On Monday, April 29, Nohra Padilla of Bogotá, Colombia, received the top award of $150,000 from the San Francisco-based Goldman Environmental Prize, the world’s largest and most prestigious award for grassroots environmental efforts. Her work over many years finally led to formal recognition and pay from the city of Bogotá for hundreds of members of her organization, the Association of Bogotá Recyclers (ARB), part of a larger network which she founded that operates throughout Columbia. For a woman who grew up sifting through trash in a dump near Bogotá to help her family survive, being awarded a large cash prize for her work organizing poor trash collectors and informal recyclers must seem somewhat surreal.
From the age of 7, Padilla worked alongside her large family sorting garbage to find materials they could resell to recycling companies, paper, glass, plastic and metals, often delivered in a horse-drawn cart. In 1987 when the city closed a number of neighborhood dumps in favor of one central landfill and then prohibited access by the “waste-pickers” as they are known, Padilla and others were forced to the streets to gather recyclables from trash bins. Although working in the garbage dumps was difficult and hazardous, it was preferable to the discrimination and potential violence they faced in the streets of Bogotá.
In their statement awarding Padilla their top prize, the Goldman Environmental Prize pointed out the value to the community of the work of these informal recyclers: “With urban growth outpacing the capacity of municipal dumps, waste management is a major problem in Bogotá and throughout the continent. Compostable garbage buried in landfills release powerful greenhouse gases, while recyclables left in dumps keep materials out of the recycling stream, increasing the need to extract more raw material.”
With her long experience and natural leadership, plus determination and vision, Padilla began to organize the 5000 unofficial recyclers into cooperatives to assure a measure of safety and mutual protection. Committed to fighting for their basic right to work and to gain some measure of respect for the important work they do, Padilla continued to organize the groups to give them a voice in their future. In late 2011, they achieved a major victory in a court decision confirming their right to collect and sell recyclables. When the city moved to overhaul its waste management system in 2012, it was forced to include recyclers as part of the process. As a result, the ARB members now enjoy legitimacy for their work and will be eligible for government benefits such as healthcare and a pension.
Working in Columbia’s notorious culture of violence and corruption in which powerful corporations fight hard to protect their landfill contracts, Padilla has faced threats of physical harm and slanderous attacks. When she requested state protection, it was denied but she fought on and has continued to enjoy success in her quixotic efforts. The 12,000 members of the National Association of Recyclers (ANR) are revolutionizing waste management in Latin America, developing markets for materials averaging 1500 tons per day, including companies in the United States and Brazil as well as in Columbia. Padilla’s work thrust Bogotá into a leadership role in sustainable waste management policies when Bogotá Mayor Gustavo Petro issued a decree mandating recycling throughout the city, stating that recyclers are to be paid for their services and establishing a system whereby recyclers can sort through material before it goes to a landfill.
As countries around the world struggle with the issue of waste management and recycling, the heroic work of Nohra Padilla richly deserves the honor she has received. Her vision and persistence provide a model for others to follow and her award stands as a victory for the rights of marginalized people working in thankless but vital jobs everywhere.
Report by Kat Sunlove
The Costa Rica News (TCRN)
San Jose Costa Rica
