“The whole city has been invaded by recycling bins,” he told me during a visit to the modest shack where he lives, across the street from one of Quito's largest landfills. “Hardly anything valuable arrives here these days. We don't get that much good material anymore.”
Manuel is a “recycler.” He works in a waste-sorting facility 8-10 hours per night, five or six days a week. He told me that, until recently, he used to earn between $75 and $100 a week, depending on how much material he managed to collect. (Plastic is the most valuable, followed by cardboard and metal.) His income dropped in half, he says, once recycling bins were introduced across the city of Quito little over a year ago.