Transforming Plastics into Solidarity: Ethical Vertical Integration and Binational Recycling

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Building on a decade of experience researching the simultaneous transformation of materials and social relations in recycling economies across Latin America, my proposed research will compare the workings of the 'social economy' in Uruguay and Brazil. The social economy is the name given in much of Latin America to various forms of ownership, management and distribution that differ from capitalist norms. The study of a binational solidarity recycling chain - involving the transformation of plastic bottles into synthetic textiles - provides an ideal context in which to bring together the anthropology of ethics and labour and a unique opportunity to study what is simultaneously an attempt to formalise waste-pickers' labour and create an ethical supply chain, from the disposal of plastic bottles, to their eventual repurchase as clothing. Through a focus on the ethics of labour, I will investigate the resilience of a socio-economic model that could provide hope in turbulent times, given its capacity to combine participation in economic decision-making with the recovery and recycling of valuable resources and the creation of solidarity-based economic bonds. From the oceans to the food chain, plastic waste is increasingly understood as a global problem with local dynamics and inequitable impacts at different scales and geographies. In the United States, only 10% of plastics are currently recycled, compared with much higher figures for papers, metals, and e-waste. A new sense of urgency was injected into the need to tackle plastic waste in the West by China's announcement in early 2018 that it would ban the import of unsorted plastics and scrap paper from overseas (China imported over half of the world's used plastic, paper, and cardboard in 2017, some 32m tonnes). This has led to bales of material piling up at recycling plants across the world. EU countries are limited by strict landfilling regulations and taxes, while elsewhere the overaccumulation of surplus plastic waste co-exists with a surplus labour supply. Latin American attempts to solve both these issues simultaneously through the creation of dignified 'green jobs' can be instructive for developing and developed countries beyond the region.The Brazil-Uruguay Cadeia Solidária Binacional do PET (Binational PET Solidarity Chain) entails the bulk recovery of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles by waste-picker (catador) cooperatives in Rio Grande do Sul, their transformation into synthetic fibre by a cooperative in Uruguay, and transportation to the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais to be processed by textile cooperatives. The scheme, inaugurated in 2014, is one of the first circular economy schemes globally in which every partner business involved is managed by its workers. It is also ground-breaking in that it links South-South socio-economic development with the promotion of ethical consumption in the Global South. Differing political and labour genealogies, contrasting state recycling policies, and varying degrees of political upheaval ensure the basis for a study of difference as well as similarity within this binational collaboration. The ethical and practical commitment of workers is often overlooked as a key factor in determining productivity and the success or failure of particular initiatives. Do social economy schemes prove lasting when workers are deeply committed ethically and politically? Why do workers like those in the Cadeia choose to remain in the social waste economy despite hardship and precarity? How does social economy work articulate with career trajectories, political histories, and life aspirations? How is the social economy perceived and enacted by workers on either side of the Brazil-Uruguay border? Attending closely to workers' lived experiences means testing the foundations of circular, social, and sustainable economies that have the potential to tackle some of the greatest social and environmental challenges of our time.