MIT D-Lab and the Ecorecolectoras
The Ecorecolectoras are a group of primarily women in Cochabamba, Bolivia that collect recyclable materials from collection routes on demand from municipality-owned “Green Points,” and provide other cleanliness and waste management services to neighborhoods in the city. Their collaboration with D-Lab began in 2018, but this is only the second student trip to take place.
The team
Camila had participated in the first trip in 2024 as part of the D-Lab: Development class, and now she joined again as part of the D-Lab: Gender and Development class. It was the first trip to Bolivia for Frankie and Sofia, who both took the D-Lab: Development class. We were hosted by the Catholic University of Bolivia (UCB) and also worked in collaboration with the Higher University of San Simón (UMSS) and we worked with students of both universities: Aldana Torrico Mercado, Valmari Vargas Carrión, Angela Valverde Lamas, and Diana Mamani Mamani of UCB; and Erika Vanessa Morales Figueroa, Lizeth Choque Ugarte, and Gloria Roxana Rodriguez Alvarez of UMSS.
Introducing the projects: Designing a recycling center and furniture restoration
This year, there were two projects that we were involved in. The first was the design of a recycling center that the Ecorecolectoras could manage independently from the municipality, collaborating directly with an OTB, or a unit of governance for villages or neighborhoods in cities. They also wanted the center to be either mobile or disassemblable in case they wanted to move the entire unit to a different OTB.
As a cooperative that performs a variety of services across the city to recover recyclable materials (in Spanish, material aprovechable), the Ecorecolectoras collect material that can be challenging to re-sell or turn into income. Chief among these collected materials is discarded furniture. The second project, a furniture refurbishment workshop, was co-designed by the Ecorecolectoras and Frankie; born out of the cooperative’s interest in diversifying their income-generating activities from their recovered materials and Frankie’s previous experiences in furniture refurbishment and woodworking. Using discarded furniture the Ecorecolectoras had collected, Frankie led the Ecorecolectoras and our team of university students, in establishing a method to assess the state of collected furniture and familiarize the cooperative with the basic tools and skills needed to restore the furniture to sell to artisanal markets and buyers.
Week 1: Meeting with key stakeholders in Cochabamba’s recycling system
During our first week in Cochabamba, we were warmly welcomed by our host institution Universidad Catolica Boliviana San Pablo, and our collaborators, the Ecorecolectoras and students at UMSS and UCB. With these project members, we spent the first five days meeting with key actors at different stages of the local waste management system in Cochabamba to understand distinct aspects of the circular economy cycle as an extension of waste management and how these sectors are involved within the waste management system.
We met with generators by walking through one of the Ecorecolectoras’ collection routes, getting to know some of the local neighborhood residents, buildings, and businesses. As part of preparing for our second week Green Point construction project, we also met with the OTB’s of the Colquiri and Cantaranna neighborhoods who led us on walkthroughs of their neighborhoods. Additionally, we met with operators such as the municipal collector EMSA and final disposal companies like Colina, which manages Cochabamba’s K’ara K’ara landfill. Next, we met with the city’s Office of Urban Planning and Environment to understand the goals of the city’s urban planning agenda and how it aligns concerns of economic revitalization with environmental care. As part of our project’s involvement with local circular economies, we also had the opportunity to meet with various companies involved in the material treatment and recycling industries, like EMPACAR, which treats recovered plastics and transforms them into new material that is used for new plastic manufacturing for bags and similar products.
We closed out the week by visiting local woodworking artisans in preparation for our furniture refurbishment workshop, who shared their design process and involvement in local artisanal markets. Our first visit was to Flawa Pawa, a green business run out of the artisan family’s home workshop, whose products included vases, furniture, glassware, and jewelry, all created from recovered materials like sewing machines, old cloths, bicycles, newspaper scraps while homaging indigenous and Bolivian culture. The second visit was to Paniagua, an artisanal carpentry business owned and operated by two brothers with over 25 years of experience, who walked us through their workshop and construction process, giving us and the Ecorecolectoras insight on the operations of larger-scale artisanal woodworking from scratch and restoring older furniture.
Week 2: Facilitating the Co-Design Workshop
After synthesizing all the information we had gathered from the visits we had and the people we met, we began the co-design workshop with members of the Ecorecolectoras, a leader of the OTB Cantarrana, which we had finalized as the target neighborhood for the recycling center project, and a member of the Japan International Cooperation Agency who was working with the municipal government on recycling education.
The first day was dedicated to building connections with the workshop members and using the information we had gathered to help them create a value chain of recycling in Cochabamba. We had more information on the specific actors in the system, but our investigation was structured linearly, from producer to final deposition. The Ecorecolectoras brought their mindset of circularity and a circular economy into every process to turn the value chain into a value cycle. The team working on the refurbishment project focused on the process of acquiring, redesigning or refurbishing, cost analyzing, and final selling of furniture.
Then, both teams identified possible bottlenecks during each step of the process, along with potential solutions to each bottleneck to account for in creating the designs for the projects, such as transportation and accessibility. The teams then created the initial designs for each project, with the refurbishment team quickly assembling the materials they needed. The recycling project had some more initial iterations, with an initial prototype being created out of paper, then digitally modeled by Frankie, and then finalized by UCB’s lead workshop engineer, Billy. We started gathering the materials for the recycling project at the end of Wednesday that week and really started construction on Thursday. All the workshop participants and facilitators helped with constructing the projects, from sanding wood to sawing steel, and we’d work from 9 to around 5 Thursday, Friday, Monday, and the finished and presented the projects on Tuesday. Some workshop members even continued working through the weekend to finish up the projects.
Side trip: Salar de Uyuni
Our time in Bolivia wasn’t dedicated exclusively to work; we did our best to spend the weekends resting and exploring Bolivia. The most notable trip was our visit to Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flat about eight hours from Cochabamba. The salt flats are 4,086 square miles and are located along the Andes 12,000 feet above sea level.
Final touches to the projects, and some reflections
The projects were nearly complete by Tuesday of the third week, all that was generally left was transporting the recycling modules to OTB Cantarrana and assembling the center there. We also brought the furniture there as part of a final presentation of the project results, where many other members of the Ecorecolectoras and some UCB faculty were there to see the hard work of the workshop participants.
About the authors
- Camila V. Becerra: I am a third-year at Wellesley, studying Political Science and Economies with an interest in Latin American affairs and development. I was born in Cochabamba, BO but raised in the DC-metro area.
- Frankie Schulte: I’m a senior here at MIT studying Computer Science and Engineering with a minor in Art and Design. I grew up in Huntington Beach, California and this was my first visit to South America!
- Sofia Lora: I am a sophomore at MIT majoring in Chemical-Biological engineering and doing an Environment and Sustainability minor. I was born and raised in Florida, but my dad is Colombian and my mom is Peruvian, so I’ve gone to South America and the Andes several times prior to this trip.
More information
MIT D-Lab class: D-Lab: Development
MIT D-Lab class: D-Lab: Gender and Development
Contact
Libby Hsu, MIT D-Lab Associate Director of Academics