Cartoneros. I've rented an apartment in Buenos Aires. It's a one bedroom flat in the barrio of Caballito, which is a nice neighborhood located south and a little more central from downtown. Downtown Buenos Aires is the easternmost part of the city near the River Plate which leads to the Atlantic Ocean. It's sunny and quiet and I have a terrace with a decent view. It has air conditioning, which is key because it has been about 90F with humidity. It also has an old fashioned elevator in which you have to manually close two gates (one for the elevator and one outside the elevator) in order to operate it and a big garden out back with two canaries, one white and one orange, both named pipi. I'm about 10 minutes walking from Parque Chacabuco, where I can run, and another 10 minutes to Rosana's house on the other side of the park. This is a picture of a 'Cartonero' (a 'Carton' is a cardboard box) that I took on Avenida Cobo in Parque Chacabuco. Buenos Aires has no real recycling to speak of. People dump their bottles, plastic, paper and compostables in the trash, and, instead of trash cans, they have metal trash baskets on top of a 3-4 foot pole or perch on the sidewalk outside their homes (presumably so the dogs can't get into it). The city trash guys come everyday - I think. Businesses and residents that don't have trash baskets walk their trash bags to the nearest corner at the end of the day and leave them there. Every evening these Cartoneros descend on neighborhoods with horse drawn-carts, like this guy, or hand-drawn carts, some of which are as small as canvas hotel/gym laundry baskets and others of which are big as a pick up truck. They pick thru trash bags and take anything and everything of recyclable value ... cardboard, cans, plastic, pringles containers .... load them up on their carts and take them away to sell them to whoever is buying. I'm not sure whether there are recycling centers where they can sell their stuff or whether there is some sort of private market. But the city doesn't pay them so they are selling it somewhere to someone. The Cartoneros are men, women and children. I've seen whole families picking thru trash on a corner, tiny kids and all. They are controversial because it confronts people with the extreme poverty that exists in their country, because of the child labor and health risks and because it's unregulated. On the other hand, it's a source of income and labor for people who have none and provides the city, which obviously hasn't invested in recycling or recycling education, with a valuable service. The Cartoneros live in poor neighborhoods an hour or more outside of central Buenos Aires. There used to be a train (El Tren Blanco) that they road with their carts into the city every day. But last I heard the city stopped the train from running (presumably to prevent or discourage the Cartoneros from coming). So now they supposedly come and go in the containers of big trucks which they hire. Here's a short preview of a documentary about them. And while we are on the topic of alternative employment, I've seen vendors here that I never imagined existed. For example, on a cold evening in Salta I saw a guy slowly riding a bicycle by me with something that looked like a doll-house or big koo-koo clock perched on the handle bars. Except he had a coal fire glowing inside of it and little locomotive engine whistle. He was selling fresh roasted nuts, that he roasts right there on his bike. You know he's coming by when you hear his whistle. Yesterday, I saw an man who must have been in his 60s or 70s bicycle by me with something that looked like a big fly-wheel mounted on his handlebars. He was also blowing a whistle, but his was a mouth whistle. Rosana told me that he was a roving knife-sharpener. You hear his whistle and go outside with your knives and he sharpens them right there.