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Informal Economy News Home Page > Downturn in Recyclables Industry
December 8, 2008
The Association of Recyclers in Bogota (ARB) provided the following report on the downturn in the recycling sector in Colombia:
The following are prices compared to prices in early 2008: the prices started to drop around June but the situation worsened and became identifiable as a "crisis" around September. Part of the downturn is attributed to a decline in export markets: China has stopped buying metal and that trade with the US diminished too. As soon as the exports dropped, national buyers followed the trend and dropped prices too.
- High and Low-density Polyethylene: The market just stopped, almost no transactions are currently taking place.
- Ferrous metals (scrap): Prices dropped 70%
- Non-ferrous metals: (copper, aluminum, bronze) Prices dropped almost 60%
- PEC (Polyethylene terephtalate) wastes: Prices dropped 50%
- Paper: Prices are steady.
- Glass: There is a monopoly in Colombia so for the last 15 years the price has remained roughly the same: to the point that the waste pickers do not trade in glass but simply dump it.
The waste pickers do not have the economic capacity to stock the recyclable waste, mainly because they lack space. As of mid-December 2008, the Association of Recyclers in Bogota (ARB) believes that they can hold on for three months more. After that, they will just have to start sending the waste to the dumps.
According to the Association of Recyclers in Bogota, the economic crisis had not yet fully impacted Latin America by the end of 2008. They estimate that the situation for waste pickers will worsen once the effect of the current crisis fully hits the region, possibly in the second quarter of 2009.
In terms of a more optimistic longer-term scenario, an activist lawyer (Adriana Ruiz-Restrepo) working with the Association and with WIEGO writes, "we hope that ARB can enter Bogota's cleaning and solid waste management business in 2010. Hopefully they will win an administrative concession contract for cleaning and recycling one of the six zones in which Bogota is usually divided for that purpose. For that our project (i.e. the WIEGO project on Law and the Informal Economy in Columbia) will have to "give teeth" to the affirmative action of the court so that ARB may enter the bidding process and compete under terms of reference that are transparent and fair."