Venezuela - Women recycle for income and environment

The women of this town in northern Venezuela no longer say "garbage" but rather "secondary raw material," and instead of referring to recycling, they talk about "separation at point of origin." Tacarigua is a long coastal lagoon covering 9,200 hectares along Venezuela's Caribbean coast, a three-hour drive east of Caracas. The lagoon has areas where freshwater meets saltwater, but most of it is separated from the sea by a sandy strip 28 kilometres long and about 300 metres wide. "Here, we women organised ourselves in a small company to collect what we used to see as garbage," María Auxiliadora Uriepero, who has six children and 11 grandchildren, told Tierramérica. She stood in the doorway of her half-built house of cinder-block walls and zinc roof, which currently serves as a warehouse for her sacks of discarded bottles.