Las relaciones (in)visibles de una botella PET desechada en Cuenca: apuntes etnográficos a propósito de la recirculación y el desecho

Abstract

This anthropological research, written into Science and Technology Studies (STS) addresses how the waste of recyclable materials is imbedded in circuits of capitalism and colonization. These circuits are delegated to –and supported by– the precariousness of the people who dedicate their lives to waste collection in the streets, a socially and economically marginal activity in cities like Cuenca in Ecuador. We ethnographically followed an object of daily consumption –a PET bottle originally containing water– from the moment it is discarded, situating our point of observation in the everyday life of a couple of grassroots collectors. The movement of some of these recyclable materials allowed us to reflect and analyze critically the human and non-human actors that intertwine –often without knowing it– sometimes generating synergy and other times, disagreements. In the broader spectrum, we address the routes of single-use objects within the production-consumption-disposal system of bottled beverages in their legal, cultural, social, and economic frameworks which endorse, enable, and depend on the existence of objects such as the PET bottle. Once the bottle is discarded it becomes part of the recycling process and a collaborative survival, but also to toxicity, slow violence and the sacrifice of territories and people