Recycling cans, a meager livelihood for thousands of poor people …

On the sidewalks of Brooklyn, Laurentino Marin pushes his heavy team between the pretty typical houses of the neighborhood. Like every morning and like thousands of poor people in New York, this old Mexican went out to fill his cart with cans and used plastic bottles, which he will exchange for a few tens of dollars.

Frail and stooped, the man stops in front of each stone staircase, some of which are decorated for Halloween, lifts the lids of the trash cans and plunges his gloved hands into them. He also searches the plastic packaging filled with waste that litter the ground.

“I’m looking for cans to survive,” said the wrinkled-faced little man from the state of Oaxaca in Spanish. “I am not receiving help, there is no work, so you have to fight.” His age ? “80 years”, he replies, before resuming his cart filled with a multicolored pile of cans of sodas and beers.

Laurentino does not have an employer. He will exchange his collection at one of the city’s private recycling centers for five cents a can. That is, on a normal day, between 30 and 40 dollars. Enough to help her pay the rent, “$ 1,800”, with her daughter, who works in a laundromat.

– Five cents a can –

Five cents, this set price has not changed in New York State since a 1982 law, the “Bottle bill”, passed to encourage consumers to recycle.

“It had a really positive impact (…) But we didn’t realize that it would become a crucial source of income for so many families”, explains Judith Enck, expert in environmental policies and founder of an anti-pollution movement, “Beyond plastics”, which campaigned at the time for this law and today for the deposit to increase to 10 cents.

On its website, the state environmental protection department also rents the “Bottle bill”, which has enabled the recycling of “5.5 billion plastic, glass and aluminum containers” for the year 2020 alone. , out of 8.6 billion sold, across the country.

In New York, they are thousands, up to 10,000 according to some estimates, to contribute to this effort, by collecting cans – hence the name of “canners” – and plastic bottles, without any status or the social protection which accompanies a job, to earn meager sums, as only income or in addition to another.

– The elderly –

Men and women, many are elderly, often immigrants, a large proportion of whom come from Latin American countries or China. One of the faces of inequalities in New York, a file on which the Democrat Eric Adams, big favorite to become the new mayor of the city, is expected after the election on November 2.

“It’s hard. There are people who walk miles and miles,” said Josefa Marin, a 52-year-old Mexican. “There are places where people do not like to have their waste collected. They throw us away like little animals and do not understand that we make a living with it,” she adds.

But “we are helping to keep the city clean (…) all this plastic would go into the sewers and the sea. We are also doing something for our planet, for our ecology”, claims Josefa, a regular at Sure We Can, a center recycling center, which also serves as a reception center.

Between the mounds of cans and sorted bottles, its director, Ryan Castalia, tells about “the diversity” of profiles, of homeless people, who earn only a few dollars a day, “because they collect what they find. “, to” quasi small entrepreneurs “, working in teams and capable of” processing thousands of cans per day “. On average, a “canner” hosted at Sure We Can was earning $ 18 per day before the pandemic.

For everyone, the most acute months of the Covid-19 crisis, in the spring of 2020, were a very hard stop, in particular due to the closure of bars and restaurants.

Difficult to measure, the phenomenon has been going on for years and still attracts candidates, like Alvaro, a 60-year-old Mexican.

“I’m in construction, it pays much better. But there is no work, so for a year I have been collecting my cans,” he explains. But “it does not bring in much, there are too many people in the streets”.

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