Venezuela: Food in exchange for rubbish

by Catherine Wattes

On a hilltop in Venezuela's capital Caracas, where hunger and crime are 
commonplace, Amarilis Chirinos is finding that the rubbish strewn on the 
slum's slopes has its uses.

"I feel pretty proud because I earned the food. It wasn't just given to me. 
They swapped it for rubbish I collected", said Chirinos, who turned in 
empty bottles, old clothes and a damaged and rusty cooker in exchange for 
groceries.

Under the Big Swap program, organised by authorities in Caracas' Libertador 
district, residents can exchange 25 kg of scrap metal for 1 kg of rice, 2 
kg of aluminium for a can of powdered milk and 20 kg of glass for a can of 
tuna.

Caracas' slums are overflowing with rubbish.

Old fridges, mattresses and used tyres are among tonnes of discarded items 
clogging the steep ravines, which are packed with poor homes that ring the 
sprawling capital of the world's fifth largest oil exporter.

According to official estimates, 80 per cent of Venezuela's 25 million 
people live in poverty, with many of the rest living in disproportionate 
wealth.

Unemployment remained stubbornly high at 18.3 per cent in July.

It was pushed up by a severe recession triggered by a crippling general 
strike in December and January called by Venezuela's US-backed right-wing 
opposition against popular leader Hugo Chavez.

Organisers said the food-for-rubbish program had more than one benefit.

Besides providing food for the poor, it also helped to clear rubbish-choked 
ravines that overflow in the rainy season, threatening homes with deadly 
floods and mudslides.

"The Big Swap helps us because we clean up our neighbourhood — and we can 
obtain food from it", says housewife Blanca de Teran, as she waits in line 
to weigh the bottles and cans that she has scavenged.

In some cases, collecting the rubbish involves scouring foetid, polluted 
streams that bisect the capital's slum neighbourhoods.

But, despite some complaints that the scheme exposes them to infection, 
most El Resplandor residents seem to think that the program is worthwhile.

"Swapping bits and pieces for food is not a bad idea. We've all got to find 
a way to live", says unemployed 36-year-old Pedro Salas. But he adds that 
he would much prefer to have a stable job so that he could buy food for 
himself.

The idea of exchanging recyclable waste for food originated in the 
Brazilian city of Curitiba. It has also been applied in the western 
Venezuelan states of Lara and Merida.

Manuel Molina, head of municipal services in Libertador district, explains 
that the program works on a system of points, calculated from the market 
cost of the recyclable waste and the cost of food to be handed over in 
exchange.

"We could just buy the rubbish, but the idea is that people develop a sense 
of the value of the material they collect, not in terms of money, but in 
terms of food products", Molina says.

The Libertador district alone, one of the five municipalities that make up 
Caracas, generates 2000 tonnes a day of discarded items.

The food-for-rubbish program is expected to reduce the level of refuse by 
up to 40 per cent.

Molina says that the authorities intend to carry out around 60 similar 
food-for-rubbish operations in Caracas this year, swapping 1200 tonnes of 
refuse for around 76 tonnes of food.

The three tonnes of food being distributed in the first exchanges were 
donated by the Sovereign People Foundation, which is directly run from the 
office of the President.

Molina says that it was better to hand over products rather than cash.

"We wouldn't want people to be squandering away what we get from the swap 
on horse races or crates of beer. We want them to have food", he adds.

The collected rubbish is given to local co-operatives which sell material 
to recycling companies. This covers around 30 per cent of the cost of the 
program.

Authorities are hoping to extend the initiative to the rest of the country.

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Morning Star, Britain's socialist daily