable by the catadores themselves). The collected cans were put into large agricultural bags, after being compacted by hand. The bundles were weighed at their arrival at the local company and compacted again by simple mechanical compactors. Catadores were paid right away. They knew exactly the weights and income potentials, especially with aluminum cans. Some metal-based recycled objects (machines of all kinds, refrigerators) depending on their condition had either a repair or recycling potential also by weight. The second company mainly recycled plastic and certain types of packs, such as tetra packs and washed sachets for milk. The types of plastic were sorted and then cut in a specific machine, a shredding machine. Here too, prices varied according to the type of plastic, with milk sachets being among the most expensive. On the other hand, cleaning was problematic. We could not find any studies showing the viability of recycling this type of plastic packaging, bearing in mind the water and energy consumed, and labor time. And that was an important input for the waste management of the LCA (Life Cycle Analysis).

***

The following week, the Tuesday community meeting focused on the presentation of the team. This did not take long, as the two catadores did not seem keen on this kind of exposure. And a vote was carried out on the financial participation for the work of collection, by each household. It was decided that 5 reis (= 1.56 euros) per house for 2 collections per week, 8 per month, representing about 32 hours would be a reasonable and dignified price to remunerate that work. This ensured R$500 (70% of the minimum wage) per person for the team and with recycling it

200 suggested a potential of R$1000 per person, way higher than the average individual wages in the community.

There was also a discussion about the place to store objects and the categories to recycle. I was impressed by the almost unanimous vote for financial participation by such a poor community when national reports show that richer communities do not want to participate. This should be noted as an example of how waste/dirt are not externalized the way they are in the other northern countries I have known. It also confirmed to me how poor marginalized communities have tremendous capacity for entrepreneurship. Moreover, the willingness to participate, to deal with their own waste, was impressive and quite a surprise to me. A WTP (Willingness to Pay) was defining here a new relationship with waste and end of life products, especially in a very poor community.

***

It was also decided during this second assembly to start collecting the community waste door to door the following week, and to draw up a contribution list to be kept up to date by the two catadores. We decided – together with W. and the catadores – on 2 collection days per week, with one day when larger items would also be collected. I was very surprised to see how fast the process was unfolding and creating itself, with voting and the favorable commitment of the community to internal organization of a sanitation system. W and I had decided to participate in the collections alongside W. and F., the catadores, whenever possible. We had written a pamphlet explaining the project, the simple method of separation in the houses, the objectives, and the compost (in the private gardens and in the larger gardens closer to the entrance of TB). With each of our visits, doors opened more easily, and people spoke to us more readily, in the case of families who had participated in the vote. The influence of neighbours and peer pressure raised the level of commitment and that positive influence seemed to spread to the community, as there was a pride in seeing the streets cleaned up. The collection did not stop at the houses themselves. We also wanted to clean the streets and eradicate the points of illegal dumping. This was for reasons of hygiene of course, but also to achieve an immediate visual impact and a positive collective incentive effect.

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5.1.4 Meeting with the Municipality of Riberão das Neves

The municipal team received us with courtesy and politeness. You could feel a little awkwardness, though, in some eyes. The mayor of Ribeirao das Neves came to greet us briefly. W. told me in a low voice that “they are always more careful when there are foreigners, and even more so when there are Europeans”. We discussed with P. W., the Brigadas' lawyer, and me the points we wanted to negotiate: we wanted to ask for a budget to manage waste, compensation for the work done, on the principle of public service delegation: the community would manage its own waste, avoiding significant collection, transport, treatment and landfill costs, but also health costs and major health risks. We had made a short presentation of the Bairro Limpo TB project, with figures, cost estimates, and budget, and so we asked for partial compensation from the municipality. A state law required public premises and schools to buy vegetables from local organic producers. We proposed to set up production in TB, for which we asked the municipality to provide market opportunities. Here we could secure the creation of value through the transformation of organic products into compost and then into vegetables produced in and by the community. After the creation of two catadores jobs in the community, the potential of three to four people in large gardens either private (like that of the family of M. near the entrance of TB) or collective (like the one that existed before our arrival) could be guaranteed by this kind of assured municipal flow of orders.

The municipal team led the four of us into a smart meeting room. P. and the lawyer were both looking fine and professional in their pretty summer dresses. There was no difference between this meeting and the ones I had attended at the UFMG. But there was a profound sense of embarrassment about the topic of the status of the occupation. Although everyone remained polite, no commitment was made to a budget, a vegetable market or compensation (or even an agreement to barter for materials). P. knew all the details of the history of the occupation and had taken on board all the information about Bairro Limpo TB. She was the one who was leading the discussion with W. and the lawyer on some more legal issues. When we got out, we went for a drink in the “boteco” across the street. I was very disappointed; my inexperience of such situations and Brazilian political contexts had created expectations. P. was wearing a brave smile, and W. and his Brigadas colleague already seemed very happy to have gotten so far: negotiating as equals,

202 putting TB on the municipality table no more as a problem but as a potential, was already quite an achievement.

“The mayor stopped by to say hello,” said P., proudly.

“They liked the idea of vegetable production and hygiene,” added W.

“They agreed that we could set up a place to recycle the objects under the electric pylons.”

Where I only saw the reality of no commitment from the municipality team (their empty pockets resembled empty political promises) P. and the Brigadas saw that their words had been listened to. A place had been made available, won at the meeting table, and the possibility of negotiations was open.

***

A point was beginning to appear to me more and more clearly. A deep anger emerged with this new, darker perspective: Riberão das Neves had been described to me as the city where outcasts, rejected by society, gathered. It is well known to be the city of prisons for the Gran Belo Horizonte region. In Brazil it was too expensive for families to travel far to visit their loved ones in jail on a regular basis. As a result, neighbourhoods (favelas) would be created by the families of prisoners. The favelas would be made of recycled scrap materials. The families are almost being treated in the same way as the prisoners and are kept imprisoned between their poverty and their desire to see and support their loved ones in jail. They are poor, rejected by society, and condemned to live on the margin of society. The Tomás Balduíno occupation was by definition outside of society, illegal: the scrapheap of rejection. What was I getting into? What was I embracing? We were dealing with the garbage of the outcasts! Everything that the reigning and ruling society tried to hide, to push as far away as possible, or even bury. Would putting waste at the center change perceptions in the community and outside it, allowing value creation processes to emerge, new collaboration flows, respect, dignity to emerge from waste being transmuted into a new product and a new central objective?

***

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Back in the community a small gathering was formed around P. and W. The inhabitants present knew that the meeting with the municipality had taken place. The expressions on their faces were both inquisitive and worried.

“So, what happened?”

“Well, they didn't give us any money, but they received us and listened to our requests.”

“We'll be able to put the recycling hut at the entrance, next to the pylons?”

I noticed some questioning expressions and saw that some were against this idea.

It was only afterwards that P. confirmed to me that in fact for the occupation of this place, the setting up of such a hut would require the authorization of the “dono de droga”. I didn't know who he was. Like a child who doesn't know but thinks he knows everything, I said to her full of my ignorance of such community codes: “When can I go see him?”

“You can't! We'll go and we’ll tell you afterwards what happened,” replied P.

It was only later that I understood the danger of knowing the “dona da droga” personally. Not particularly him as a person, but mostly because if he had to come out of his anonymity because of someone from outside who could identify him, that would become very dangerous for that outsider. Hence, for me.

The following week the authorization came for us to start cleaning the area where W. and F. would display the recyclable items they would collect.

The collections had started over the past two weeks, of general and common waste. In parallel W. and F. started as well to collect the financial participations of households which was close to 70%. And that was very encouraging.

5.1.5 Peripheral centrality

His chiseled face lit up when I asked him to show me and explain his gardening techniques. He was an old man who lived alone on one of these sloping streets; he greeted us each time with a very strong coffee prepared in a brown “Coador”. He lived in a small house and had the finest garden in the whole neighbourhood. Each time he spoke of it with the same joy, proud of having

204 his own garden. He would then encourage me to go and work with a pat on the back; that was his signature.

I met his neighbour as well, a few houses away who showed me her aromatic herbs: basil, rosemary, coriander. Next up were the fruit trees and each time, as though she had just rediscovered it, the acerola cherry! Excited, and walking a little clumsily on the grass of her garden, she showed me a crate, where she bred worms, and her terracotta statuettes. It was her little world, and she was proud of it.

We had been there for almost six weeks every day, and we were invited, with W. and the collection team, to enter their homes, their intimate space. They showed us the containers for the different types of waste, talked about the new expertise they had gained, and above all took us to see their garden. They were proud to introduce me to some local vegetables and flowers, and to the interior of their home, often built from scratch, usually from recycled materials...

Almost all the organic waste was now being recycled, transformed into compost or sold for recyclables, such as aluminum, paper, plastic, etc. The compost was used for private gardens and vegetable gardens, with part of the produce being sold on the market. The rest was transported to a municipal collection point. The streets and surroundings had become clean again in a few weeks, two catadores living here had gained a job, and almost all the families were paying R$5 per month and per house. Everything was going better than we had expected, and there was a sense that something more had happened than just the development of a waste management system.

During the visits, people called out to us in the streets, inviting us to their homes, treating us as one of them, and clearly feeling proud: their achievements, their home, their contribution, their sense of belonging to the community. It was not our project. For each of them, it was theirs at an individual and collective level. Here again we had an example of a community from the South that was not ashamed of waste and who did not see waste workers as having lesser social status. Many of them had had either worked themselves in waste picking, recycling or were in contact with ‘catadores’. At the meeting, we had talked about waste first and foremost, but their pride was not limited to waste or its management. It had turned into an environmental commitment, and it was based on and strengthened a social organization, a political struggle.

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The movement had begun with the most external, the most peripheral agent. Waste, what is discarded, what is hidden, what is of the least value, had taken on a more central role in the community. First, the waste was recycled, a source of shared compost and income. From pollutants the waste had become a natural contributor to agriculture, and then a source of pride and a contribution for the community to a common and widely talked about project, the object of a collective decision and the participation of each individual. By individuating itself, the “Bairro Limpo” project had become trans-individual, it had contaminated other spheres and dynamics, and participated in the individuation of the community and its members. And of the researchers too.

Moving from the periphery to a more central place, from rejection to a source of dignity, from something hidden to a source of value, from linear consumerist logic to a more circular economy, the transformations were spreading and gaining traction.

5.1.6 Indirect jobs, value creation

The meal was delicious at Tia J's. Her adorable little girl passed us the plates, and everyone would serve themselves. The meal was like Sr J's coffee, a sacred step into a social bond, into the Brazilian culture and even more with the feijoada ‘mineira’ (feijao arroz, beans and rice). And the cuisine of Tia had its sacred sides, with the wonderful gustatory quality of its typical dishes (‘frango com arroz e feijao’). There were lots of subtlety in the tastes, created using the typical ingredients of the region. Everyone around the table was smiling. The silence of the hungry workers was soon replaced by belly laughs and jokes, which filled the air in the modest little house at the upper end of the community. A sofa and a few mismatched chairs to welcome us, and a smile on our faces, and love expressed in extraordinary home-made “caseira” cooking. The two catadores were delighted. There was lots of chat and joking. A feeling of intimacy emerged from the dishes were eating, and a few beers.

Later I spoke to Tia about creating her own company, a small local restaurant. She became very shy, not thinking that her cuisine could be good enough to be successful, to meet people’s expectations. The idea was that a start-up fund could be set up with funding from the UFMG. It could be part of a longer process of value creation purpose, maybe linked to entrepreneurship.

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This extra activity would demonstrate the potential of autonomy for TB. A community kitchen for the whole of TB, for the whole community.

“That would be nice”, W. said. “And Tia would be happy.”

I left Tia’s house smiling at her and imitating Donald Duck to make her little girl laugh, which worked every time.

***

T. was welding the broken wheel of the collection cart, using his professional gear, set up in the trunk of his car.

I asked him how he ended up in this community.

“I arrived here a few months ago. I think this project is important for the community. Helping out is the right thing to do. It’s my way of giving something back to the people that are doing something good for us.

For me, participating is a way into the collaborative and self-sustaining mode that the community is working on.”

At the end of the project’s implementation I came back with a few gifts.

“Oooh thanks, I never had any pictures of my children.” said this mother in front of F.'s house, always very shy but very touched with the pictures of her two boys who were playing kite in front of her house. “This is a great gift for them,” confirmed W.

Each house that had participated significantly received a plasticized pamphlet setting out the activities created during the almost two months of the project: recycling, composting, cooking, and sewing in the community (with the names and contact details of the person running the activity).

I took great pride in the final month of my presence on the TB Bairro Limpo project in January 2015. That was because of the pride on the faces of the people who had experienced so much pain and persecution since their arrival at TB. The aim now was to assess the situation and to gather the views of the inhabitants. I was saying farewell and handing over responsibility to

207 others. I interviewed 122 households, families and persons. The intention was to find out which recycling and contribution practices had been acquired, and to receive feedback from the interviewees.

W and P. summed up the project, chatting with another strong coffee in their hands:

P. put it like this: “We now have two jobs up and running for the catadores, and the potential to use compost for private gardens and to reactivate the collective one. One family makes its living solely from their garden, and the project has boosted their activity. There are opportunities to sell the production locally too, mostly to the local school. A place is used to collect and stock recyclables, and clear markets have been identified nearby, and the logistics are possible, even though they are still problematic. This project has given us the opportunity to have new meetings with the Municipality from a situation of strength and pride. We have shown them what we are able to do, and how self-sustained we are getting.”

W. added: “And there is more potential with a community kitchen and a community seamstress. The communication and collaboration process has become stronger, with T. arriving and getting involved immediately by helping repair the cart free of charge; new people arriving are realizing that this collective sanitation project is important. This is quite amazing after just 4 weeks of implementation and 2 months for the whole process”.

After the 6 weeks of implementation, the full system of the project “Bairro Limpio” was running satisfactorily.

***

5.1.7 An unscheduled visit in 2017, three years after the project started

“It's the same one you gave us three years ago.” The father of the family was proudly showing me the plasticized pamphlet I had given him, and also showed me a photo of his family, with his little girl pushing a toy stroller. He went on to talk about their family garden and what they were selling, while giving me their contact details.

“We have changed a lot here”. His horta (garden) had indeed got much bigger, and the number of types of produce and vegetables had increased sharply. But there had been no link-up with the community compost collection scheme.

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We had come back to TB with my thesis director and his wife. The community was proudly showing off the levels of cleanliness and self-sufficiency it had achieved over the previous three years. The catadores had changed but the collection was still being done by two young people from the community. The financial participation per household had increased from 5 to 15 reis/foyer/month, which had reduced the participation to less than half (estimated by the interested parties).

In the car on the way back W. made a remark whose full significance escaped me at first.

“A few weeks ago a representative of the municipality of Riberao das Neves cited Tomás Balduíno as an example for its independence and sustainability in terms of sanitation, especially for its waste management system. This happened in a big urbanization meeting in Belo Horizonte dealing with the global urban plan of the city and its surroundings, encompassing more than 5 million people.”

I turned to Jean-Luc, my thesis director, and Isabela, his wife:

“I just realized that this means official recognition for the exemplarity of this project started up by the community. It is the start of legitimation for Tomás Balduíno.”

***

5.1.8 Ghosts of history: a past built on clear inequalities and on the institutionalization of outcasts. With theatre as a catalyst

The long history of community spirit, a very powerful collaboration that existed in pre- Columbian times, based on trust, was imprinted as a spectrum in the present, in people and in lifestyles. But at certain times these contacts were particularly intense. Theatre is often a catalyst for such moments.

Without there being any link between the two series of events, Zé, one of the members of the theater troupe of Isabela (the wife of my thesis director, who accompanied us on this return to TB), had staged a play in the “occupation”. The play presented to the community featured the story of the Caldeirão de Santa Cruz do deserto, a piece of land in northeastern Brazil, portraying people who were working together. Caldeirão de Santa Cruz do Deserto was a community led by Beato José Lourenço, under the leadership of Padre Cícero, in the 1930s. The region, in the midst of a

209 drought in the sertão de Ceará, had only one well: the “Caldeirão”. This community was known for its organization: work was distributed amongst all the members of the community, excluding all forms of exploitation. Sharing and cooperation were at the heart of the community, in stark contrast to the organization of other farms. Local and national powers were totally opposed to this peaceful occupation, and knowingly spread the rumour of a rebellion: a “New Canudos”. The community was bombed in 1937 by two military aircraft, a massacre ordered by the governor in office at the time: Getulio Vargas.

The year 2017 marked the 80th anniversary of the episode, of which all trace was removed from official historical records. The play was about this collective invention of a way of life.

Everyone was free to relate this play, this piece of common history, to the struggles for land, housing and rights in Brazil. However, the play was performed at a crucial moment for the community, shortly before the judgment was scheduled about the status of the current occupation. The court hearing was to be held in the state capital of Belo Horizonte, quite a long distance away. Most of the people of Tomás Balduíno did not own cars or any other transportation means, and yet somehow the majority of the community managed to get to the court and attend the hearing. The play had the unexpected effect of mobilizing the entire community to represent their interests at the official decision-making hearing of the judge on the occupation. Zé said that it was rare in cases of this kind for people to be present in large numbers, and that this would impress and probably influence the judge.

W. explained to us how this mobilization had undoubtedly influenced the judge's positive attitude towards the status of TB. He was confronted with many determined faces, not tables of figures and accounts of illegal occupations. Even if the people were not allowed to speak, their faces spoke volumes. They told, as much in their singularity as in their multitude, of the solidarity of its members, their attachment to their piece of land, to their community, to their way of life, and finally their dignity. The community had gained a face that, in Levinas' expression, shouts: “Don't kill me!”.

***

All these emotions were bubbling around inside me: the project was going on, sustained by its own energy, no less than three years later. Sr J., the old man who invited us in for coffee,

210 had died, and his wonderful garden was abandoned, as seemingly was his house. Some families recognized me and invited us into their homes, which was a moving experience.

The process of exemplarity, and legitimization, opened up a lot of hope and opportunity: self-structuring, pacification of favelas, creation of job values at much lower costs than the projects of the Brazilian government. Here again, the integration of waste and end-of-life products had unpredictable, positive and much broader consequences than the project itself: beyond a health project, the project had taken on a social and human political dimension, the impacts of which were immensely stronger than I could have ever imagined.

Of course, nothing was won on a purely legal and political level, but it seemed to me that in their heads the inhabitants of TB after three years had won their right to live on their land, to cultivate their garden in peace, to enjoy beautiful flowers, roses just for the pride of smelling them, admiring them and showing them to visitors.

“Look at my roses, even in a poor neighbourhood, an occupation surrounded by a trench, they grow beautifully”, their smiles seemed to tell us.

Figure 18 – Private Gardening and new cart for local “catadores” in Tomás Balduíno

I continued the visit, following W., feeling a little stunned, without really knowing what to do with this information, these emotions.

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5.2 Tools, models and data: Community data from Brazil

5.2.1 122 semi-structured interviews from Brazil and 5 unstructured interviews

In January 2015, some weeks after the implementation of the full project had finished, we returned to TB for two weeks. The objective that time was to gather information from the local people: a mix of facts, figures about collection, waste generation, typology of waste, and feelings describing motivations to act towards engaging, feeling empowered by this sanitation project. We managed to carry out semi-structured interviews to verify the acceptance and participation of the project which had continued further to include regular collection for almost all families (86%), a ‘recycling galpão’ (local recycling spot) cleared and a shelter built for large recycled objects (old fridges, washing machines...), with the rest of the collection sent to the municipality waste management system for disposal.

Our return made it possible to carry out 122 semi-structured interviews that covered most of the 150 local families. While our main source of knowledge came from direct experience, and actions, decisions and discussions made together, these interviews allowed us to evaluate the project on a participatory basis. Only aspects regarding the outcomes and some aspects of internalization were included, as well as unforeseen perspectives.

The non-directive interviews were mainly used to triangulate our findings from an autoethnographic perspective. In particular, they provided additional evidence of the importance of the project for the community: “We are very proud: dealing ourselves with our waste, educating ourselves, our people” (Community representative); and for integrating people, like a new settler explaining that as soon as he arrived he wanted to help in the project as much as he could with his own expertise, welding the “catadores” cart for free, as a gift for belonging. These statements bore witness to the centrality of waste management as an issue for the community and of the positive dynamics that followed the inception of the initiative.

The main elements of the systematic evaluation are summarized in Table 13.

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Table 13 - Synthesis of 122 semi-structured interviews done in Tomás Balduíno in Jan. 2015

RESULTS OF SEMI-STRUCTURED INTERVIEWS JAN 2015, Tomás Balduíno, RIBERAO DAS NEVES, REGIAO METROPOLITANA DE BH

QUANTITATIVE QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Response Avg Comments How many people live in this house, per family? 100% 3,85 (avg. nb. of pers per house) Approximately, how many kilos of waste do you think your family produces per week? 100% 1.92 Kg

What is the income per family? Minimum wage in Brazil R$812,2 2015: R$ 788; 2018: R$ 954

QUALITATIVE QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS (MOSTLY YES OR NO) % based on the answers not taking into account “does not answer”

What type of waste are produced? Mostly organics, plastics and glass

Where and how are the waste stored? % Yes No Doesn't know Response

Usage of bins, plastic bags? 100 100%

Inside or outside of house? 100 100%

Do you separate organics for composting? 100 29,6%

Is waste management important in your community? % Yes No Response

For environmental questions? 85,2% 85,2% the rest

For sanitary questions? 100% 100%

How can waste management be improved in your community? % Yes No Doesn't know Response

Specific laws on waste management? 100 95,24 4,7

Better collection of waste? 100 96,3 0

More taxes on families producing waste? 100 44,44 0 55,55 "More the rich” In your opinion, waste separation should be an obligation? 100 76,9 7,7 the rest

In your opinion, recycling is the correct thing to do? 100 100 0

What is the importance of waste management in your community? 100 85,7 16,7 the rest

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Table 13 shows the high level of participation among the occupation population in the waste management system. Most of the questions were answered with 100% response rate (first column). Then the averages can be compared to national statistics like average wages, average separation rates. All the education efforts achieved an 85% awareness level, which is unexpectedly high for a community in a poor and precarious situation.

Of particular interest was the willingness to pay (WTP) of the vast majority of the community, at a much higher rate than other wealthier household communities, measured in terms of median salary level (included in the chart) and property tax. In our case, the fee was of 5 reis (€1.35) per household (housing an average of 5.6 people, many houses including more than one family) with an average monthly salary of 812 reis (€219). This clearly evidences buy-in and approval from the community and indicates the depth of their concern about the need for local waste management. Another aspect here that is shown by the qualitative results from the further five unstructured interviews: the importance of the pride this project generated at individual as well as collective levels. Pride is a core motivation to participate, to engage, to be empowered.

5.2.2 Two later visits to the Brazilian project, later interviews and visits to evaluate the lasting impacts

Another visit was conducted in November 2017 with W., our key collaborator in the project, allowing us to dialog with several families. We could evaluate the continuity of the project for clean streets, a working recycling process, composting and collective orchards, two employed catadores, and we conducted three further unstructured interviews. Photos and videos were made, showcasing the state of the project. This visit three years later showed ongoing persistence in maintaining cleanliness. The streets of Tomás Balduíno remain ordered and clean thanks to regular collection, with some improvement in tools achieved through basic technology and local donations (new lighter cart designed that was donated by a local steel company in collaboration with new catadores from the community). The self-sustainability of the collection process was still independently paid for by the monthly fees paid by a majority of households. There was also pride among many inhabitants about the productivity of their private gardens producing vegetables, fruits, flowers. Likewise, the growth of the commercial orchard which was the sole revenue of the

214 family working it, and the revival of a similar community site. The feeling of pride and togetherness was still very strong despite the ongoing pending threat of expulsion.

An architect employed by the municipality of Ribeirão das Neves had recently presented the community of Tomás Balduíno as an example of collaborative community self-organization in the area of sanitation at an urban policy conference. His characterization of the waste management organization as an exemplary model helped give it wider legitimacy despite it being in a community on illegally occupied land. An outcome that public institutions had refused to acknowledge.

In November 2018 a new visit with the new person in charge at the city of RdN as well as a student of UFMG gave us the opportunity to see the progress made and undertake new interviews.

5.2.3 A conference at UFMG, and a meeting with A. the new UFMG master student taking on the coordination of Bairro Limpo, at the last visit (4th) to Tomás Balduíno, November 2018

I met with A. during a conference I was attending at UFMG, on circular economy in one department and affects in research, presenting a chapter written about our experience in TB with Bairro Limpo. A. was the new student, although a mature guy in his late 30s, that had taken over the coordination of the sanitation and self-sustained projects in TB. He was living in Riberao das Neves nearby, as well being an active member of the Brigadas Populares, and of the municipality, in one of the environmental commissions.

“We are following the project you started at the beginning of the “occupacao”, but extending it everywhere opportunity arises, focusing now more on urban agriculture.”

We got funding from an organization in Salvador CCS, for the new cart for collection.

We started to collect compost from the houses, especially the houses not using it for their own garden. But that organic material changed destination and is now given as food for the pigs of the two catadores. This even though not creating direct value in compost that could be reused for community gardening was creating a value in terms of efficiency of organic waste collection

215 and one of the most efficient bio-digestion processes. The manure of the pigs could be used for gardening in the same way and sometimes with higher agricultural values.

Two extra persons from the community showed up to help as well in waste collection. The project was expending as well in number of job creations and interest from the community itself. The project was scaled up also when the collection started to grow outside of TB itself, with neighbouring ‘bairros’.

There was a project at the beginning to create dumping sites, but since we opted to aim at Zero-Waste, there was no need for dumping sites anymore. We asked the funding organization to shift funding to a new collection cart which they accepted. In March-April 2018 collection started outside of the community as an extension of the same system of Bairro Limpo and TB catadores. Organics and recyclables: logistics to sell them were a problem since the local recycling brokers were quite a long distance away.

“Yes, I remember we had managed to clean a plot to separate and regroup recyclables before they could be sold, but it was in the open air,” I added.

“Well we have now chosen a new spot inside the community, close to 100m2 which is a great size for the separation, stocking of recyclables and a new artisanal activity. The old “galpao” was close to the other community, in the part called “campinas” and there had been exchanges of gunfire with the “favelinha” on the other side, called “Gaza Strip”. It stopped all the recycling activities for a while.”

These people of TB are stigmatized as lazy, outcasts, and useless. And yet they separate well, work hard, in one of the poorest regions of Brazil (one of the lowest income per capita of the state), a lot more than in richer areas. But the catadores have been telling me recently that they do not make a living out this recycling activity. The sell 2 truckloads a month on average, but this does not generate enough revenue to sustain them. This lack of revenue generation with recycled material is a problem.

The new artisanal activity is starting with the use of glass bottle to make cups. Glass recycling is of such low value that it does not make the trip to recycling sites worthwhile. So, this activity generating work is good.

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Another activity is coming for seeds. We are getting many seeds and reusing pots to sell them. We have built a co-op to sell them.

As you can see over the last few years the community has not only grown in size, doubled in fact, but also grown in creating its own value and self-sustainability. It is now supported and encouraged by the municipality, and indeed held up as an example to be copied.

“Yes like the ‘revolucao dos Balduinhos’ in Florianopolis which is the example Chico wanted me to follow. It is now an example of collaborative schemes for poor communities and their self-sustainability, urban agriculture and sanitation that has gained international reputation and prices” I added.

5.2.4 The notion of contribution at the core of this process of self-sustainability for the community of Tomás Balduíno

It seems to me that one of the core values created through this process has been a pride. Pride at individual as well as at collective levels: pride in having a home, of taking care of it, pride in having a clean community, of dealing with waste in a proper way, done by local catadores.

There is a collective pride as well, in taking decisions together. A pride of doing alone or with the others, feeling you are doing the right thing, going from awareness to action. Pride in contributing actively to their daily lives, to their communities. A feeling of pride to contribute, that seemed to keep people alive, when faced with the hardships of poverty, the stress of the owner’s harassment, and the police. Pride in being the ones considered “outcasts” that in fact deal better with waste than the rest of the town!

Taking a macro perspective, this process of pride from individual to collective action, from awareness to taking responsibility is an empirical step towards the construction of new societal models.

In our case study collaboration leads to co-creation, co-design, cooperation of different communities, competences, ages, empowering everybody who wants to, to contribute. A world of meaningful communal relations. The main problem being in such a context the loss of responsibility: individuals are not responsible for polluting, parents are not responsible for the education of their children. The “American way of life” can be seen as the utmost dangerous 217 consumerist world: dangerous collectively for the environment, individually for a loss of rationality which ultimately makes us unhappy. “Systemic stupidity”, as Bernard Stiegler calls it.

The alternative and way out of this agony of consciousness is sharing. Sharing knowledge, know-how, about doing and living. More knowledge of life, more taste for life, leading to individuation.

A process of triple individuation from vital/ natural to technological/artificial to psycho- social/organizational. This implies sharing responsibilities, and new ownership rules. Hence the definition of a new societal organization paradigm: the economy of contribution being built on the automatisms of co-implication. In this tech economy, 'work' can emancipate itself from the abstracted, alienated and measured activity that consists in the execution of programmed gestures, in the pushing of buttons upon a surface one can't grasp or hack: hacking is an exemplary self- driven activity that reinvents work, creativity and meaning (Stiegler, 2010, 2015).

The moral crisis of our society is a result of developments in the technical organization of society. Technics generally are forms of the materialization of experience and the ‘spatialization of the time of consciousness beyond consciousness’ (Stiegler, 2016). In this theorization the question of economics becomes one of externalization and exploitation of forms of human memory, of libidinal economies and economies of attention.

Internal and external factors of contribution to society here become a process for the creation of new paradigms to societal organization placing human consciousness at its core.

Understanding the factors that instigated collaboration allowed us not only to replicate and improve the waste management process but also to manage further these processes, fostering foster collaboration in various layers of communities, mixed with different competences, even different cultures. From waste management to management of collaborative innovation, the lessons of social innovation have given a new perspective that can support such needed changes.

Here contributions are made by “amateurs”, i.e. person that do not exercise labor but ‘love’ for what they are doing and contribute according to their know-how. Compensation is often not in the form of a salary but what they get from what is made in common, and from the community thus created. By participating, they not only improve their skills but also their quality of life, and their “knowledge of how to live”. Contributing to sorting, recycling, educating about waste, is a 218 contribution to the community, whose compensation is not only monetary but also knowing that one is contributing to the constitution of a better environment and community constitution.

Integrating waste pickers into the solid waste management system might not always be efficient or even preferred by waste pickers. If local recycling markets are weak or if the waste collection or sorting needs of the city do not require extensive labor, waste pickers might be more productively employed outside the waste management system. Since waste pickers often lack skills for alternative livelihoods, external employment requires social support and vocational training to ensure a smooth transition.

Job retraining or skill-building programs, in combination with social support programs such as in health care and child education, can support adult career transitions and minimize periods of vulnerability. Although the personalized attention and resources needed to support alternative livelihoods can be substantial, when provided properly, this support can help break the cycle of poverty for several future generations. An example of education reducing waste picking is that of the conditional cash transfer program, Bolsa Familia, in Brazil (Dias 2008; Medina 2007). It entailed giving a financial incentive to vulnerable families for sending their children to school and resulted in more than 40,000 children leaving waste picking to attend school.

5.3 Lessons learned

The major lesson of this last project of my research was the totally unexpected result we discovered in the 3rd visit, 3 years after implementation: the intervention in a public urbanism meeting of the Great Belo Horizonte conurbation, mentioning the exemplarity of the occupation of Tomás Balduíno. This gave it a sense of legitimacy that we had not thought of. The efficiency in waste management had become constitutive of a self-constructed organization, the setting of a co-designed system that had been fully embraced and take on by the community and was reaching a self-sufficient stage, alleviating the sanitary risks of municipal structures, reaching a level of organic, political communication (Marques, 2016).

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 Legitimacy, suggesting the possibility of a legal status  Waste and waste management as a constitutive organizational element  The reintegration of Waste and waste management at the core of the nascent community organization, defining its strength and collaboration, with a cooperative model.  Value creation model building direct economic activities (now up to four catadores, composting for the community, efficient collection of waste, cooperation of all layers of the community) and indirect economic activities (artisanal coop).  Values including non-fiduciary aspects like pride (far removed from the 1st level of Maslow)

5.3.1 Role of the chief/ representative of the community

Here again, like in the project in Bolivia, the role of the coordinator of the community P., has been key in order to enter the community itself, to be heard, to understand the flow going on within the community, to speak to the right people, to build local teams, to negotiate with the local drug dealers.

The personality of P. probably made the contacts and the process of the project unfold most probably faster and more smoothly, with a level of engagement and community empowerment that could not have been achieved otherwise.

In the case of this project in TB, in Brazil many more figures appeared to be assuming leadership roles.

F. and the first four young men that had started the ocupacão had a role of leadership and a legitimacy to speak and their opinions were listened to.

The “Dono de droga” was a non-spoken, non-visible leader but who informally, illegally had a very important role in the community, as a ruler as well as a dealer.

The owner or owners of the land also have played and still play an important role through their position of opposition since the beginning of the occupation. The conciliation hearing on the 13th June 2019, regarding the Tomás Balduíno Occupation (Ribeirão das Neves, MG), where more than 300 families live, ended without agreement between the parties. Despite the support of the

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City Hall of Ribeirão das Neves, all city councilors, the Public Defender's Office and the Public Prosecutor's Office, the so-called owners of the land denied all alternatives presented by representatives of the occupation and by state agencies. Faced with this intransigence, it is up to the judge to decide what should happen to the illegal occupation, a decision to be made in a few weeks.

The proposal discussed during the hearing was presented by the owners two years ago. In other words, the authors of the proposal themselves went back on their promises. When questioned by the judge, they did not present any justification for the refusal, nor any alternative for the resolution of the conflict. Meanwhile, the families are still standing their grounds. Resisting and building a new form of city. And they are willing to fight to protect their rights and dignity.

All these various forms of leadership regarding the land of TB are playing a pivotal role in the constitution of the community, its cooperation, collaborative schemes, its self-sustained organization, and structuring, whether for legal matters or for the sanitation aspects that became central in this process.

5.3.2 A democratic and participatory decision process

The quantitative reflections from this case study lead to participation and pride. We wanted to know if, following the project’s implementation, the preoccupation with waste had been internalized in the practices, representations and conscience of responsibility. In January 2015, we returned for two weeks and managed to carry out semi-structured interviews to verify acceptance and participation in the project which had continued further to include regular collection for almost all families (86%), a “recycling galpão” (local recycling shed), and shelter built for the large recyclable objects (old fridges, washing machines etc.), with the rest of the collection sent to the municipality waste management system for disposal.

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5.3.3 A specific and collaborative/participative economic model: each house pays for a waste management service provided by people from the community itself: community contribution and auto-sustainability

Here I am going to present a revision of the model developed in Bolivia, more focused on organizational elements and the formalization of processes. Qualitative reflections: from concern to responsibility and actions.

A young community member recalls how “the first four young people started this community, occupying the area in mid-2013, and it went well... They were free to embrace the green areas and wanted to preserve them” and prevent them from becoming garbage dumps. But now, all the new settlers and would-be settlers are required to take part in the community-wide waste management project.

Direct results were fast: the implementation of separation at source and collection were a success. From the first week, a commitment was made in community sessions: collection three times a week of the two categories of waste by the two local catadores. The dry, or non-organic fraction was first sorted into recyclable categories and the rejected material was disposed of in a specific place at the entrance of the occupied land, where the municipality waste truck could pick it up once a week. The wet/organic fraction which represented 50% to 70% of the volume of the community waste was fully reused either as wet compostable waste in every house in private gardens or in the garden of a family producing and selling fresh vegetables. The community garden was not operating at the time due to insufficient community support. Another vote also set an agreed monthly fee for the community for collection. The vast majority accepted 5 reais (€1.35) per month and per house. A clear willingness to pay (WTP) and a fair price for dignified work. The project then led to the hiring of two local catadores to carry out the collection sessions. With a dedicated team of two persons, complemented by two external persons (the UFMG student and myself), the collection gained more and more legitimacy. The recurrence of such visits to the households, explaining the goals and ways to separate waste, to reuse, appeared to be an effective educational tool, overcoming fears and barriers as well as spreading the word in the community and further building momentum.

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Waste collection was becoming a collective act, building pride in a clean and organized community, even though that community was not officially accepted and in fact illegal. As the two catadores put it: “every house felt proud of participating.” I was impressed by the level of participation, to define priorities, share ideas, build possible solutions. I could see solidarity, social cohesion, hope, willingness to stand up for the community. A significant indicator was the weekly payment, the regularity of which could be tracked by the accounts kept by the catadores. For collection, large objects were the most valued ones (especially when made of aluminum, the resale price being the highest of all types of waste). We checked the market opportunities available in the surrounding neighbourhoods both for the objects to be recycled and for the vegetables produced. The two local catadores proved to have very useful professional contacts that facilitated links to the local commercial recycling market.

Other community activities generating value came indirectly, as induced effects of the recycling: community cooking for example, and community sewing with recycled fabrics. Non- fiduciary gains included the growing connections with the community decision and implementation process: a feeling of solidarity, of dignity, a willingness to participate, to act, to improve their own environment for the good of all, was starting to emerge. I could feel it in the smiles of people when we were doing the collection tours, the way they were inviting us into their homes with pride and joy, to serve us coffee or water.

Negotiations with the municipality of Riberão das Neves were carried out in parallel to negotiate their financial participation: compensation for the work done by the community as a redistribution of the public service delegation costs (waste management and public health risk protection costs saved by Riberão das Neves municipality), and a place to store the recyclables and prepare them for selling to the local recycling market. At the municipal office, a team of institutional employees received us politely – some of them were really interested in the project but all were reluctant to commit to financial and legal subsidies, or compensation to Tomás Balduíno, an illegal community. It would be a way of legalizing its existence, which was not in the hands of the municipality at this stage. Yet public health was also a major concern and not constrained by land tenure problems. They wanted to keep on incentivizing the project but without official subsidies. Very few official organizations had managed to achieve positive local results

223 tackling difficult problems of waste with self-sufficient approaches, even in much richer neighbourhoods.

As for the recycling shed, the agreement ultimately needed to be re-negotiated with the “dono da droga” (head of the local drug dealing network), by intermediaries, as I was not allowed to meet him in person.

“We could now negotiate with the municipality, with local shops, with institutions, directly” says the community representative. It brought a legitimacy to have a voice outside the occupied land, progressively erasing the status of the outcast. This evolution was subtle, and gradually grew throughout the life of our project. Nevertheless, waste had become a cornerstone in new organizational developments, and a source of community strength gained through collaboration, inter-dependence, solidarity and care, according to various representatives of the Brigadas Populares.

5.3.4 Motivation and values: Eco-political and pride factors are linked/ intertwined

Our visit three years later, November 2017, showed the ongoing persistence in maintaining cleanliness, leading sustainability and exemplarity. The streets of Tomás Balduíno remain ordered and clean thanks to regular collection, with some improvement in tools achieved through basic- technology and local donations (a new lighter cart was designed and was donated by a local steel company in collaboration with new catadores from the community). The self-sustainability of the collection process was still independently funded by the monthly fees paid by a majority of households. After three years the recycling of the organic fraction had been consolidated. Successful management of the organic waste generated increasing pride among many inhabitants about the productivity of their private gardens producing vegetables, fruits, flowers. The people we had met three years ago were happy to meet with us again, to describe their experiences, including their growing activity in their new gardens (one family had a “market” garden, and also a private flower garden…). Along the same lines, we witnessed the growth of the commercial orchard which was the sole revenue of the family working it, and the revival of a similar community site. Many traditional and improved method for local organic composting have been

224 developed in Brazil (Inácio & Miller, 2009). The feeling of pride and togetherness was still very strong despite the on-going pending threat of expulsion.

An architect employed by the municipality of Ribeirão das Neves had recently presented the community of Tomás Balduíno as an example of collaborative community self-organization in the area of sanitation at an urban policy conference. His characterization of the waste management organization as an exemplary model helped give it wider legitimacy despite it being in a community on illegally occupied land. Up until then, public institutions had refused to acknowledge this fact.

5.3.5 When waste is placed at the center of the project, it works: this reinternalization of waste was key to the success of the project, which is still running 3-4 years after its start and our presence within the community

Through this sanitation project we witnessed global changes in the community at the organizational, collaborative and individual levels.

The process of collaboration reinforced through weekly votes allowed a faster integration of local teams for collection and recycling. As well as the creation of collateral social activities like community cooking and sawing.

The process of organization through the sanitation program and waste management implementation became structuring inside the community itself, setting up collaborative processes, and fostering pride and dignity.

This organizational structuring by the re-integration of waste at the center of community activities - establishing priorities, creating values (firstly fiduciary) creating new jobs, directly and indirectly and social individual values like dignity, cooperation – collaboration had unexpected results like raising hopes for the legalization of the occupation. This led to a strong engagement of the whole community to follow the legal process.

Another process that was noted was a movement pride in belonging and in pacification.

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And this is one of the most important results, that can raise hopes: the reinternalization of waste creates value and jobs, but also sets in motion a trend towards the pacification of a community habitually plagued with drug dealing and violence.

5.4 From a personal perspective

This was a different experience, in a totally new context for me: an occupation, a favela in one of the most dangerous suburbs of the city of Belo Horizonte. The negotiation with the ‘Dono da Droga’, the connection with the volunteer team and the local representatives, as well as the community as a whole. I could feel the influence of the people and of the process of raising self- sufficiency growing in me.

A process of learning together created a sense of humility in me, and a sense of equality with the members of the community participating in the project. It is as though we were at school together, discovering new things and learning about them together. And there was no sense of establishing a hierarchy, or a structure of domination. No-one was looking at other people with a sense of superiority or trying to control them.

Another very important element of success of these projects at least from my perspective has been my perseverance in learning the local language. Even though my Malayalam will never be good, it will always raise a smile and elicit a sense of respect on both sides.

There was respect for the local culture on my side and a clear willingness to integrate the culture, while on their side there was respect for the effort I was making.

5.5 What is still missing

To many, waste management is basically associated with a deeply rooted cultural conception of waste as the dirty byproduct at the very end of the production and consumption process, that we need to eliminate or dispose of through technology that keeps our hands clean, and so that it can be buried and forgotten (Hird, 2013). This conception is profoundly rooted in our culture (Douglas, 1966).

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We were wondering what the internalization of waste management in the center of community life, in particular, could trigger in terms of the handling of waste, community building, and society itself. Based on the case of the occupied land of Tomás Balduíno, where a participatory research project was conducted and where waste management became central to that community, we saw how this more central position enabled waste management in a community at the margin of the margins to achieve meaningful economic, social and political outcomes, such as job creation, community strengthening, identity construction and steps towards the legalization of the occupation. A community at the margin of the margin was cited as exemplary and deserving attention.

While this research is based on only one case, we contend that it shows how the internalization of waste and waste management can help invent new organizations that are not only technologically efficient, but also economically sustainable, socially caring, which build dignity, and which are politically empowering. Even in a very poor community, we found a willingness to pay, to participate and to transform waste management into economic opportunities, social solidarity and political engagement. But this requires waste not to be rejected and buried, but instead to become part of social activities. To be not only a cost object but a resource for reuse, and for organizational transformation. “What now impels the increasingly forceful spread of the solidary economy is no longer the demands of the victims of the crisis but a far greater knowledge of the social, economic and legal strategies for the implementation of the solidary economy” (Singer, 2006 p.40).

Further research is needed to better understand the various dynamics that internalization of waste may trigger, their possibilities in different contexts, and their interconnections with more classical approaches to waste management. Political reflections are also needed to better assess the kind of economy that could emerge from this action.

According to Sloterdijk (2011), societies are structured to immunize themselves against what they think is threatening them. Today the threat is probably less that of waste than that of our way of managing it, by burying it, forgetting it, rejecting it to the periphery. However, faced with major global environment threats we are being called to invent new co-immunities, i.e.; new communities, structured against the dangers posed by waste. Such a co-immunity might well require the contribution of all: north and south, politicians and inhabitants. 227

Were less at the margins, waste management processes could be more influential in society. Including scavengers in all parts of waste management, from collection, separation and transformation of recyclable material to the re-education of consumers would present an opportunity to recover their livelihoods. (Gutberlet, 2013) At the same time, scavengers could educate and disseminate information regarding waste reduction, resource recovery and the social benefits of organized, selective waste collection. A cooperative movement of catadores, other workers and marginalized families could help them to free themselves from poverty through solidarity, as shown by Singer (2006). The integration of the informal sector into municipalities can be made by co-ops, self-sustained communities, or even Private Public Partnerships (PPP) in waste management.

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Chapter 6 Discussion

Wall calling for Love in Rio de Janeiro

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Chapter 6: Discussion

In this chapter we discuss the collaborative learning experience that unfolded over seven years of research with a focus on the lessons learned from the three case studies and the implications that these have for the questions that were raised in the earlier theoretical chapters. My experience as a researcher working with the three communities was transforming and gave me the opportunity to imagine new ways to deal with waste and to collaborate inside and outside of the dichotomies discussed in Chapter 1.

The world is facing a problem of plague proportions due to its increasing generation of waste in multiple areas. As discussed in Chapter 1, we are in the midst of a global pollution crisis but the greatest impacts of this scourge of waste are being felt most strongly in communities at the BoP where there are no sanitation services. While the three cases reveal that waste poses different social, economic and environmental problems for communities at the BoP than those in the global North, what really stands out is how these three communities engaged with waste differed significantly as well. Thus, a major finding of this research is the impact that internalization of waste had on the three communities I worked with. An internalization of waste far greater than typically observed in countries in the global North - and that opened up possibilities for its management, and further for community empowerment. Gilbert Simondon’s process of autoindividuation sums-up nicely the mechanics of what happened when waste was placed at the center of the three communities. Internalization brings different spheres to communicate and initiates a set of individuation and transduction processes. As such, the findings not only have important implications for waste management efforts in other marginalized communities, but probably for the global North as well. My personal conviction after seven years of intensive study of waste and waste generation is that most of the problems in developed countries come from our perspectives on waste, as described by scholars such as Hird and Douglas in Chapter 1. These communities from the global South show the potential of a change of perspective (which may be valid for the North).

We will first elaborate on key lessons from the three case-studies in this research, then use a Simondonian perspective to make sense of the process of internalization of waste in the

230 communities, detail implications from value creation, to collaborative models to a framework for community empowerment among others.

6.1 Key lessons from the three case-studies

It is clear from the various charts and other findings in the three case studies presented in the preceding chapters that some of the reasons behind the challenge of waste and insights into resolving its management are beginning to emerge. In this section we will discuss the key lessons from each case study. One of the early aims of this research was to understand value creation in waste management and we will discuss what was observed in the three cases. We will then look at some unexpected and indirect outcomes that may have important implications for waste management in communities at the BoP as well as globally.

6.1.1 In India: spiritual representations of waste overcoming very strong social taboos

Amma, the spiritual leader of the community in which the first case study took place, provided me with the initial impetus to undertake research in this area of waste management. Moreover, she played an important role in the success of the pilot by helping the community to internalize waste and to rally around the waste management pilot.

As detailed in the chapter on the Indian case study, waste is regarded as impure and untouchable in conservative Indian society. An object that falls to the ground should not be touched by anyone except those from the lowest social caste who are themselves condemned to be ‘untouchables’ as a result. In a country where large numbers of people struggle each day to obtain the basics of life, this cultural taboo prevents much needed access to serviceable clothing, shoes and the like from second-hand markets.

These kinds of deeply rooted social taboos are difficult to shift. For people to let go of them in a very conservative part of India requires something bigger or more important to take precedence. In this first case in India it was the guidance from Amma, a highly respected spiritual leader, that fostered those cultural changes, placing love for Gaia (mother nature) higher than their long-standing cultural beliefs around waste. 231

6.1.1.1 Community leadership and a common goal

Amma helped her followers to see beyond their taboos about waste. Her followers committed themselves to seeking connection to a supreme spiritual purpose through daily action (their goal). In this case Amma focused their efforts on the spiritual importance of waste management. Seeing foreign sevites follow Amma’s counsel to deal with waste directly helped to influence the local Indians, showing them that it was possible to break the taboo around waste and to achieve good things such as cleanliness and spiritual fulfilment as a result.

Amma’s guidance to her spiritual community was that we need to overcome our stigmas and cultural hindrances around waste. Her spiritual message about the importance of preserving Gaia and that ‘cleanliness is holiness’ quickly became the shared objective and goal across the community. From the students at Amrita University who instigated the project to the foreigners at the ashram who next came on board, and eventually to the other Indians at the ashram.

The role of Amma as a leader was clearly a key to the success of this project. Particularly her message through karma yoga and other daily spiritual practices in the ashram, monasteries, universities and wherever else her guidance was followed. Her edicts around cleanliness were communicated directly to and among her followers, as well as indirectly to other people influenced by her followers. As noted earlier in Chapter 3, the Amala Bharatam campaign was also likely influential in the national campaign of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan of Prime Minister Modi. The importance of Amma’s actions in sowing the seeds for change raises the important question of whether an initiative like this could be replicated or scaled-up without the guidance and leadership of someone like her as an essential ingredient.

6.1.1.2 Waste and waste management at the centre of the spiritual community

It was amazing to witness the shift in mindsets, from externalizing waste to internalizing it, in a region where long-standing and powerful taboos that preclude the handling of waste should have made such an outcome impossible. Waste went from something unpleasant handled by a lower caste at the fringes of society, to a central place in this spiritual community. First on the ashram side then on the university side across its five campuses in south India, and eventually also in surrounding communities.

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As an act of volunteering and as an act of devotion, ‘cleanliness is holiness’ became the common uniting vector for change and was instrumental in facilitating action at the individual and collective level. By placing waste at the center of the society, its members were able to treat it appropriately and feel pride in helping to create a more pleasant, clean and healthy environment for themselves and their community. This could be considered as Amma’s first circle of influence: her message of cleanliness and respecting mother Gaia, and recycling, cleaning, reusing, integrating the 7R’s at the hierarchy of waste, was directed and shared at the individual level of her devotees and monks, be they westerners or Indians. Beyond this we can see a second circle touching the wider spiritual community at the ashram level at Amritapuri and other spiritual communities around India and the rest of the world, as well as other university campuses. To this end we can see how this influence spreads further to other communities, including at the political level as in the example described in Chapter 3 of Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India.

6.1.1.3 Collective mobilization

From the initial efforts of the students, it was incredible to observe the collective capacity for waste management growing and transforming an entire community. From externalizing waste and its management as work fit only for untouchables, to internalizing responsibility for dealing with it. Amma’s actions having made people go beyond taboos, initiating a process, where something very powerful (and not totally controlled by Amma) took place. I have learned the power of representation, the importance of initiating (not planning everything) and how a project can spread so quickly. Waste went from being buried, outcast, forgotten and a social taboo, to a central and visible activity for everyone in the community.

There was there a tremendous strength and power moving people to work together that I could not understand or explain at first. Going from handling waste as a problem blocked by old habits and taboos to making a change that ought to have required a lot of system redesign time and effort, and seeing more and more people expressing motivation and willingness to contribute in such a short space of time was impressive. In short, I felt the strength of collective mobilization being born around me. It became apparent that another force was emerging from the community itself through the interactions between more and more people encouraging and persuading one another into embracing a new mindset.

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It is important to note that it was not a design of some smart solution by experts that explains the success of the cleaning campaign on the ashram or the university sides. Nor was it what we, a few Westerner sevites, following Amma’s guidance put in place at the start that explains the end result. Rather, it was the collective mobilization of effort that grew from small beginnings into a community wide effort. Something much bigger was at work. Something that was not designed from the outside, but which emerged from within.

What I saw here could be described as the opposite of outsourcing. Waste management was an issue that the community became increasingly aware of after it was placed at the centre of the lives of its members. They started to act upon and deal with the issue themselves as individuals and with their neighbours collectively, appropriating waste management practices at their disposal to transform waste into new sources of energy, compost, materials for local markets or new products. Placing waste at the centre was the seed for this change in the way that waste was conceptualised. Growing awareness started conversations that began a process that changed negative and deeply rooted cultural taboos about the way that waste was supposed to be collected and handled, including by those from traditionally high social castes.

I see this huge potential for change (which Simondon calls “change in phases”) as much a challenge, where unexpected results, collective action emerge naturally rather than by deliberate engineering. This raises an important question: How can this sort of mobilization be encouraged? Or rather, can we understand and contribute to the emergence of such a mobilization, given that wanting to “stimulate” could be repeating “northern, western” interventionism, and externalizing solutions?

6.1.2 In Bolivia: the spark coming from an incentive

The Bolivian project started in a very different setting: a challenge between two friends passionate about social change and happy to learn together. One being the director of a local Bolivian Foundation, the other a PhD researcher exploring pragmatic implementation of waste management projects in BoP communities. No spiritual master in this case, though I felt all along that my PhD was guided and inspired by Amma.

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The place itself was on the border of Bolivia and Brazil. A far more hellish place better known for drug smuggling and prostitution. Surrounded by the green haven of South Pantanal, one of the richest ecosystems on earth that is becoming polluted by illegal toxic dumping practices and lately huge Amazonian fires started primarily from the Brazilian side.

6.1.2.1 Internalizing waste management through economics

The surprise in the Bolivian case was that after a promising start and a slow burn, the project rapidly grew in scale. This occurred once the wider San Antonio community internalized the problem of waste and brought it to the center of the local economy. Momentum rapidly grew once the project was linked to resale of end of life products through local waste dealers, local artisans and recycling companies from Bolivian and Brazilian sides, followed by regional companies who recycle at major scale high value waste like cans and metals. The economic links were diverse and even included local organic food producers looking to buy organic compost.

Some other economic elements were logistic, such as the offer of free freight for recycled products with a local train company running from Puerto Suarez to Santa Cruz. This made the products more competitive in the marketplace, and more accessible than those crossing the Bolivian-Brazilian border illegally.

6.1.2.2 An incentive coming from the community

One unexpected indirect economic link was the rebate offered by the local supermarket to families that participated in the cleaning and waste separation at source project. This incentive was pivotal in engaging the local community. While the amount of the incentive may have had a different impact on individual participants according to their level of wealth, the incentive had a psychological impact; linking a financial reward to reinforce cleaning the space around dwellings and the surroundings neighborhood.

The Bolivian case shows that incentives can play an important role in engaging local communities in decentralized waste management actions like separation at source, decentralized composting, reusing products deemed to be at the end of life, and encouraging local rag-pickers and recycled product dealers.

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The purpose of incentives is to encourage a change in behavior in relation to waste generation and management. The idea being that the incentive can be withdrawn once the target population have formed stable new habits. The problem with incentives is that behavior changes sometimes do not endure once incentives are removed. Moreover, their use can undermine intrinsic motivation to do the right thing for its own sake. In the case of communities at the BoP, the need for voluntary participation is necessary but incentives may have a place in boosting participation in specific areas and for short periods of time. For example, if significant manpower is needed to clean a site in a short period of time.

The fact that the initiative fell away when the budget to pay the collection team ran out when I left, indicates that economic incentives alone may not be enough of a driving factor to sustain a project. In this case there was a slow and modest inception leading to a larger community success with some replication efforts, before a rapid collapse once the incentive was removed.

6.1.2.3 From a community that did not deal collectively with waste to a global campaign

When we started the project in Puerto Suarez, Bolivia, a few residents were able to access a twice-weekly collection arranged by the local municipality in a few places. However, there was no community-wide waste management system. One of the major sites for the municipality collection system was adjacent to the town market where waste was dumped indiscriminately in cement tanks. The municipality then dumped the waste at illegal dump sites near the outskirts of the town.

The municipal service could be characterized as “shoveling shit under the carpet”. The fact that such quantities of waste were accumulating in vacant land between the two cities had very dangerous consequences including toxifying the environment through putrefaction of accumulated waste, leakage into the soil, local groundwaters, and ultimately the lake waters around the South Pantanal eco-system which are sources for drinking water, irrigation for local farming and the flora and fauna in a fragile ecosystem.

The local population were at different stages of readiness to support the waste management project. Various local people like Marian, the OTB representant of the community chosen for the project implementation raised concerns and were keen to organize clean-up efforts. However, the

236 case shows that much of the population took some time to come on board. In any event, their positive reactions, participation and solidarity are indicative of the way that the project was received and its likelihood of continuing.

Compared to the Indian case, the implementation of the project required various layers of stakeholders such as Rene and FTE, Juan Alex, Marian the OTB of Barrio San Antonio, a few key local participants, some local entrepreneurs, schools and universities, the local newspaper, TV and radio.

The collective effort seems to have grown through iterative influences, with one positive action influencing the other like a snowball effect. This suggests an element of positive peer- neighbour-pressure as mentioned in chapter 4 and not dissimilar to the emergence of a community wide effort in the Indian case.

A positive impact of seeing their “barrio” being cleaned up, with cleaning by local people, changed perceptions within the community, including among youth who had been involved with antisocial behavior like drug-dealing, alcohol abuse, etc. What could have remained just a campaign became a grass roots movement of people cleaning by themselves after two weeks of regular collection by the FTE team. People stopping the illegal burning of waste in front of their homes, becoming more aware of their own responsibility with their own waste, their capacity to deal with it at their own level and to join forces to clean up their neighborhood.

A collaborative impact mostly at the level of the community, with few external agents like FTE and myself, fueled by unexpected economic starters.

6.1.3 Brazil: structuring impact of waste management in a community fighting to exist

The third case involved the squatter community of Tomás Balduíno in a semi-urban area of Gran Belo Horizonte, the main regional city in Minas Gerais, Brazil. The project began as an endeavor to use basic environmental technologies and community mobilization methods to help a poor community to overcome local pollution and sanitary problems and to grow its capacity for self-sustained sanitation. Our departure was largely driven by technology and economics, but we soon saw the limitation of this. Opening up the collaboration to the social and political dynamics

237 of the community is what brought the project to life and allowed it to evolve beyond anything I had imagined.

6.1.3.1 Capacity for self-organisation

Despite the precarity of its legal situation, this community was able to self-organize relatively quickly to tackle its problems. Using the democratic decision-making and voting process that it had already developed in order to fight for its survival, the idea for a waste management initiative was formally presented to its members and a collective decision was taken to physically locate a new sanitation project at the center of the squat. It was pitched as a collective project that would involve everyone (internalization in the social sphere) in simple separation of household waste and paying for collection services, thereby creating employment for local rag picking catadores.

What stands out here was the orderly collective process for decision-making and action in a squatter community that ironically, has little or no legitimacy in the wider Brazilian society. Paradoxically, its members seem to enjoy greater hands-on involvement in community decisions affecting their daily lives than that afforded to the rest of Brazil through its mainstream version of ‘democracy’.

6.1.3.2 Positioning waste management at the centre of social, economic and political life

As with the two previous cases in which responsibility for waste management was internalized, the project was positioned at the center of community life which proved very effective in transcending the four externalizations described in Chapter 1. Waste management was connected to the social, political and community dynamics, but in this case, it was also integrated into the community’s broader fight for legitimacy and survival. Many avenues were explored, and some success was achieved in engaging the municipality to support the waste management initiative. This not only enhanced the latter, but it indirectly caused the wider municipality to formally recognize the community and give it a degree of legitimate standing.

Placing the project at the center also had noteworthy positive collateral impacts. These included the revival of a community garden, instigation of a local composting initiative and growth in household gardens earning income in some cases, by selling surplus production outside the 238 community. Internalizing responsibility for waste management also had a powerful psycho-social effect: it made waste management a respectable social responsibility and obligation that each household agreed to pay 5 reis per month for, which in turn gave dignity to those who processed the community’s waste.

A valuable and unexpected benefit of the waste management initiative was that it came to help improve the peace and quality of life in area subject to dangerous criminal activity. The employment of a catador who had just left prison created an opportunity to support his rehabilitation and re-integration into the community: “I could not pay rent anymore and this is the only place where I could afford to come”. Improving the aesthetics of the public space and stimulating various activities that helped locals to generate various legitimate sources of income, fostered an environment where crime became less of a necessary means of survival. As Colon and Fawcet (2005) point out, with such interconnected dynamics, greater outcomes become possible although these are usually more complex and unforecastable.

This research was an exploratory search for collaborative community solutions. However, its outcomes surpassed my expectations. Especially concerning the high level of participation, the positive collateral impacts and its sustainability (to date). It is worth noting that this is the only case that has continued its waste management activities and objectives in the past five years since my formal involvement ended. The extent to which this community was able to internalize responsibility for waste management seems to me to be the key factor in why it did not lose sight of its waste management objectives.

It appears that this internalization entailed three dynamics: a shift in the social image and social narrative around waste toward a sustainability issue of central importance for the whole community; implementing waste management from the center facilitated connections with a host of other important social, economic and political objectives that allowed the project to draw upon wider resources and action nets; unexpected beneficial outcomes for the community that reinforced its value and importance to the community.

First, with the sanitation project, the image and status of waste changed dramatically. While most cultural representations of waste tend to make us reject it (Hird, 2013), the image of waste in this community shifted from rubbish to be disposed of (with an aura of dirtiness and shame), to a

239 resource with value: compost for community and private orchards, metals and materials with an economic value, etc. The social narrative moved from “hide your waste” to “contribute with the waste you produce”. P., the community leader, soon referred to this project as a responsibility to deal with the waste produced by the community itself.

Waste management became a sustainability issue and a major concern discussed and managed collectively by the community as important for the present and future survival of its residents. Waste became visible, discussable, and moved from an outcast position to a more central place in this evolving nascent community. Waste became a collectively owned problem for the whole community and something which its members accepted and exercised responsibility for addressing. Concern about the socio-economic future for a group of people consciously reflecting on their sanitation needs lead them to own and internalize the problem. I observed at the core of this effort, mutual respect among the community through the processes of collective engagement and decision-making.

Positioned at the center of community life, waste management became connected to wider encompassing needs and goals. The sanitation project was integrated into their own agendas and interests by various groups. First within the Brigadas Populares team itself, then with the representatives such as P., and then slowly with the wider community of Tomás Balduíno who were surprised but respectful of what this project was achieving.

These connections led to further unexpected outcomes. Due to the high level of community participation, this outcast community became both more visible and an exemplary case and model for other communities to follow. This success led to respect from the wider Brazilian society for the Tomás Balduíno community which is helping to pave the way towards legalization of their tenancy.

6.1.3.3 Pride as a powerful driving force: a critique of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

According to Maslow’s well-known hierarchy of needs, basic needs for the essentials of life such as food, shelter and safety always take precedence over higher order needs such as pride, dignity and beauty. However, members of this illegal settlement of Tomás Balduíno had no formal tenure over their homes, no access to municipal services and marginal protection from local Police

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– yet they showed tremendous willingness to invest themselves in a project that gave dignity to waste collection and which improved the aesthetics of their space and pride in their community. The abovementioned recognition from the wider community of San Antonio for what it was achieving was a source of pride for the organizing team and the community.

In fact, one of the first values that became apparent after the internalization of waste in each of the communities studied was a deep respect for the people doing the cleaning and waste management - be it a holy temple in South India, a neighbourhood, a school in Bolivia or an occupied land creating new spaces in Brazil.

Respect as well for that work of cleaning, separating, collection. From a respect for cleanliness, cleaning your own space to cleaning your own neighbourhood, to a respect for people doing it, be it at individual or collective levels. Which is I believe what led to a respect for waste and waste management, for rag-pickers, untouchables, catadores. It seems to me that it is that process of value creation that initiated a thread of creation of values: from respect to dignity as described earlier, from dignity to willingness. A willingness to be part of a new way of dealing with cleanliness, with dirt, with waste with people, creating as well new collaborative modes especially in the last community of Tomás Balduíno. And in each community, I observed as well the emergence of a feeling of pride of participating, a sense of contribution which seemed to enforce an individual and collective pride. That element of contribution, be it by participating to community meetings, participating to the waste management process, has led to a reinforcement of collective confidence, a stronger mobilization for the legitimation process of the squat of Tomás Balduíno. A mobilization which has driven local people to demonstrate at public hearings of the court judging of the legalization of the squat.

The impact of dignity pride and contribution is scarcely mentioned in the literature on waste management. It seems to me that pride and dignity go hand in hand with internalizing responsibility for waste management at both individual and community levels. In this case it was the pride felt by members of a community with no legal standing in taking decisions together. Pride among individuals exercising their own freedom to clean their environment and pursue their livelihood. Pride in having your own place, taking care of your own garden, planting flowers and vegetables for your own table, and earning income by selling the surplus. And perhaps most importantly,

241 pride in being able to pay for your own waste collection to financially sustain an important community good.

Together with impacts such as job creation and dignity for workers, waste management initiatives have the potential to improve the quality of life in communities. For example, in the Brazilian case, not only was the community turned into a more visually pleasant neighborhood, but it also became less associated with criminal activity. The three cases also evidenced the enhanced solidarity as well as non-fiduciary participation (‘gifts’) which come from a sense of belonging and pride in contributing to a community movement.

6.2 Making sense of the effects of internalization from a Simondonian perspective

What happened in all three field projects went beyond our expectations, and beyond what we might have thought. How can we give meaning to the scale of the results and the suddenness of certain participations? How can we make sense of the fact that the organization of the waste management has had effects far beyond its own circle, effects that are constitutive of the community? How can we make sense of the fact that many elements took shape during the projects without them seeming to have entered into a pre-established plan or having been directed entirely by a leader (Amma, P., W., the OTB, Rene, FTE, or myself)?

We did not and will not seek to give explanations, or propose a pre-established model, or a theoretical reading model, but it seems to us that one way to give meaning to the three experiences is to use Simondon's concepts. It may seem surprising that we refer to Simondon in this context. Surprising because Simondon did not talk about waste management, because he does not seem to be an author linked to the concept of Postcolonialism, and because we have not mentioned this point earlier.

Simondon is an author from the North, an author who promotes a technical mentality but he is also someone who has thought about technology in relation to society, humanity, sciences, religions and philosophy. We consider a Northern thinker, breaking outside of those dichotomies described and debated earlier in this thesis and because here we want to try to make sense of our learning. This is a learning process carried out by a person whose education has largely taken place in the North and who wants to give meaning to experiences lived with and in communities in the 242

South. So, I am not talking here as a representative of the Southern community. It is not a question of speaking for them but of the experience I had with them. If I have used Southern thinkers, for example on hybridity, it is in order to transcend my “folds of thinking”, and not to claim to speak on behalf of the South.

Moreover, the importance of Simondon’s perspective became relevant after the three projects had been completed. We are talking here about an analytical framework to give meaning to certain elements of the case studies that seem surprising, and not a theoretical framework that would have guided the design, implementation or mode of analysis of this research. It was at the very end of the analysis that its importance emerged.

And its justification seems to be above all that it helps us to form an enlightening view of these experiences. It gives meaning, without claiming to explain or express all of what they mean. Concepts like individuation, phase shift, concretization, technique, transduction, hylemorphism are particularly useful to describe and make more sense of what occurred. While thinkers such as Deleuze, Latour, Stiegler or Massumi pay tribute to the French philosopher Simondon, the latter has up to now had little impact on organization theory (exceptions however are Styhre, 2009 and 2017; Leonardi, 2010; Jardat, 2016) or entrepreneurship (with the notable exception of Styhre, 2008).

First of all, I must admit that I started the research, especially in the case of India, as a fairly traditional project management study. It is a question of starting with a “design”. In other words, to think about the form that the project should take, and to impose this form on the community issue. This is the most common way of thinking in the West, which was already described by the Greeks, and which they called “hylemorphic” (hyle being the material and morphe the form). Simondon criticizes our “hylemorphic” thinking. We almost always imagine action or change as the act of a constituted individual giving form to matter, as one would mold clay to produce a brick. Simondon rather invites us to imagine a craftsman confronted with a specific situation, a problem that he cannot fully resolve by the usual trick. He is then drawing from a craft tradition and from shared knowledge in order to achieve a solution. By inventing the adapted brick, he transforms himself and his technique, and his solution will probably be taken up by others, spreading through society, what he would call “transduction”. In this process, a transductive unity is achieved by combining “physical, technical and affective realities” (Mackenzie, 2002 p. 35). 243

And yet, this description might well already be over -individualized and over-agentic. Simondon is a radical process thinker (Letiche & Moriceau, 2017), and especially a thinker of individuation processes. Individuals, communities, and techniques, are not fixed entities; they are rather in the constant process of becoming, of reforming themselves in their context. It is a genesis of a proper form (individuation) from a state and a milieu which did not contain it (pre-individual) and which spreads to neighbouring elements (transduction). Individuation for humans is always psychological and collective (see Simondon, 1989). Stiegler would add that this is also a technical process. If there is a certain agency of individuals, groups, communities, a relative agency, this agency is not born randomly, but rather as a result of a process of individuation.

If I had to describe the cases from my position, it was because that was what I could testify to, and thus make the reader relive my experience. This writing can give the illusion that a large part of the agency came from me. With Simondon, there are rather different levels of simultaneous individuation, where the agent is as much the product as the producer of the process. It is therefore not a question of describing how an action led to an outcome, but of seeing how different processes connected to achieve change. The cases were described from my perspective, but they could have been described from the perspective of the community, their leader, waste, technological developments, etc.

Hence, when Simondon (2005) describes how operations lead to structural changes, to the passage from one state to another, the change itself is an individuation, a process that is invented and updated along the way. It is neither the community nor the individual who acts; the process originates and is accomplished in the trans-individual: “Actions are not governed by rules, but circulate horizontally, from close to close, from grip to grip, while people, things and collectives acquire meaning from their contribution to configurations of all kinds” (Bencherki, 2015 p. 129).

This perspective relativizes the omnipotence of the project manager or entrepreneur, and his central role in innovation and entrepreneurship, but it also limits an accountability that can become guilt-ridden and stigmatizing of the most disadvantaged. As Styhre (2008) put it, this enables us to think about entrepreneurship “beyond the individual” and to recognize the flaws of simply attributing an over-determined social process to one or more individuals’ activities and decisions: “The concept of individuation as the ontogenesis of a transductive unity is of interest to entrepreneurship research because it underlines the dynamics of individuation and the recursive 244 relationship between agent-structure and organism-environment, and their continuous exchange of information.” (Styhre, 2008 p. 110)

The main unexpected effects seem to have come from the communication of different processes. Communication takes on a very special meaning in Simondon's work. As he put it, “If the notion of Form deserves to be replaced by that of information, to be extended to all ontological levels of individuation (physical, technical, vital, psychic and collective), it is at the price of a reform of this notion of information and, first of all, of a reform correlative to that of communication” (Simondon, 2010 p.12). Communication is first and foremost connecting, coupling, in such a way that the two entities no longer function as they would separately. “Communication implies, in the most primitive sense, the bringing into continuity, by establishing a generally reciprocal coupling, of several individuals, or of several groups, or of several subsets of the same individual” (Simondon, 2010 p.42).

Connecting individual realities triggers individuation in all the connected entities (see Simondon, 1992). For example, in Barrio San Antonio, in Bolivia: families living in the same area formed a neighborhood but there were few connections. The waste management project drew together neighbors around a shared goal of cleaning, and these neighbors were connected to the project waste flows, notably via the rebate in the supermarket as well as the influence and engagement of the OTB Marian. These connections made some individuations happen, in the neighborhood, in the connections between people, and in the project itself.

It is probably far clearer in the third case in Brazil. If the waste management project remained as a closed system, exactly as the usual habit would command (waste has to be hidden, buried, disposed of, and kept invisible), then the dynamics that happened in the waste management sphere would not have spread more widely. Waste management was visible, even an object of pride: the sorting bins placed in front of the houses, the ‘catadores’ who talked with the inhabitants, and the compost that circulated or allowed the cultivation of plants and vegetables of which we were proud... The waste management entered into communication with the individual, and with the political and solidarity dynamics of the community, and each dynamic was thus brought to individualize. Making waste management more central means increasing the possibility of its communication with other dynamics.

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But these individuations do not go in one direction or another at random. Simondon talks about concretization. The concretization is the meaning of technical progress. It refers both to the fact that the function is carried out in a simpler, more integrated way, and that it is becoming more and more connected with the other functions, so that it is more and more difficult to separate one from the other. While the first few times, it was necessary to explain and persuade, waste flows became simpler and their management became more and more fluid and was considered normal. And above all waste management is becoming less and less a separate entity; the project has entered the community, it is part of it, it is less waste management than part of daily life in the community. What the projects have brought is not a waste management service. The waste management has become part of the daily life of the community, without having to be hidden and buried.

However, what cannot cease to surprise us is the speed with which it takes shape. In India, thousands of people are suddenly participating. In Bolivia, once the discount is applied by the supermarket, 37.25% of the community participates in the project during the 4th week of the project, the second week of collection, then 82.25%, a large part of which is outside the incentive of the discount at the local supermarket. In Brazil, it took less than two weeks for the project to become central. We are a long way from the slow penetration of selective sorting in Western countries. These abrupt changes in the way a system works are termed “phase shifts” by Simondon. Just as when a germ enters a mother water (‘eau mère’), the latter will take a specific crystal form at the point of contact, and then this structure will propagate and affect the whole environment. It is neither the seed nor the environment that has induced change but their encounter, which will then produce the milieu for future individuations: “The living entity is both the agent and the theater of individuation: its becoming represents a permanent individuation or rather a series of approaches to individuation progressing from one state of metastability to another. The individual is thus no longer either a substance or a simple part of the collectivity. The collective unit provides the resolution of the individual problematic, which means that the basis of the collective reality already forms a part of the individual in the form of the preindividual reality, which remains associated” (Simondon, 1964, p.12).

It is therefore not the project manager or community leader who alone causes the phase change. The medium, like the mother water, forms an already favourable or relatively ready

246 substrate. Suddenly the system starts to work in a different way. In Barrio San Antonio, aluminum waste or beverage cans were normally dumped in huge landfills, and this was what everyone did. Suddenly, much of this waste enters other circuits, and the transition from one method to the other has taken place in a very short time. And I must say that the transition back to the old habits, when the project no longer succeeded in mobilizing the inhabitants, was done just as quickly. The community can operate in one way or another, and it is necessary to find the series of elements that allows you to switch from one mode to the other. Bringing in the series of elements that will cause a changeover, particularly to engage residents, is far removed from project management actions or persuasion campaigns.

This means that there is already a willingness to participate for a cleaner habitat, a willingness to contribute against the scourge of waste and in favour of the community. It is not the project that gives rise to all this; it is in fact the project that acts as the grain of sand that will crystallize these wills, expectations and aptitudes. Similarly, there is already a willingness to pay for health services that would be available, and for some knowledge about composting, etc. The role of the project (after a preparation phase with the key people of the community) is not to create everything ex-nihilo, and to impose a new form composed from the outside to the matter of the community, but to bring about such a phase shift.

If the project represents an individuation of the community (as can see from the project, the members, and the researcher), then one of the key elements is what Simondon calls the pre- individual. The pre-individual is rich in all the potentials that can be individuated – once again it is a question of actualizing a potential and not of creating everything from scratch. For Simondon, the pre-individual is what is shared by the community, what is the most common (before everyone has individualized it in their own way). Here is how Simondon explains this use of pre-individuals (cf. Barthélémy, 2014): when the entity is confronted with problems and cannot solve the problem according to its current mode as individuated, then it will search in the pre-individual to try new individuations.

The pre-individual is thus this fund shared by the community and which can be mobilized for new individuations. This pre-individual fund is generally what is neglected by project management (Letiche & Moriceau, 2017). Indeed, the project tends to fight against acquired habits, or folds in ways of doing things. In each of the three projects, pre-individual elements of the 247 community were used. For example, spirituality, jugaad and seva in the case of India. But this is also the case in Brazil. The tradition of solidarity in building houses or organizing harvests, as well as that of self-organization to ensure survival together, form a pre-individual fund on which the project has been able to draw and build. We will be more specific and precise later on with the tradition of the mutirão and the past of the Quilombos later in this chapter. Rather than wanting to import and impose a model that is valid everywhere, the approach consists in mobilizing certain pre-individual elements to invent new individuations together. These elements have not been mobilized here in a functional and instrumental way. It was only in hindsight that we realized that part of the success in the commitment and speed of the spread of change resonated with deeply rooted and territorially specific attitudes and traditions.

As this pre-individual constitutes the common, the use of the pre-individual requires broad participation but in return contributes to the strengthening of the common, of the community. Waste management is not what is excluded, rejected outside, but it is that common problem that needs common ground in order to be solved. By finding a common solution, which ultimately benefits everyone, community ties are strengthened.

The mobilization of a pre-individual fund is all the easier because waste management is used as a technique, not as a technological solution. For Simondon, technology is human activity, a relationship to the intrinsically human world. The human being has individuated himself largely in connection with his techniques. We live with our techniques, which are an important part of the individual that we all are. In contrast, technology is the discourse of studying technical objects. Finding a technological solution to manage waste may reflect the fact that the community has learned a way to manage it, but the technology is largely expropriated from the inhabitants of the communities. And most often, these technologies are provided by entities outside the community. The technical know-how, and the possible individuations related to this know-how are lost. Simondon spoke of alienation, a theme that Stiegler would take up and extend (Stiegler, 2015). Separating man from his technique is in part alienating him. “I believe that there is something

248 human in the technical object, and that this alienated human can be saved on the condition that man is benevolent towards it. In particular, it should never be condemned” (Simondon, 198310).

To follow Simondon’s argument, it is a question of not separating work, technique and human activities. To this end, he promotes the development of a technical mentality, a willingness to understand the functioning of the techniques that surround us. Outsourcing waste management through technology is a “disconnect” between residents and technology. Outsourcing is a way of no longer understanding, of no longer being able to individuate in contact and to have a magical relationship with it: waste disappears as if by magic (“I don't have to worry about it”). Developing a technical mentality is about ensuring that all participants understand how what is being implemented works. The success of the project requires that everyone understands at least the basics of composting, perhaps some of the permaculture, and that everyone understands – in the case of Brazil – where their participation, contribution as Stiegler would say, their 5R$ goes...

For Simondon, innovation and invention are encouraged by a great proximity with technique, an attention to precise operating modes, to operating modes common to spheres or quite distinct scales (Carrozzini, 2011). Technique is the context in which individuation occurs and new ideas are generated. It is always in a technical environment that the members of a community or entrepreneurial ventures will individuate. The technique in return also individuates itself and become more concrete and effective.

While externalization tends to alienate and cut technical continuity, internalization promotes individuation. First there is the individuation of the technique. The technique is individuated to respond to the specific problems of the community, the place, and mentalities. Then there is the individuation of the participants. I remember the pride of a particular farmer who used community fertilizer to develop his vegetable garden, learned the techniques, found opportunities, and supported his family. There is the individuation of those who develop an

10 in https://sniadecki.wordpress.com/2018/09/09/simondon-technique/]

249 activity, whether commercial or not, directly or indirectly related to waste management. There is the individuality of the community, which becomes more integrated, proud, and uses the project as an additional argument to legitimize itself.

And I would like to add a point that is rarely highlighted, that of the individuation of the researcher (cf. Moriceau & Soparnot, 2019). During each project, it is my technical know-how that has been identified, but also my knowledge. And when it was necessary to write up these experiences, the individuation focused on the writing skills, and on the development of a reflection in contact with other writings. The reader will have understood that the path followed is not a simple research project. It is a path of individuation.

Integration is thus, unlike outsourcing, something that makes it possible to generate individuations. There is of course an additional outsourcing of which we have not yet spoken directly: that of outsourcing the nature of most human activities. Outsourced from economic calculations, it is also outsourced for many of our activities. However, it is probably by reintegrating nature into our activities that we will be able to produce the individuations necessary for the challenges of the anthropocene (cf. Stiegler, 2015; Roberts, 2017).

In summary, Simondon's approach allows us to reflect and give meaning to the three cases studied. The surprising aspects of the projects as well as the key learnings are in our view more comprehensible if we see them in Simondon’s terms. In taking his approach, we do not see projects as the imposition of a form on a material, in other words the imposition of a solution thought up on the outside and then applied to a community. We explained earlier our sensitivity against, and our doubts about, the approaches that are classified as postcolonial. What Simondon helps us to describe is an individuation of the project (which has not been totally conceived and controlled by the external advisor, and where everyone – inhabitants, community, project, researcher – individuates, transforms, and learns). The project is internalized in the community. Although it is a question of collaborative learning, we also see the full role and importance of the pre-individual (and which therefore existed in potential before the project). Change does not go against the ways of doing things, but by showing the problem, it encourages the invention of solutions by drawing on the pre-individual, on the pre-existing strengths in the community, and this recourse strengthens community ties. This could be a way of rereading the cases presented by Peredo, which in turn mobilized the singularities and strengths present in the community. 250

In this environment, rich in terms of pre-individuals, the project functions less by design and imposition than by provoking a phase shift, which can explain the suddenness and scale of the project. In a short time, waste management moves from one system to another. If things can be done so quickly, it is because they rely on the pre-individual. The individuations from this pre- individual go in the direction of a concretization, which leads to more efficiency but also to more integration in the whole community. The know-how increases and with it the possibility of new developments, which are generally autonomous.

In general, what Simondon allows us to see is the way in which externalization limits the possibilities of individuation and therefore risks being a source of alienation. Externalizing through technology cuts everyone's relationship with the waste they produce and prevents the development of techniques such as composting, permaculture, etc. The externalization of the production/consumption process prevents the mobilization of recycling, resale and more generally circular economy opportunities. The externalization of the community from waste management processes prevents us from taking the measure of the problem, from feeling responsible and from making it a collective issue. The externalization of the social aspect makes everyone hide and bury, preventing certain exchanges and inventions in common.

On the contrary, internalization brings processes into communication that are otherwise disconnected. It forces new individuations, which can then spread by transduction towards a collective learning of new waste management solutions. Internalization alone is not the solution, but it seems to us to be an extremely positive pre-condition for innovative solutions to be invented in collaboration, using the pre-individual powers of communities.

Now that we have proposed a theoretical framework to take on board on the surprising events that took place when waste was internalized at the center of communities in various contexts and situations, we can look at the implications these changes and impacts may have for those communities themselves but also, in a more macro perspective, for the rest of society as indirect effects and collateral impacts.

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6.3 Implications

The world is facing a looming pollution crisis, much of which is related to the four forms of externalization described in Chapter 1. In short, we need solutions that help move us beyond seeing waste as the valueless end of our cycle of consumption, or as something constrained by cultural taboos about uncleanliness that hold us back from engaging with it, or as something we hide by burying in landfills and the like, or as a problem in search of better technical miracle to keep it at arm’s length from us. The main implication of this research is that I encourage the internalization (four dimensions described in Chapter 1) of waste and allow the individuation processes take place.

6.3.1 Value creation in waste management includes more than just economic returns

6.3.1.1 Recycling and repurposing waste

Contrary to the Northern prejudices described in Chapter 1 that distance communities from their waste using mixes of centralized technology and high levels of investment, the three poor Southern communities that I studied successfully developed decentralized solutions that were “basic-tech” and far cheaper to set-up and manage, and all focused on recycling or repurposing waste in ways that turned it into something that had value.

Having directly witnessed during my previous voluntary work in recycling that the value of recycled waste was typically low, I began this research looking to better understand the possibilities for value creation in waste management. Coming from a managerial and financial discipline and personal background, I was initially confident that the answer lay in achieving a better financial valuation of waste together with improving the way that it is dealt with through better social engagement. For example, setting up efficient processes for sorting waste at the source to allow a higher percentage of recycling, especially for products and materials with a higher resale value like aluminium (cans), specific plastics (PET, milk bags etc.), cardboards and paper (which are easier and cheaper to recycle, transform easily into new products). This would also require a sound understanding of local markets for waste, data management, and logistical planning of quantities for resale across sites.

The value of recyclables varies considerably and, in many cases, makes waste collection, treatment or recycling efforts economically unviable. Part of this is due to genuine fluctuations in

252 supply and demand, but it is also a consequence of the systematic exploitation of poor and marginalized rag-pickers by unscrupulous merchants and the like. Medina (2008) reports for example that Brazilian ‘catadores’ are paid around 300 times less than corporate providers for performing the same recycling work. Setting a fair price for recycled waste materials and products is thus essential for efficiency and inclusion in societal schemes. The challenge in an unregulated marketplace is how to determine a fair price for recycled products and lessen the risk of exploitation.

6.3.1.2 Job creation

The potential for job creation in waste management is significant. Fergutz et al. (2011) estimate the cost to the Brazilian government for each job created in the waste sector is between R$ 3,000 and R$ 5,000, which is one of the lowest costs for job creation in Brazil. As such, a public investment of around R$ 178 million could generate 39,000 jobs in 199 cities.

Municipalities in the global South spend between 30 and 50 per cent of their operational budgets on waste management, yet they only collect between 50 and 80 per cent of refuse in their area of responsibility. The three cases show that the municipalities concerned were not dealing with waste in these communities at the BoP. The findings of this research show that these communities possessed significant capability. It stands to reason that their municipalities could have delegated or sub-contracted parts of this work to them directly. As noted by Medina (2007), innovative social organizations working with self-organizing communities, or a collaboration of formal and informal entities following the lead of this project, could reduce public spending on waste management, while also creating job and fostering much needed community development.

6.3.1.3 Prioritising waste reduction over recycling or reintegration

In recent decades there has been a view that the problem of waste generation was a consequence of linear production models and that shifting to a circular economy could help to reduce waste by reintegrating it as a resource back into the production cycle. However, as discussed in Chapter 1, the major flaw in this circular economy concept is that it favors large, capital intensive high-tech solutions that are threatened by long term reduction in waste generation. Together with requiring higher levels of municipal taxation to support their ongoing running costs and longer periods of amortization to offset the investment cost, these centralized industrial 253 complexes require large amounts of waste to maintain their economic viability. As such they, paradoxically, inadvertently encourage waste generation which goes against the first objective in the hierarchy of waste management and the 7R’s. This represents a major contradiction between the objectives of neoliberal notions of circular economies and the ultimate goal of waste reduction.

A good example of this are the Biogas-Biodigestor industrial recycling factories developed in Sweden, which continuously require high levels and high value types of waste, and for which waste reduction threatens the economics upon which they are based. As noted by Corvellec (2016), when levels of waste generation fall, so do their financial yields and economic yields. Hird (2012) has likewise observed the impact of the same sort of economic disincentive to the phasing-out of landfills in Canada. The essential problem with the neo-liberal conjecture that favours waste reduction through circular economies is due to an incompatibility of time scale and waste performance indicators. That is, it is based on analysis of short-term conditions, while ecological outcomes play out on much longer terms as noted by Hird (2016 p.1):

“A landfill's contaminating lifespan is estimated at hundreds to thousands of years, and nuclear radiotoxicity endures for upwards of 100,000 years, or 3,000 generations, making the consequences of this re-stratification indeterminate. This in turn draws our attention to the imprescriptibility of our ethical responsibility to future human and environmental sustainability.”

Accordingly, I contend that if there is to be any chance of a real diminution in levels of waste pollution and toxicity, communities rich and poor alike must make waste reduction a higher priority than waste recycling or reintegration through practices like frugal consumerism. This is not to say that the circular economy concept has no place in waste management, but rather that we need to be vigilant against inadvertently introducing perverse incentives that undermine the ultimate goal which is waste reduction (and not merely waste processing).

In the three fieldwork studies we saw examples where communities engaged in various composting of organic waste to produce an output that was either sold or used within the community to nourish and boost existing agricultural yields. These simple, low-tech solutions constitute a functional application of the circular economy concept, without any of the aforementioned perverse incentives that have plagued Northern examples.

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We have seen in chapter 1 how technology has been used to avoid touching waste or to deal with it personally, and to instead use complex hi-tech mechanical processes to take it far away from our lives. The integration of waste at the center of society as we saw in the three cases, brought it within the field of vision of the community where solutions to managing it could be more easily devised. A major step forward for the global North may well be to look at reducing the technical complexity of its waste management solutions and to bring them closer to the center of community life where people can become more active in dealing with it themselves. Composting, which is becoming made more commonplace, may be a good starting place for organic farming at individual and private levels as much as commercial entities. Florianópolis, the South of Brazil, where I am implementing decentralized community-based waste management solutions, for example became in the past months the first South American city to impose composting as a core municipal practice, and to commit to becoming the first Zero-Waste municipality in the coming years. The same applies to the issue of food waste where low-tech solutions based on community engagement, empowerment and training have already shown promise in dealing with it. The key in urban or suburban areas for municipal and other authorities is to develop the logistics that close the circle and return organic waste back to the soil in a cost- effective and environmentally friendly manner.

6.3.1.4 Willingness to pay

We accept that something is important in our system of values when we have to pay for it. In the case of Tomás Balduíno, I witnessed a willingness to pay for waste management by households in a very poor community. This willingness is an important economic factor for municipalities and other entities attempting to create, replicate or scale up similar initiatives.

6.3.1.5 From respect to dignity to contribution

An important aspect observed and fostered in each case study has been how respect of work with waste and people working with waste, developed organically. The integration of waste at the center of the community in the ashram and university in the Indian project is a sign of this respect, as much as the further integration of rag-pickers in Private Public Partnerships (PPP) in Pune, in Surat in north of India and indeed the structuring of catadores in Brazil and more generally in South America. The growing recognition of the role and position impact of the informal sector,

255 representing outcasted people working with waste is creating individual and collective values like respect, recognition at individual and collective levels and hence dignity. A consequence observed of respect and dignity around waste, around the community structuration around a waste management project in Brazil has shown a growing contribution. This contribution is noted at the level of people working with waste, collecting, recycling, composting and indirectly using recycled material but as well at the community level, participating financially as mentioned above, but also collaborating in meetings, taking decisions. A global movement of collaboration, of generosity like in the Bolivian example. This contribution is linked to pride of improving community livelihood, a feeling of stronger bonds through more collaboration, cooperation, a more selfless spirit of contribution like in the spiritual appeal of Amma, or stronger bonds to fight for the survival of the community of Tomás Balduíno. Some core elements are described by Peredo in the three communities she presents or even in the economy of contribution developed by Stiegler. It has been noted that these elements creating stronger bonds, a higher sense of community were also creating the conditions required within the community, giving hope for leading the way to pacification especially in cases of communities plagued by drug gangs and prostitution violence. Since there is no universal solution to waste management, nor to poor communities’ empowerment, it is necessary to learn and do with the community, which created dignity for local people, and becomes key to the success of the project. The incremental impact of those three social values, from respect to dignity to contribution has been a very subtle and very powerful lessons for me, as a researcher and as a person interacting with local communities in very different contexts.

6.3.2 Models of collaboration

The three case studies show what is possible when resources are managed by ordinary people for the common good of a whole community through collaboration and cooperation, especially when there is little or no municipal support. This is the very scenario described by Peredo in Chapter 1, in her ideas and theory on Community Based Entrepreneurship (CBE) drawing on her observation of pre-existing indigenous entrepreneurship in impoverished communities in South America, Peru and Ecuador.

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6.3.2.1 Community Based Entrepreneurship

Note here that Peredo did not try to facilitate entrepreneurship nor observe it develop from infancy but rather developed her theory by looking at how existing indigenous enterprises operate. As such, my three cases provide important dynamic evidence that shed light for the first time on the feasibility of her ideas and CBE model when it comes to creating indigenous entrepreneurship. Yet, the global community did not become an entrepreneur like in Peredo’s cases, but entrepreneurial dynamics emerged in the communities I worked with.

The findings from my three cases support Peredo’s (2003) premise that resourceful locals and a communal approach are the key assets necessary for sustainable entrepreneurship and development in highly marginalised communities. None of my cases were launched or sustained on the basis of major financial or other material assets. Rather, it was the willingness of individuals and their solidarity as members of the community that gave birth to what transpired.

The first, second and fourth proposition in Peredo’s model hold that CBE is an innovative community response that capitalises on local resources in order to address shared community problems such as social disintegration, poverty and environmental degradation created by macroeconomic, social, and political inequity. This was strongly borne out in all three of my case studies. The local people who participated in these projects all agreed to do so out of a personal and shared concern about the degradation of their communal environment. In the cases in Bolivia and Brazil, the local communities recognised that the pilot could be an innovative solution to overcoming their lack of political influence which had prevented action in the past.

The findings from the cases in Bolivia and Brazil in particular, support Peredo’s third proposition that impoverished communities’ need autonomy in order to manage the use of their resources, so as to address collective needs and improve local quality of life. The squatter community in Tomás Balduíno got together to discuss and agree on how much each family should contribute and how these funds should be used to initiate and maintain a waste collection and management system.

The failure of the Bolivian pilot to continue once the external incentives were removed is consistent with Peredo’s fifth proposition that the influence of external entities makes ongoing broad support from a community less likely. The corollary being the Brazilian case in which CBE

257 is created and self-managed by a community around a shared goal to address an economic and environmental need (proposition six).

My three case studies did not yield data that is relevant to Peredo’s seventh, eighth and tenth propositions, but they do align with her ninth proposition that CBE needs strong individual leadership with communal initiative. While all of the cases showed the necessity for capable and determined community leaders, this was perhaps best illustrated in the case in India in which Amma, the spiritual leader, played an indispensable role in encouraging her followers to adopt a different ‘internalized’ perspective on waste, both placing waste at the center of the communities (spiritual and universities), allowing new processes of waste management to take place.

6.3.3 Collaborative research partnerships

The findings in my thesis show that much is possible when we pursue collaborative action research with communities that is based on learning by doing to find local solutions using the participatory research methodology presented in Chapter 2. Essential to this approach is a premise that requires us to accept that waste management, community empowerment solutions are unlikely to be universal or directly transferable, but rather unique local answers that fit with and respect the particular mix of talents and capacities that exist in each community at a point in time. Indeed, it is this which gives rise to the creation of value at several levels. Beginning with waste itself, local innovation finds ways to turn this into something of economic value as discussed previously. But also, in valuing those who manage waste by affording them dignity, respect and appreciation for performing what is an essential community service that benefits everyone. This was a powerful motivating factor in all three cases. The findings from the three case studies show that the solutions were linked to economic value creating objectives but that they also integrated social aspects that created a deeper sense of individual and community value.

6.3.4 Towards a framework for community empowerment: linking economic and social factors

This program of research has been an iterative learning endeavor in which knowledge from the existing literature was examined in light of that which emerged and accumulated with each successive case study. Having observed how value can be created based on community collaboration allows some conclusions to be drawn and suggestions made for other waste 258 management initiatives in future. However, these suggestions should not be taken as universally applicable. Notwithstanding commonalities in poverty and injustice, it is clear from the chapters on the three case studies that each of the communities differed significantly in terms of their composition, strengths, needs and challenges – and all evolved in a fluid and dynamic way. So, as much as it would have been folly to impose the remarkable solution devised in India on to the subsequent communities in Bolivia and Brazil, imposing the ‘good ideas’ developed by any of these three communities on to others than exist in the world today would be to do them an equal disservice.

6.3.4.1 The concept of a ‘wheel of positive virtues’

Instead, there were important lessons along the way and useful steps that were followed during the project that suggest that community engagement and motivation to participate can be achieved elsewhere if they are kept in mind.

Proposing a framework may appear as a paradox: although I did not want to propose a universal model, I was willing to help and was involved in developing pragmatic solutions with the local communities which were meant to have practical implications. The wheel, coming back to a shift o circular approaches, is not a form to be imposed, but what seems to be able to facilitate the individuation processes referred to previously.

The interdependency of these elements forms what I would characterize as a “Wheel of positive virtues” conceptual framework (see Fig. 19 p.260). In summary, this begins with observing and engaging to clearly identify the needs and objectives and boundaries for an initiative, in order for a core implementation team to drive forward taking simple actions quickly over a relatively short period of a month or so, to engage with local people and to find opportunities for linking potential waste processing outputs to the wider market for waste management in order to create additional economic value for local participants. This conceptual framework can be seen in action in the way that the third case study in Tomás Balduíno, Brazil, unfolded (see Fig. 19 p.260).

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Observing and engaging

Our first steps focused on information gathering, finding markets for recyclable waste and identifying potential project ‘champions’ in the local community.

It was necessary to firstly understand the quantities and typology of waste produced and the limitations of current collection and treatment systems.

Markets, gaps and needs

We started identifying the current policies and waste management practices, and what was really needed, and identifying existing gaps, like separation of waste at source and either treatment of organic waste in households or locally in each area considered (decentralizing the steps of the waste management chain from collection to treatment).

To create value through waste management it is necessary to identify potential local waste markets (where/what/how different kinds of recyclables are sold), and any other potential revenue sources (transformation of recyclables to be sold in categories at local level). In this project, the current local market was already dealing with aluminum cans, cardboard, PTE bottles (full-size or compacted) and several categories of paper.

We looked at creating a recycling market for different types of compost and verifying with local organic producers their needs/prices/types of compost (windrow, vermicomposting, etc.), as well as the potential for creating artisanal products based on local demand, like shopping bags made out of recycled cloth, and other low tech solutions like converting plastic to oil, and reusing tires in the making of water tanks and playgrounds. The main objectives at this stage were to engage with a clear and consistent market for recyclables, to identify where and how to sell, reuse, and transform as secondhand products, local artisanal products, or even fuels (plastic to oil). All based on local Basic-tech solutions, operated and initiated by local teams, when possible using local self-empowered solutions (like the Juggaad concept in India described in Chapter 3). We confirmed the scenarios of the value chain (current flow of waste, disposal sites, local markets for compost, for recyclables) with local people in the field and with field visits.

Our second significant step involved engaging the community to create trust and interest, define local needs and to identify teams for implementation. We defined the parameters of the pilot

260 strictly to ensure it remained manageable. For example, a maximum of 2000 local participants, living in close proximity to each other, in an area no more than 5 by 5 kms, and who have expressed an interest, and a clear willingness to engage in cleaning up their local area and in recycling generally.

We sought to build a cohesive local team through the identification of community needs in partnership with locals from the community. This identified solutions that locals saw as most profitable for the community (based on local incentives, local governance and control, no high budgets that could be targeted for corruption purposes).

Dreaming together, pilot values and sustainability

Our third step-initiated group work in the community based on the legitimacy and acceptance of a local team undertaking the pilot project together with members of their community. The area was selected for its small / manageable scale, its local core of motivated people, and a community willing to change their situation.

The process was aiming at taking the community from awareness to responsibility and action: local people received training on best waste management practices and the dangers of local current practices (illegal dump fills, burning, sand road watering to avoid dust), and simple waste management processing (1 to 2 pick-ups door to door per week). Based on a flexible small budget and small teams, availability of a space to collect/recycle/compost and the setting up of a community space: a community garden managed by volunteers, games areas created for local children out of recyclables, and new housing made using eco-building technologies.

Education, simplification and replication

Our fourth step was to put in place simple processes for education and repetition, and a sustainable business model.

The process was kept simple by restricting waste to two segregation categories (organic/inorganic). We set simple education objectives (one flyer distributed every day in the start phase, with a concise explanation of the waste categories, incentives, and duties of neighbors living together). The waste management process was created to be as simple as possible with one pick up round per day of a third of the area (four hours from 6 to 10am), i.e. 2 pick-ups per house per 261 week. The simple uncomplicated model meant we could make minor adjustments in the light of difficulties or successes encountered.

Most importantly, we negotiated and finalized an agreement with the local Tocale Supermarket to offer rebates to project participants.

The miracle of implementation

Our fifth step was the full implementation of the project. The project team started work, collecting, recycling and working in the community garden every day.

An important consequence of a genuine community engagement process consisted of the many donations and other goods that began arriving after the first week of collection and promotion of the project: free use of a recycling area (roofed construction with two separate rooms, area for a one garden, and for composting), two tons of composted soil, free services from local businesses (cycle shop, carpenter). By the end of the second week, 140 families had registered for the cleaning incentive discount scheme with the Tocale Supermarket. Continual adjustments were made in the collection process and practices to improve efficiency where necessary, and the process was simplified wherever possible.

Community celebration

The implementation team presented the work that had been done and what had been achieved, providing inspiration to continue and extend the volunteering effort.

Figure 19 next page

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Figure 19 - Wheel of Community Engagement (source: author)

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6.3.5 Going beyond the externalization of waste

From Chapter 1 where Hird’s perspective on externalization of waste was introduced and through each successive case study, we have seen both the dire consequences of externalizing waste as well as the possibilities and solutions that emerge when people decide to internalize it and to bring it closer to the center of their lives and society. As stated by Hird, the difficulties that modern developed societies face today with pollution and the depletion and degradation of natural resources are a direct consequence of a tendency to hide and bury waste. By combining sociological and economic perspectives, Hird presents a compelling perspective of the hurdles that we must overcome if we are to develop new waste management approaches that internalize waste, starting from societal acceptance and centralization. Without wanting to present them as some kind of a universal solutions, internalization of waste and promoting individuation processes have proven key in the success of the case studies presented in this research.

6.3.6 Dismantling postcolonial hegemony

The distinction between global North and South is a reflection of a colonial past in which wealthier and technically powerful countries imposed their will on other countries and cultures for the purpose of pillaging their resources. Though most colonized nations have regained their independence, the countries of the North continue to impose themselves globally through frameworks that they created for international trade and law that are based on their own cultural perspectives. Signs are however emerging that countries and cultures from the South are standing up to this hegemony and seeking to overturn these post-colonial postures.

With the arrival of the first Indian/indigenous president in South America in the person of Evo Morales in Bolivia in 2006, followed by Rafael Correa in Equador in 2007 to 2017, indigenous conceptualizations of nature (such as bien vivir and pachama), became integrated into the legal systems of those countries and subsequently at the level of the United Nations as well. This was a pivotal act in decolonization and reversion of post-colonial postures, marking the end of environmental legal frameworks from Europe and the US in these south American countries and the start of a movement toward laws and regulations in sync with the traditional values of its indigenous cultures. That said, progress has not been easy with much disappointment around the

264 actual implementation and uncertainty about the political steps forward. For example, in fighting direct and indirect resistance from international conglomerates whose profits are threatened by these environmental laws.

As Douglas and Hird have argued, waste and waste management are highly dependent on culture and there is no one-size-fits-all waste management model because each and every community has unique history, strengths, assets, challenges and needs. The importance of sensitivity in this respect is why the aforementioned ‘Wheel of community engagement’ was presented as a framework rather than as a prescriptive universal solution. Efforts to implement waste management initiatives with other communities that use this tool should thus be executed in ways that do not just merely allow, but which capitalize upon the strengths arising from local culture and traditions. Coming back to Simondon, the individuation is done on a common pre- individual level. This pre-individual is what can be mobilized to find new solutions and produce collective individuations. There was certainly a pre-individual level in the case of Brazil, which I did not mention earlier because it was not part of the case description.

We can see the impact of local culture in each of the case studies presented earlier. Almost everything about the way that the case in India unfolded was heavily influenced by the cultural and spiritual traditions associated with that country. Looking at the case of Tomás Balduíno, Brazilian traditions in the context of land occupation around mutirão or mutual help (Duarte, 1998; McNee, 2007) and post-slavery African clannist solidarity (Bowen, 2010; Keisha-Kahn, 2007) played important roles in shaping how that project was undertaken.

Regarding the cases in Bolivia and Brazil, south America has very deeply rooted traditions of community cooperation as a form of social organization, stretching back to prehistory. Archaeological studies in South America do not show signs of developed market economies that are frequently observed in archaeological records of North America, where similar agricultural intensification and cultural complexity led to market economies on par with other parts of the world over past millennia (Goldstein, 2013). Instead, “embedded” economies were far more typical, in which reciprocity and redistribution defined relations between expansive agricultural societies. Pre-Columbian societies in the lowlands of South America enjoyed wide-ranging cultural interactions, exchanging agricultural species and practices, religious ideologies and economic practices. 265

After European contact, this particular kind of ‘embedded’ economy attracted economic experiments such as the Jesuit missions in southern Brazil and Paraguay that tried to create utopian settlements among Guaraní Indians, promoting community life, full literacy and arts (Vizeu et al., 2015). The hybrid culture that developed and which persists to this day, reinforced notions of ‘embedded’ economies to the point that the Guarani word “mutirão” has become the common word in Brazilian Portuguese for communal work or collective mobilization. In modern Brazil, “mutirão” is a practice commonly found in both rural and urban areas and is most prevalent in traditional communities at the margins of modern society (Vizeu et al., 2015). The ‘mutirão’ thus represents an alternative form of social organization, in which dominant values relate to social bonds, sharing and mutual aid, rather than competition, individualism or self-promotion. It leads to non-capitalistic organizations that organize themselves around ecological use of natural resources, communal use of territorial spaces, as opposed to monolithic forms of organization such as capitalism.

Negro solidarity movements are numerous in the history of Brazil, both before and after independence and following the end of slavery. Its roots can be traced back to African solidarity, within clans or villages, as well as group resistance in fighting for one’s life, or one’s rights. In Brazil, quilombos were hinterland settlements created by escaped slaves of African origin. Since the mid-1990s, the national quilombo movement has effectively mobilized rural black communities around the issues of landownership and the regularization of quilombo territories. Quilombo territories have become the medium of black resistance.

One famous such solidarity and resistance example is the one of Caldeirão Santa Cruz do Deserto, led by the black leader José Lourenço Gomes da Silva from 1926. It achieved a high level of self-organization and development until the 1937 invasion of Governor Getúlio Vargas, who used a military air-force aviation under the pretext of fighting communism. Mutirão and quilombo thus form an intrinsic part of Brazil’s embedded culture and tradition of solidarity, which is fertile ground for replications and other expansions of similar projects. Hence the potential application in Brazil more specifically of the various societal paradigms like the solidary economy, gift economy and self-sustained communities. The story of the Caldeirão and the play developed in Belo Horizonte and played in Tomás Balduíno, influenced the community to go and attend the

266 judgment on the illegal settlement which made a huge difference not only for the judgment itself but as well for the way the community evolved from then on.

The differences in the way that the three cases were approached and implemented by the communities was largely shaped by local socio-political history and cultural factors. Efforts to implement waste management initiatives with other communities will need to respect this. Indeed, the success of community waste management initiatives in other parts of the world will likely depend on how effectively they align with extant socio-political roots and are able to draw upon the strengths of the local culture.

My aim in starting this work was to try to improve outcomes for those at the BoP by identifying ways and means of helping these communities to address the dire problems posed by unmanaged waste. However, working in partnership with the remarkable people in these communities over many years has had the effect of transforming my outlook as a researcher and myself as an individual.

6.3.7 Research as a transformative experience

It has been always very difficult to get involved and at the same time to let the process happen and flow. I have always tried and stand by a principle learned 15 years ago with my three friends from TerrAtiva, and NGO in Rio de Janeiro where I worked in 2000-2001: “has nobody asked you for help?”. If they haven’t, they probably either do not want to be disturbed in their routine, they may not be ready, or they are not aware. That is where the fine line is: how to raise awareness and interest in taking action while allowing the process to happen without it being forced.

In the spam of 7 years I evolved from postures that were close to the consulting and corporate worlds I had worked for and learned from during fifteen years to a more spiritual position of acceptance, letting go and learning together. At the beginning I wanted to bring solutions with a posture of the one who knows, the one who leads, the one who imposes, and today I believe I have grown into a dynamic where I learn as much as I teach, overcoming hurdles of judgment, doubts (Germain & Taskin, 2017).

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I believe that the various steps of the Wheel of Community Empowerment are progressive steps that help set out the necessary fundamentals while letting the process of community engagement and ownership to occur and flow in the way that is both natural and appropriate to the local cultural context. First because each step involves local people. My own positioning has always been linked to my capacity to blend to include myself in the community itself as well as in the project with them. A part of this I believe was the effort I made to learn the language in each case which helped tremendously. Of course, my Malayalam is very weak and will probably always raise a smile. But I am convinced that it showed respect that is much needed in such projects. And then to work hard, collect waste with the teams, build sheds… always with the community and the workers.

Not to be the ‘doctor’ on the side with my computer or my notepad! This is another area upon which I drew from my own life experience. I was born in a ‘black’ island where all my friends were black, “métisses”, where color was not an issue among kids where I grew up, nor religion, and not in a colonial way. Sometimes in an inverse ‘revengeful’ way. I always tried to deal with it with using humor and speaking with people in their local language (at least a few words).

These key elements have always been pivotal: respect and bringing something to contribute to the community. This research which took many years of my life has taught me two things: humility to be ready to learn from local communities and the importance of giving communities the feeling that we were learning together at the same time, studying in the same ‘school of life’. A reciprocal feeling of inclusion that always felt good and indeed built a deep sense of true collaboration.

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Conclusion

Logo of the Project União com Rio Doce from November 2015 to March 2016, building a water harvesting system for a poor community highly affected by the Environmental and Human disaster of Mariana (5th of November 2015)

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7 Conclusion

This research explores what occurred when waste was placed at the center of three poor communities in India, Bolivia and Brazil. The research process, which took seven years, began in India with a grassroots level volunteering project that evolved into the beginnings of a PhD. Since then over the course of the three case studies, and with my ongoing exploration of the academic literature, my insights into waste generation and the various dichotomies around its management have steadily evolved. Thinking about economic, motivational and community engagement factors led me to begin this research with a focus on the process of creating economic value from waste. However, after the second and especially the third pilot in south America, what I observed led me to expand my thinking to focus also on the creation of social values at the individual and collective levels. This included the importance of respect and dignity for people working with waste and ultimately the sense of fulfilment that comes from contribution that underpins community empowerment.

A key finding of this research is the importance of internalizing waste. The impact of this was evident in all three cases but perhaps most visibly in the community of Tomás Balduíno in Brazil in how they went about building a self-sustaining organization and collaborative system, elements in the individuation process described by Simondon. The hybridity of solutions that were devised in all three case studies was another major insight that emerged from the case studies, as an essential element in the successful implementation of waste management projects.

While this work began with a focus on economics and quantifiable outcomes given the interests of my academic advisor at the time, I did not feel that I could capture or explain satisfactorily much of what I was discovering within this framework and so I began to look for other ways to position the research. This shifted to a community-based participatory research methodology that offered a more congruent basis for studying the implementation of community waste management initiatives and especially for learning alongside communities. A qualitative autobiographic/autoethnographic voice was also opted for as a more authentic means of conveying the richness of what I was observing in the case studies as well as describing my own experience and evolution as a researcher, telling a story without speaking for the local people I was working with and at the same time, having an opportunity to give them a voice. 270

7.1 Insights and recommendations

The insights from this research are relevant to any institutions and entities working on sanitation or environmental initiatives in poor communities in developing regions. However, the uniqueness of the context for each of my case studies means that the lessons presented here are intended as a guide rather than as prescriptive or definitive conclusions.

7.1.1 Internalization is key

The path that much of the world has taken around waste management has created the environmental crisis that now threatens the survival of our planet. It is clear that we need a new paradigm around resources in general and waste, products at the end of life, in particular. The results of all three cases evidence what is possible when waste is placed at the center of societies and communities where people can combine their skills and resources to address the problems that it poses, that cannot be solved by individuals working in isolation. This is what I have called internalizing waste generation and management in this thesis.

The importance and power of internalizing waste in the three cases cannot be overemphasized. The community-wide decision in the illegal squatter community in Brazil to place waste at the center of their world led to a host of positive social, economic and political outcomes for the community, ranging from giving much needed respect and pride to those who collect and process waste, to becoming a vehicle in the fight to gain legitimacy. In my view, it was also a major factor in why this case turned out to be the most sustainable of the three pilot initiatives.

Internalization is the polar-opposite of the process of externalization conceptualized by Hird discussed in Chapter 1. Externalization goes hand-in-hand with the neo-liberal ideology favoring production (and thus greater waste generation) for economic maximization of profits – likewise waste management solutions like incinerators or landfills that can be operated as money-making enterprises, again for short-term financial gain. Approaches driven by the need to externalize waste make no allowance for long-term consequences and are entirely out of step with natural ecosystems that feel the impacts of pollution and waste on much longer timescales. The problem for our planet

271 is thus that most of our waste management infrastructure is predicated on externalization of waste and this neo-liberal ideology.

7.1.2 Hybridity

Hybridity is a concept arising from the dynamic (rather than linear) way that the world actually works. It is everywhere in nature and intrinsic to the fluid way that human societies evolve and change. The culture of any society is shaped by its major preceding historical shifts, including any demographic, economic and social movements. The spread and evolution of spiritual movements around the globe is just one well-known example. Being hybrid is to embrace the ‘mixity’ as in Césaire’s concept of creolity, which goes far beyond just ethnicity.

Hybridity has been here for a long time, but it has not been well integrated in policymaking. The latter, by and large, has remained enamored with the simplicity of linear causal models and centralized solutions. For example, the waste-to-energy incinerators used by many in countries in the global North that are very expensive to build and maintain and which require the supply of large volumes of waste for many years to justify their large investment costs. These mono-focused systems are not only economically counterproductive in that they discourage long-term waste reduction, but they impede the supply chain of waste according to Micheaux and Aggeri (2019). In any case, the high and continuing growth in global waste shows that such centralized hi-tech solutions are not the answer. They represent a strategy that has been thoroughly tested, trialed and found wanting, and the time has come to try something else in the global North - and to stop exporting the fallacy that underpins such systems to countries in the global South.

Though the communities in the three cases in this research lacked the economic and information resources seen in communities in the global North, they used what they had at hand to develop and implement hybrid solutions that were comprised of their individual and collective resources and capabilities. Their results show that large investments and advanced technologies are not essential to finding sustainable solutions to waste management. Instead they suggest that in countries and communities everywhere, headway can be made by pursuing hybrid solutions that mix centralized and decentralized, high- and low-tech, community centric and municipal systems, depending on what the local need is and what is available that can be used sustainably.

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7.1.3 Having a higher purpose

In the case in India, spiritual guidance played a very visible role in breaking cultural taboos and stigmas around waste and in setting a common goal that collectively mobilized the community. This is not to say that a monastery and a spiritual master are pre-requisites for success in waste management, but rather that having a higher purpose helps people to get past the ‘folds in their thinking’ manifested in old stigmas or paradigms such as externalization. The case in Brazil did not feature a spiritual master, but the common fight for the survival of their community gave its members a higher purpose than their personal battle against poverty, and this dimension was critical to the success of this pilot.

7.1.4 Recognizing capability in marginalized communities

At first glance the shabby or dirty appearance of many inhabitants in very poor and marginalized communities might suggest that they have few resources and limited if any education, technical skills or organizational capacity to contribute. However, my three case studies show unequivocally that engaging these people with respect and dignity and as intelligent and capable agents, created a positive and empowering space for them to work collaboratively and achieve outcomes that few could have imagined. Firstly, in identifying local waste management needs and priorities from their perspective and then in developing and implementing corresponding solutions that matched their level of capability and confidence to deliver. In short, engaging people shunned by wider society with respect and dignity had a powerful motivating effect, inspiring direct participation in the projects or else supporting it indirectly through important aspects such as community decision-making processes, separating at source or willingly paying for collection services. The creation of important human values appeared as well to be a virtuous cycle, circular and growing exponentially through individual and collective positive influences.

7.1.5 Local champions

The autobiographic style that I used to present the case studies in the earlier chapters could create an impression that I was a critical ingredient in the successes that were reported. The reality

273 was far from that. While I was active in engaging with local communities and I participated in a hands-on way in all facets of the ‘dirty work’ in solidarity with my partners in these places, the initiatives were very much driven by key local people who took it upon themselves to persuade their communities to participate. In India it was Amma, whose action in making cleanliness a pathway to spiritual fulfilment, transformed the way waste was thought of and responded to in this spiritual community. In Bolivia it was FTE who invited me to take a project on in a region where they were already influential. Their local contacts and employees were pivotal in driving the project and its success. In Brazil it was a professor of the UMFG in Belo Horizonte that gave me the opportunity to join his team of students alongside volunteers from an activist organization that made it possible to launch such a pilot on waste management. It was these passionate people on the ground that initiated, built the ground for the implementation of the waste management initiatives, not as leaders but as facilitators allowing a process of individuation to take place.

7.1.6 The effect of external incentives

A shopping voucher was offered to residents in a small poor neighborhood in Bolivia to facilitate internalization of waste. The purpose for using an incentive was to encourage a change in behavior and new habits in waste management. The idea being that once formed, these habits would endure after the incentive ceased to be offered. This incentive had a surprisingly quick and positive impact in mobilizing participation that had been slow up until that point. Though the success of this pragmatic economic instrument received much attention and inspired other communities to trial the concept, the fact that the Bolivian pilot lost momentum after the incentive was removed raises questions about its efficacy as a behavior change tool from a long-term sustainability perspective.

7.1.7 Secondary impacts

Following the implementation of waste management initiatives in the three case studies, I observed several unexpected but noteworthy secondary impacts. The internalization of waste by the ashram community in India had an impact on the perception of waste, and the perception of “dalits” by local Indians after they began handling waste themselves. Likewise, the creation of paid jobs in waste management in the two south American pilots gave an income to people and 274 structure to their lives that had a pacifying effect on them and their communities in general. In favelas and slum communities plagued by drug-related gang violence, this represents an important secondary outcome – and which follows from the concept of individuation noted in the Simondonian approach discussed earlier. These various secondary impacts were not the focus of this research, but they merit further study to understand what drives and sustains them, and what is required to replicate them in different community contexts.

7.2 Caveats

As this research is based on three case studies conducted under different circumstances, the findings presented here are by no means definitive answers to the problems posed by waste generation and management. Nor is the proposed ‘Wheel of Community Engagement’ a fully specified model, let alone a universal solution to these either. Instead, the cases were purposefully undertaken in very different contexts, cultures, countries and continents in the hope that this might reveal new and different insights and gaps in the ‘folds in our thinking’ about waste and its management. We may suggest here that such projects be managed in effectuation. Though the results of the cases help us to understand the possibilities of individuation and how we might position waste in our society, they should not be used in a prescriptive way.

The cases were presented as being from the global South, but they actually represent only a small fraction of this as there was no representation from anywhere in Africa or other parts of Asia. While the proposed Wheel of Community Engagement presents important process elements that are likely to apply across different countries and situational contexts, it is offered as a guiding framework rather than as a prescriptive model. Further fieldwork in other communities is required to verify it beyond the three cases presented, likewise the drivers of important secondary impacts such as job creation and pacification.

As noted previously, the impoverished conditions in which poor and marginalized communities eke out their existence leads many to underestimate their capacity for innovation and their resourcefulness to achieve with the little that they have. Further academic research using participative methods is needed both to understand the mechanisms behind this as a key plank in supporting the emergence of innovative community owned and driven social innovations. In this 275 respect, the three case studies raise a very interesting possibility that the supposedly educated and technically advanced experts from the global North (who, to date, have failed to turn around the global waste crisis) could learn a lot about how to manage waste pragmatically, effectively and much more cheaply by partnering with communities in the global South to learn from them how to do it!

Going back to India to witness the changes that happened in the field after five years is one of my goals after this thesis is completed. Here again not in the spirit of creating models, but rather to broaden our understanding of the spectrum of solutions, not external, Western/North/technical solutions, but solutions that are embedded in the growth processes of each community.

7.3 A final word

The scale of the global waste management crisis is so large that it can sometimes feel like a lost cause and that we are doomed to end in environmental disaster. However, small communities like those studied in this research and entire countries and even groups of countries have shown what can be achieved when there is agreement on a common purpose. For example, even though the shifts in development to meet the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals11 by 2030 is not advancing at the speed or scale initially expected, favorable trends are emerging that show that the global community is starting to turn things around: extreme poverty and child mortality rates continue to fall, progress is being made against diseases such as hepatitis, the implementation of gender-responsive budgeting is in progress, the proportion of the urban population living in slums is falling and the proportion of waters under national jurisdiction covered by marine protected areas has more than doubled since 2010. These outcomes show that the world is ready and capable of making inroads into serious global crisis – and that it can do the same with waste

11 UN Report of the Secretary-General on SDG Progress 2019, gives a status on 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (United Nations, 2015 ; 2019).

276 if only we can agree on a way forward that takes us beyond the failed solutions and rationale that have got us here.

Over recent years there has been a distinct rise in individual and collective awareness and acceptance of the consequences of the waste generation and pollution crisis facing our world. However, the road to finding pragmatic and sustainable solutions is unclear for many individuals, communities and governments who are unable to see beyond the folds in their own thinking, and thus continue with the existing practices and systems that are at the heart of the problem.

This research began with the intention of exploring whether waste management initiatives focused on value creation could be pursued in very poor communities. What transpired in the case studies however broadened my conceptualization of value to recognize the fundamental importance of investing in the building of relationships based on the values of respect, dignity and contribution - irrespective of creed, race, wealth or any other discriminating criteria. The principle being: If respect exists then we can communicate. If dignity is in place there can be contribution, durability, and collective effort and movement supporting the welfare of the group.

While the results obtained verify this rationale and the importance of a broadened conceptualization of value creation, this was only part of the full story. The remarkable outcomes observed and the willingness of many in the communities to participate so wholeheartedly strongly suggests that there is a need to shift our paradigms around waste management - from linear approaches that focus primarily on the fiduciary creation of value, toward social and collective wellbeing, with respect and recognition through contribution. In short, turning around the global waste management crisis will depend on whether we can transition beyond the neo-liberal capitalist ideology that underpins our currents systems, toward a more humanist approach centered around the internalization of waste. Such a change in mentality can only happen if the “folds in our thinking” change so that models are not required as solutions and if we set ourselves free of the dichotomy between theory and practice. Francois Jullien (1997) sums up how the gap can be filled to allow such a paradigm shift:

“The fold has now been made: the theory / practice coupling is imposed on us, and we could not even think of challenging its validity (and whatever we do to rework the articulation of these terms, there is no escaping it). Indeed I see this as one of the most characteristic gestures of the modern

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West (or of the world – if it standardizes itself in line with the “West”?): everyone is in chambers, whatever their roles – the revolutionary draws up the model of the city to be constructed, or the military man the plan of the war to be waged, or the economist the growth curve to be achieved... All these schemes are projected on to the world, and branded with idealness, and they will then have to be made to fit the facts, as the expression goes. But what does ‘to fit’ mean when one is attempting to fit something into reality? First of all, understanding would design things “for the best”, and then the will takes over to impose this model on reality. Imposing means placing on top, as though to trace an outline, but also submitting to it by force. Furthermore, we are tempted to extend this modelling to encompass everything, this modelling whose principle is science; for we are well aware that science (European science, or at least classical science) is in itself merely a huge enterprise of modelling (and primarily of mathematization), whose technique, as a practical application, by materially transforming the world, has testified to its efficacy”. (Jullien, 1997 p17).

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Figure 20 - Waste Collection Team Tomás Balduíno, with Will the two local ‘catadores’ and kids of the community

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Annexes

Figure 21- Community power switch, ocupação Tomás Balduíno

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Annexes Twenty first questionnaires made between December 2014 and January 2015 in Oc. Tomás Balduíno, Riberāo das Neves, Minas Gerais, Brazil

20 first questionnaires anonymized as examples of the 122 semi-structured interviews done in Oc. Tomás Balduíno, Riberāo das Neves, Minas Gerais, Brazil The results of these questionnaires are summarized in chapter 5 describing the B

Questionario Projeto RdN – Nov 14- Jan15:

Process: face to face interviews (10 to 20 min each household), semi-open

18 main questions, 42 questions in total

25 YES-NO

1: yes (sim); 2: no (nao); 3: don’t know (nao se)

- 44 families out of 150 registered in November 2014 - most head of family working 6 days a week - reluctancy to respond

Dia 28-11-14

Nb1: 28-11-14 Q1- Cual q seu nome, do que, sobrenome: XXX (What is your name, then, last name) a) Nb pessoas na casa: 6 (3 filhos morando na casa) (Nb persons in the house: 6 (3 children living in the house) aa) >15 anos: 5 pesssoas (aa) >15 years: 5 persons) ab) <14 anos: 1 (ab) <14 years: 1) b) Quantos quartos: 2 (b how many rooms: 2)

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Q2. Aproximadamente, quantos quilos de resíduos que sua família produzem semanalmente? (Approximately how many kilograms of waste does your family produce weekly?) 4 -5 kilos por semana (4 - 5 kilos per week)

Q3. Entre os items seguites, que é o principal tipo de resíduos que a sua família gera? (Among the following items, what is the main type of waste that your family generates?) Q3 a) Orgânico ... .Sim (Organic ... Yes) Q3 b) Plásticos ... .Sim sacolas, caixas de leiche (Plastics ... .yes bags, milk packs) Q3 c) Baterias. ... Não (Batteries... No) Q3 d) Vidro ... .Sim de oilho (Glass ... .yes of oilho) Q3 e) Metal .... Não (Metal ..... No)

Q4. Onde você colocar o seu lixo? (Where do you put your trash?) Q4 a) a onde, recipient?: Recipientes specificos na casa (lixeira) (where, recipient?: Specific containers in the house (garbage can)) Q4 b) a onde na casa: Perto da casa: em frente da casa em baldinhos, 1 so para lixo seco (where in the house: near the house: in front of the house in bins, 1 only for dry waste) Q4 c) que voce separa: Organico directamenta para galinhas (what do you separate: Organics direct tool for chickens) Q4 d) otro (other)

Q5. Você acha que a sua familia está produzindo muito lixo ou não? Pouco o muito? (Do you think your family is producing too much garbage or not? A little too much?) Sim (yes) Nao: poucou (No : little) Nao se (don’t know)

Q6. Você separar alguns dos seus resíduos para compostagem (para ser usado no jardim)? (Do you separate some of your waste for composting (to be used in the garden)?) - Sim 1 (Yes) - Nao 2: Nao (No: No) - Não sei 9 (Don’t know)

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Q7. Você separar um pouco do seu lixo para reciclagem? (Do you sort some of your garbage for recycling?) - Sim 1 (No) - Nao 2: ainda tava quemando, agora vou separar e dar para a collecta (No: I was still burning, now I'm going to separate it and give for collection) - Não sei 9 (Don’t know)

Q8: O que ajudaria voce para separar melhor seus resíduos? (What would help you to better separate your waste?) Q8 a) Melhoria da recolha selectiva de resíduos em sua casa (Improvement of the selective collection of waste in your home) 1 Sim: mais baldinhos para casa (Yes: more buckets for home) 2 Nao (No) 9 Nao se (Don’t know) Q8 b) Mais informações sobre como e onde separar os resíduos (More information on how and where to separate waste) 1 Sim: mas info (Yes: more info) 2 Nao (No) 9 Nao se (Don’t know) Q8 c) o mesmo hábito adotado na communidade (the same habit adopted in the community) 1 Sim: si todo mundo fazer (Yes: if everyone does) 2 Nao (No) 9 Nao se (Don’t know) Q8 d) Obrigação legal para separação de resíduos (Legal obligation for waste separation) 1 Sim: communidade limpa (Yes: clean community) 2 Nao (No) 9 Nao se (Don’t know) Q8 e) Impostos para a gestão de resíduos (Taxes for waste management) 1 Sim: seria uma obligacao tb, ningem trabalha de graca (Yes: it would be one obligation also, nobody works for free) 2 Nao (No) 9 Nao se (Don’t know)

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Q9. O que você acha que precisa ser feito para melhorar o trato com lixo (a gestão de resíduos) na sua comunidade? (What do you think needs to be done to improve waste treatment (waste management) in your community?) Q9 a) a aplicação da lei mais forte na gestão dos resíduos 1 2 9 (stronger law enforcement in waste management) Q9 b) os serviços de coleta de resíduos Melhor (better waste collection services) 1 Sim seria uma ajuda (Yeah, it would help) 2 9 Q9 c) Faça as famílias paguem para os resíduos que produzem (Make families pay for the waste they produce) 1 2 9 Nao se (Don’t know)

Q10. Você acha que é importante para melhorar trato com lixo (a gestão de resíduos) na sua comunidade? (Do you think it is important to improve waste treatment (waste management) in your community?) - Sim 1: manter a communidade sempre limpo (Yes: keeping the community clean at all times) - No 2 (No) - Não sei 9 (Don’t know)

Q11. Por que você acha que é importante para melhorar trato com lixo (a gestão de resíduos) na sua comunidade? (Why do you think it is important to improve waste handling (waste management) in your community?) Q11 a) para preservar o meio ambiente (to preserve the environment) 1 Sim 2 9 Q11 b) para melhorar problemas de saúde (doença) de pessoas (to improve people's health problems (illness)) 1 Sim prinicipalmente saude (Yes mainly health) 2 9 Q11 c) outros ... (others)

Q12. Seria importante saber que os seus vizinhos adotar melhor trato com lixo (uma melhor prática de gestão de resíduos), de modo que você faria isso? (Would it be important to know that your neighbors adopt better waste handling (a better waste management practice), so that you would do this?) 299

Nao: não é importante: importante e cada um fazer coisa certo, coisa obrigada fazer (No: it is not important: it is important and each one does something right, something obliged to do) sem importância (unimportant) Sim, importante (Yes, important) muito importante (very important) ou: (or) ou / além disso: (or/and beyond)

Q13. Quanto você concorda ou discorda com a seguinte afirmação: As pessoas têm a obrigação de reciclar (How much do you agree or disagree with the following statement: People have an obligation to recycle) Concordo: sim (agree: yes) Tende a concordar (tend to agree) Tendência para discordar (tendency to disagree) Discordo (disagree) além disso: (Besides)

Q14. Quanto você concorda ou discorda com a seguinte afirmação: produtos de reciclagem é "a coisa certa a fazer" (How much do you agree or disagree with the following statement: recycling products are "the right thing to do"?) Concord: sim (agree: yes) Tende a concordar (tend to agree) Tendência para discordar (tendency to disagree) Discordo (disagree) e: Q15. Quanto você concorda ou discorda com a seguinte afirmação: produtos de reciclagem dá um bom exemplo (When you agree or disagree with the following statement: Recycling products sets a good example) Concord: muito (agree: yes, a lot) Tende a concordar (tend to agree) Tendência para discordar (tendency to disagree)

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Discordo (disagree)

Q16. Aproximadamente, quanto é que a sua família (ou todas as pessoas que trabalham que vivem em sua casa) ganham com o trabalho a cada semana? (Approximately, how much do your family (or all the people who work in your home) earn from their work each week?) 800 R$ Horta (garden)

Q17. Por que você decidiu vir para cá? (Why did you decide to come here?) Porque que eu gosta (Cause I like it)

Q18. Voce conhecia as pessoas que vieram aqui antes? (Did you know the people who came here before?) Minha familia mora perto de aqui, surgiu essa oportunidade (My family lives near here, this opportunity came up)

Non-directives interviews

7 non-directives anonymized interviews have been registered through videos from December 2014 to November 2018 (which are not provided for reasons of anonymity). Extracts and verbatims are largely used in this research in particular in chapter 5.

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Table of figures

Figure 1 - Major dichotomies in global waste management perspectives (myself as the author) .. 8 Figure 2 – World waste generation, Map from The Economist 2nd October 2018 (adaptation of World Bank Report, What a Waste 2.0, Kaza et al., 2018) ...... 13 Figure 3 – World per capita food losses and waste, at consumption and pre-consumption stages ...... 21 Figure 4 - Outline of a circular economy (Ellen McArthur Foundation, 2015) ...... 44

Figure 5 – Timeline: research and projects ...... 87 Figure 6 - Mat Amritanandamayi (Amma) giving darshan ...... 106 Figure 7 – Volunteering in Waste management, project 1 ...... 109

Figure 8 – Project Waste separation and Vermi-Compost...... 114 Figure 9 – Waste separation at University level (with my friend Akilesh, the Olympic “Waste” Champion), and separated collection ...... 118 Figure 10 - Photograph of Amrita CBWM, Amrita Kerala India ABC EcoVillage Center; on 22.12.2012...... 121 Figure 11 - Volunteering at Amrita University...... 124

Figure 12 – Bins in Puerto Suarez and FTE collection team ...... 148 Figure 13 – Women team of the OTB of Barrio San Antonio and Community meeting with kids drawing bins for their parents ...... 157 Figure 14 - Wheel of Community Engagement, elaborated during the Bolivian Project Barrio Limpio, August-September 2014 (source: author) ...... 181 Figure 15 – View of upper end of Tomás Balduíno, and pollution of the stream at the lower end ...... 186 Figure 16 Sign calling for Weekly Assembly in Tomás Balduíno ...... 196 Figure 17 - Rua Esperanca, Tomás Balduíno ...... 197

Figure 18 – Private Gardening and new cart for local “catadores” in Tomás Balduíno ...... 211 Figure 19 - Wheel of Community Engagement (source: author) ...... 263 Figure 20 - Waste Collection Team Tomás Balduíno, with Will the two local ‘catadores’ and kids of the community ...... 279 Figure 21- Community power switch, ocupação Tomás Balduíno...... 295 302

Table of tables

Table 1 – Aspects of the North / South divide (myself as the author) ...... 8 Table 2 - Annual production of waste in ton/year, Major countries, ...... 14 Table 3 - Main characteristics of the three cases...... 91

Table 4 - Additional activities carried out with the communities ...... 94 Table 5 – Approaches and results for the 3 cases ...... 98 Table 6 - First case study: general information ...... 106

Table 7 - 34 SSR projects developed and showed to Amma in 2013 ...... 127 Table 8 - Second case study: general information ...... 148 Table 9 - Summary of pilot project outcomes and impacts ...... 169

Table 10 - Typology of waste collection ...... 171 Table 11 - Incentives and motivations of local communities in the Project ‘Barrio Limpio en 30 dias ...... 173

Table 12 - Third case study: general information ...... 185 Table 13 - Synthesis of 122 semi-structured interviews done in Tomás Balduíno in Jan. 2015 213

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Résumé (in french) L’augmentation dramatique de la production mondiale de déchets, une augmentation de 70% prévue dans les trente années à venir (Rapport de la World Bank : “What a Waste 2.0”, Kaza et al., 2018), est un indice du fléau majeur qu’est la pollution, aux conséquences sociales, environnementales et économiques de plus en plus graves. Cette étude attire l'attention sur le tiers de la population mondiale, celui situé au `` bas de la pyramide '' (BoP) survivant avec moins de 2,50 USD par jour. Il produit vingt fois moins de déchets par habitant que le reste de la société mais souffre de manière disproportionnée des graves répercussions de la pollution sur son bien- être et qualité de vie. Les membres de la BoP sont les personnes exclues et sans soutien vivant dans les communautés marginales de grands centres urbains qui n’ont pas accès aux solutions centralisées et sophistiquées axées sur la technologie imaginée pour ceux qui vivent plus confortablement dans des communautés plus riches. Cette recherche explore les capacités des communautés pauvres de pays en voie de développement à concevoir et mettre en œuvre des solutions sanitaires durables. Elle a pour objectif de traiter de manière pragmatique et durable la question de la pauvreté et de la pollution endémiques au moyen de solutions collaboratives, simples, décentralisées, conçues et implémentées avec et par les communautés locales elles- mêmes. Initiée à travers des projets de volontariat en Inde et une volonté de contribuer, cette recherche se concentre sur l'apprentissage acquis à partir de l’implémentation de projets visant la création de valeurs à travers la gestion des déchets dans des communautés pauvres et marginalisées du Sud global. Contrairement à la conception et à la pratique du Nord global qui externalise les déchets, je m'intéressais à ce qui pourrait arriver lorsque les déchets et leur gestion sont internalisés et placés au centre de la communauté. Son objectif final d’empowerment de communautés locales à faible ressources et d’autosuffisance durable passe par la création de valeurs que nous avons étudiée ici dans une démarche d’apprentissage collaboratif, en conservant une attention particulière au risque de dérives vers des postures colonialistes induites par nos cultures occidentales.

Le fil conducteur du cadre théorique débute par un examen des « plis de pensées » décrits par François Jullien, philosophe et sinologue français, dans sa théorie des écarts. Notre façon habituelle en occident de penser à un sujet s’organise autour de certaines croyances longuement et 304 profondément ancrées, ce qui nous amène invariablement à tirer systématiquement les mêmes conclusions. François Jullien nous propose une déconstruction « du dehors », en se situant au cœur d’une autre culture afin d’être à même de détecter les biais cachés dans les deux cultures, ainsi que pour élucider « l'impensé ». Cette recherche suivra ce fil de recherche des « fécondités » ou de la capacité qui réside dans différentes approches culturelles pour voir et réfléchir à partir d'autres solutions à la pollution et à la gestion des déchets conçues dans des communautés pauvres et marginalisées, communautés ne partageant pas les mêmes «plis» dans leur pensée.

Notre attitude face aux déchets au Nord est prise dans quatre plis de pensées qui tous amènent à une « externalisation » des déchets : ceux-ci sont rejetés, considérés comme sans valeur, devant être enterrés, et gérés technologiquement (Douglas, 1996, Hird, 2012). Nous plaçons le rôle de la création de valeur et des alternatives économiques proposées récemment comme l’économie circulaire en regard de ces externalités, montrant qu’ils ne sortent pas totalement des mêmes plis. Au Sud, le potentiel de l'entreprenariat communautaire mis en évidence par la théorie du Community-Based Entrepreneurship CBE (Peredo, 2003; 2006; 2010) donne un exemple stimulant des capacités d’autosuffisance de communautés pauvres isolées du Sud. Par ailleurs, le Sud montre de nombreuses dynamiques d’hybridité et d’hybridisation (Bhabha, 1994, Appadurai, 1996) qui transforment créativement les solutions exportées par le Nord. Les solutions pragmatiques dans les pays du Sud montrent les possibilités de la mixité, de la créolité (Césaire, 2004) où s’inventent de nouvelles formes en fonction des potentialités culturelles et économiques locales.

Trois études de cas ont été entreprises dans des communautés marginales très pauvres en Inde, en Bolivie et au Brésil utilisant une méthodologie de recherche participative. Les recherches ont été menées pour et avec les communautés. Le récit autobiographique et auto-ethnographique raconte l’expérience et les apprentissages sur le terrain, en étant attentif à la place spécifique du chercheur afin d’éviter de parler au nom des communautés. Ces études n’ont aucune intention comparative, ni de généralisation d’un savoir ou de connaissances universelles. Elles ont suivi les principes méthodologiques suivants : être le plus utile possible et apprendre avec des communautés pauvres et négligées, loin des grands systèmes de gestion des déchets, non pas en essayant d'"aider", ni en voulant "utiliser" des communautés dans le but de ma recherche, mais dans une sincère volonté de 305 contribuer. Un souci constant a été d’éviter une posture postcoloniale (me présenter comme celui qui sait, avec une connaissance supérieure et universelle), de me positionner comme celui qui sait conseiller, expliquer ou modéliser, mais pour au contraire chercher à apprendre. Apprendre, non seulement en observant ou en questionnant, mais surtout en "faisant avec". La consolidation de cet apprentissage et sa transmission se fait à la première personne, sans chercher à parler au nom des membres de la communauté (mais en rapportant régulièrement ce qu'ils m'ont dit ou montré).

L'un des principaux apprentissages a été les possibilités apportées par " l'internalisation " des déchets. Lorsque ceux-ci sont placés au centre des communautés, cela permet l’émergence de solutions collaboratives novatrices, pragmatiques et peu coûteuses (Basic-Tech) et qui ont un impact sur la communauté elle-même. Nous avons donné sens à ces processus avec Simondon (1989) et son concept d’individuation. Les individus, les communautés et les techniques ne sont pas pour Simondon des entités fixes ; ils sont plutôt inclus dans un processus constant de devenir, de se réformer, dans leur milieu. C'est la genèse d'une forme propre (individuation) à partir d'un état et d'un milieu qui la contenait en germe (pré-individuel) mais qui a été singularisé et qui s'étend aux éléments voisins (transduction). Contrairement à l’idée d’une forme imposée sur une matière, à la base de la conception technologique et externalisante du Nord, nous observions (et participions à) des processus constants de formation, où la gestion des déchets s’intégrait à d’autres processus communautaires pour inventer de nouvelles formes.

Les trois expériences de gestion communautaire des déchets mettent en évidence l'importance des valeurs sociales de respect, de dignité et de contribution, amenant la mise en œuvre d’un fort potentiel de création d'emplois, de dépassement de préjugés culturels et des possibilités inattendues de pacification des communautés exclues dans lesquels les projets ont été implémentés. Le dernier projet, dans la communauté la plus exclue, pauvre et violente de Tomás Balduíno, dans la périphérie de Belo Horizonte au Brésil a montré les résultats les plus importants d’autosuffisance, de structuration autour des processus collaboratifs mis en œuvre. Le cadre proposé de la « Roue de l'autonomisation communautaire » a été élaboré pour la promotion de solutions co-définies localement, hybrides, pouvant être un moyen plus efficace de traiter la gestion des déchets dans

306 ces collectivités que la prescription de solutions normalisées, de modèles imposés qui ne correspondent pas nécessairement aux capacités locales.

Bien que le caractère unique des cas implique que les résultats sont instructifs et significatifs plutôt que prescriptifs, ils nous semblent pertinents pour les agences municipales et autres institutions travaillant dans le domaine de l'assainissement avec des communautés similaires, et comme alternative salutaire au paradigme de "l'externalisation des déchets" qui exacerbe les problèmes de pollution et de pauvreté dans le monde. Plus généralement le schéma proposé d’empowerment communautaire peut servir de guide a des actions similaires dans des communautés pauvres exclues, ainsi qu’inspirer de nouvelles solutions d’engagement des communautés pauvres ou riches face aux défis de pollution et pauvreté.

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Title: Exploring the creation of values through waste management in poor communities as an alternative to waste externalization: Participative research examples showing collaborative learning in India, Bolivia and Brazil

Keywords: Community empowerment, Waste internalization, Poor communities, Hybridity, Sustainable development

Abstract: This research explores the capacity of The main findings were that ‘internalizing’ waste, poor communities in developing countries to by bringing it within the sphere of influence of collaboratively create sustainable sanitation local communities, lead to the implementation of solutions. The analytic framework for this unique and innovative hybrid solutions via a research included theories on ‘externalization’ of process of individuation (Simondon, 1989). waste (Douglas, 1996; Hird, 2012), value While the results are not presented as definitive creation, circular economies, and community- or prescriptive, a “Wheel of Community based entrepreneurship (Peredo, 2003). Three Empowerment” framework is offered to highlight case studies were undertaken in very poor fringe key lessons and insights that may be relevant to communities in India, Bolivia and Brazil using a municipal or other agencies working in sanitation community-based participatory methodology. in similar communities, as an alternative to mainstream approaches that ‘externalize’ waste and cause greater pollution.

Titre : Une exploration de la création de valeurs à travers la gestion des déchets dans des communautés pauvres autrement que par leur externalisation. Un apprentissage collaboratif via des recherches participatives menées en Inde, en Bolivie et au Brésil.

Mots clés : Autonomisation communautaire, Internalisation des déchets, Communautés pauvres, Gestion des déchets, Hybridité, développement durable

Cette recherche explore la capacité des Les trois cas ont mis en évidence l'importance communautés pauvres de pays en des valeurs sociales de respect, de dignité et de développement à concevoir et mettre en œuvre contribution, amenant création d'emplois, des solutions sanitaires durables. Elle s'inscrit dépassement de préjugés culturels et dans un cadre théorique qui examine les « plis pacification. Le cadre proposé de la « Roue de de pensées » qui amènent à une l'autonomisation communautaire » a été élaboré « externalisation » des déchets: rejetés, sans pour la promotion de solutions co-definies valeur, devant être enterrés, et gérés localement, hybrides, pouvant être un moyen technologiquement (Douglas, 1996, Hird, 2012). plus efficace de traiter la gestion des déchets Le rôle de la création de valeur et des dans ces collectivités que la prescription de économies circulaires, et le potentiel de solutions normalisées, de modèles imposés qui l'entreprenariat communautaire sont facteurs de ne correspondent pas nécessairement aux gestion durable (Peredo, 2003; 2006; 2010). capacités locales. Bien que le caractère unique Trois études de cas ont été entreprises dans des des cas implique que les résultats sont communautés marginales très pauvres en Inde, instructifs plutôt que prescriptifs, ils sont en Bolivie et au Brésil utilisant une méthodologie pertinents pour les agences municipales et de recherche participative. autres institutions travaillant dans le domaine de L'une des principales conclusions constitue " l'assainissement avec des communautés l'internalisation " des déchets, placés au centre similaires, et comme alternative salutaire au des communautés qui permet l’émergence de paradigme de "l'externalisation des déchets " solutions collaboratives novatrices, qui exacerbe les problèmes de pollution dans le pragmatiques et peu coûteuses; processus que monde. Simondon (1989) décrit comme individuation.

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