1001 Smart Cities
🇦🇷 Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires's Registered Recuperadores Urbanos & Green Centres

🤖 AI-generated summary · ◆ 1 sourced claim · 🔎 Last verified

This overview was generated with AI from the public sources listed below and checked against them before publication. It has not had a complete human fact-check — treat it as a starting point and follow the sources.

1 sourced claim on this page, none individually verified yet — turn on “Sources in the text” to see each one.

How this atlas is made · What “last verified” means · What “source-checked” means · The full record behind this page

Open data names the cooperative working every collection zone, but tonnage is published only by plant type, so nobody outside city hall can say who recovered what. In 2025 the fixed drop-off points fell from 80 to 22.

Outcome🔄 Ongoing
Evidence🔬 Peer-reviewed
what does this mean?The strongest source behind this entry is an independent peer-reviewed or academic study. It grades who did the looking — not how well the project went. All four grades →
Run byDirección General de Reciclado, Ministerio de Espacio Público e Higiene Urbana (GCBA), with 12 recuperador cooperatives
Scale🏙️ City-wide
FundingCity of Buenos Aires budget (GCBA), paid to cooperatives as a per-recuperador monthly incentive

Part of 1001 Smart Cities — 1,167 documented projects · 🏙️ 10 more in Buenos Aires · 🗑️ Waste & recycling guide · 🌱 Environment projects

After the 2001 crisis Buenos Aires stopped policing its cartoneros and started registering them: Ley 992, sanctioned in December 2002, created a compulsory register of waste pickers plus a cooperatives register, and ordered them into the city's differentiated collection service with credentials and work clothing. Twelve cooperatives now hold assigned collection zones and run the green centres that sort the material, and the city publishes both as CC-BY open geodata — every zone and every plant named with the cooperative that works it — alongside monthly recovered tonnage by plant type. The law framing it has not held: Ley 1854 (2005) required landfill cuts of 30% by 2010, 50% by 2012 and 75% by 2017 against 2004 levels, and in 2018 Ley 5966 rewrote the schedule to 50% by 2021, 65% by 2025 and 80% by 2030 while moving the baseline to 2012. In 2025 the city ended the funded transport that brought cartoneros in from the suburbs, used by about 3,100 of them, and cut its fixed drop-off points from 80 in 2021 to 22.

Live 📅 since 2002

📊 Impact

The green centres took in 87,175 tonnes and employed 809 workers in 2018, with 12 cooperatives grouping more than 5,500 recuperadores urbanos paid a monthly incentive of around US$200 (Schamber & Tagliafico, Laboreal 17(2), 2021).

🎓 Lesson

A formalisation scheme is only auditable if the register is public. Buenos Aires names the cooperative behind every collection zone and every green centre in open data, but publishes tonnage only by plant type — so nobody outside city hall can say which cooperative recovered what.

🌱 EnvironmentWaste & recyclingCircular economyOpen data

Sources

↗ Ley 992 (2002) — Boletín Oficial CABAPublished 29 January 2003Fetched 2026-07-26. Sanctioned 12 Dec 2002, published 29 Jan 2003. Art. 4: 'Créase el Registro Único Obligatorio Permanente de Recuperadores de Materiales Reciclables'; Art. 5 creates the cooperatives register; Art. 2 orders waste pickers incorporated into differentiated collection within the urban hygiene service; credentials, work clothing and gloves provided. Supports the 2002 start year and the registry framing.
↗ Ley 1854 'Basura Cero' (2005) — Boletín Oficial CABAPublished 12 January 2006Fetched 2026-07-26. Original Art. 6 sets reduction targets of '30% for 2010, 50% for 2012 and 75% for 2017, taking as base the levels sent to CEAMSE during 2004', and the page records that Ley 5966 (2018) modified Art. 6. Primary source for the original targets and for the fact of the amendment.
↗ Greenpeace Argentina — 'Ley de Basura Cero: más de 14 años de metas incumplidas'Published 24 November 2005Fetched 2026-07-26. NGO campaign source, used only for the amended schedule and the baseline shift: Ley 5966 sets 50%/2021, 65%/2025, 80%/2030 and takes 'como base a 2012, año en el que se enterraron 2.131.072 … toneladas … en vez de 2017, cuando la cantidad fue aproximadamente la mitad'; also 'en 2017 se llegó a un 26% de reducción'. The consolidated text of Ley 5966 on argentinambiental.com returned HTTP 503 and cedom.gob.ar failed DNS resolution, so the amended article was not read in the original.
↗ Schamber & Tagliafico, 'El Sistema de Recolección Diferenciada…', Laboreal 17(2) (2021)Published 2021Peer-reviewed. Carries the impact sentence by sentence: 'el conjunto de los Centros Verdes donde, en 2018, se ocupan 809 trabajadores recibe 87.175 toneladas/año'; '12 organizaciones cooperativas que nuclean a más de 5.500 recuperadores urbanos'; 'un estipendio mensual (que se denomina «incentivo» y oscila en torno a los 200 dólares americanos)'; on child labour, cooperatives 'se comprometen a no trabajar con menores de edad, para lo cual el GCABA ofrece la instalación de guarderías'.
↗ Buenos Aires Data — 'Infraestructura de gestión de residuos' (open geodata)Published 20 January 2026CC-BY, last modified 22 Jun 2026. The resource CSVs were fetched directly: Zona_Cooperativas_RSUsecos_clean.csv names all 12 cooperatives and their assigned zones ('asignado a 12 Cooperativas de Recuperadores Urbanos'); Centros_clasificacion_RSU_clean.csv lists 14 green centres with an 'administra' column naming the operating cooperative. This is the data layer the entry rests on. The older human-facing page /dataset/centros-clasificacion-residuos returns HTTP 404.
Show 4 more sourcesShow fewer
↗ Buenos Aires Data — 'Recuperación de residuos' (monthly tonnage)Published 20 January 2026CC-BY. Monthly recovered tonnage by plant type — green centres, composting centres, Centro de Reciclaje and the TMB plant at CEAMSE Norte III — and by material. Checked specifically for a per-cooperative or per-centre breakdown of green-centre tonnage: there is none. Supports the lesson field.
↗ Infobae — city ends funded transport for cartoneros (23 Jul 2025)Fetched 2026-07-26. About 3,100 recuperadores in cooperatives used the subsidised transport; more than 6,000 recuperadores work across 12 cooperatives; the service cost 'alrededor de 6.000 millones de pesos anuales'; mayor Jorge Macri calls it a 'privilegio'. Source for the 2025 cut in the snippet.
↗ La Nación — the city's plan for recyclable waste (19 Jun 2025)Fetched 2026-07-26. Puntos Verdes fall from 80 (2021) to 41 (2023) to 22 (2025) on 'criterios de eficiencia administrativa'; containers rise 4,079 to 4,589; city says 2024 recycled 6% more than 2023; a city legislator notes battery and organic collection at Puntos Verdes tripled 2021-23. The city's headline '60% recovered / 3,450 t per day' was deliberately not used — it mixes rubble, forestry and organics with dry recyclables and is not comparable to the Basura Cero burial baseline.
↗ La Nación — what CEAMSE is and what it receives (5 Jan 2025)Fetched 2026-07-26. CEAMSE was created in January 1977 jointly by the city and the province of Buenos Aires and handles about 23,000 t/day, of which 6,000-7,000 t/day come from the city. Cited only to fix the destination and the jurisdictional boundary; CEAMSE's landfills are outside the city and are not part of this entry.

📅 How old is the evidence?

Two clocks, kept apart: when this entry’s sources were published, and what has happened to its record in the atlas. Documented span: since 2002. 9 of 9 sources carry a publication date, from 29 January 2003 to 20 January 2026.

When the sources were published

  1. Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires — Boletín Oficial · city governmentLey 992 (2002) — Boletín Oficial CABA
  2. Greenpeace · ngoGreenpeace Argentina — 'Ley de Basura Cero: más de 14 años de metas incumplidas'
  3. Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires — Boletín Oficial · city governmentLey 1854 'Basura Cero' (2005) — Boletín Oficial CABA
  4. OpenEdition · researchSchamber & Tagliafico, 'El Sistema de Recolección Diferenciada…', Laboreal 17(2) (2021)
  5. La Nación · pressLa Nación — what CEAMSE is and what it receives (5 Jan 2025)
  6. La Nación · pressLa Nación — the city's plan for recyclable waste (19 Jun 2025)
  7. Infobae · pressInfobae — city ends funded transport for cartoneros (23 Jul 2025)
  8. Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires · city governmentBuenos Aires Data — 'Infraestructura de gestión de residuos' (open geodata)
Show 1 more dated sourcesShow fewer
  1. Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires · city governmentBuenos Aires Data — 'Recuperación de residuos' (monthly tonnage)

Every source, with links ↑

What happened to this record

  1. Sources last read
  2. Entered the record

Every revision, permanent →

Show your work What this page rests on and what it can’t tell you · all 1 claims with their sources · the forensic record

Evidence Passport · public beta 1 addressable claim, 9 source dossiers, one permanent baseline. The passport is unreviewed — an AI-assisted structural migration, not a human or expert endorsement. Every revision keeps a permanent copy under revision history.

Inspect the claims, one by one — verbatim text, sources and caveats for all 1

The text below is copied verbatim from the published record. Each claim names the source dossiers that carry it; caveats stay attached to the claim they qualify.

Claim 1 clm-da60331230fa0e5e quantitative
The green centres took in 87,175 tonnes and employed 809 workers in 2018, with 12 cooperatives grouping more than 5,500 recuperadores urbanos paid a monthly incentive of around US$200
Published field
impact · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
No support note recorded
Caveat
The entry's lesson notes the city publishes tonnage only by plant type, so nobody outside city hall can say which cooperative recovered what.

Sources carrying this claim

  1. Schamber & Tagliafico, 'El Sistema de Recolección Diferenciada…', Laboreal 17(2) (2021)
Forensic record — source dossiers, gaps, hashes and the exact revision this page renders

This layer records what is known about each source, what is still missing, and the exact snapshot this page is rendering. A missing date, archive or hash stays visible as missing.

unreviewed Revision 2026-08-20-source-dates effective 2026-07-26 · created 2026-08-20

Awaiting operator and domain-expert review; publication of this revision implies neither.

sha256:654d6dc1d672f06a52ce890da96fd59e1bffd5827637bc105a4dfc2f0956c9ce
Revision history → Permanent version link → Machine-readable record → Evidence Constitution →
1
of 1 claims mapped
9
source dossiers
8
publication dates recorded
0
archives linked
0
exact locators
0
content captures hashed

Governance facts carried by the record

Operator
Dirección General de Reciclado, Ministerio de Espacio Público e Higiene Urbana (GCBA), with 12 recuperador cooperatives
Actor types
city-government, civil-society
Funding model
public
Funding description
City of Buenos Aires budget (GCBA), paid to cooperatives as a per-recuperador monthly incentive
Cost
Not recorded
Ownership
Not recorded
Decision rights
Not recorded
Exit conditions
Not recorded

9 source dossiers

Ley 992 (2002) — Boletín Oficial CABA boletinoficial.buenosaires.gob.ar · background

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-0bb58abfd3578ae5
Publisher
Name not classified · boletinoficial.buenosaires.gob.ar
Type / language
web-page · language not classified
Published
2003-01-29
Updated
Not recorded
Source last checked
No source-level check date
Record last verified
2026-07-26
Dossier created
2026-08-20
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

Fetched 2026-07-26. Sanctioned 12 Dec 2002, published 29 Jan 2003. Art. 4: 'Créase el Registro Único Obligatorio Permanente de Recuperadores de Materiales Reciclables'; Art. 5 creates the cooperatives register; Art. 2 orders waste pickers incorporated into differentiated collection within the urban hygiene service; credentials, work clothing and gloves provided. Supports the 2002 start year and the registry framing.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
Background source; no baseline claim points here
Ley 1854 'Basura Cero' (2005) — Boletín Oficial CABA boletinoficial.buenosaires.gob.ar · background

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-3ecb6568f0f30f1a
Publisher
Name not classified · boletinoficial.buenosaires.gob.ar
Type / language
web-page · language not classified
Published
2006-01-12
Updated
Not recorded
Source last checked
No source-level check date
Record last verified
2026-07-26
Dossier created
2026-08-20
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

Fetched 2026-07-26. Original Art. 6 sets reduction targets of '30% for 2010, 50% for 2012 and 75% for 2017, taking as base the levels sent to CEAMSE during 2004', and the page records that Ley 5966 (2018) modified Art. 6. Primary source for the original targets and for the fact of the amendment.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
Background source; no baseline claim points here
Greenpeace Argentina — 'Ley de Basura Cero: más de 14 años de metas incumplidas' greenpeace.org · background

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-4e2da76a375c8102
Publisher
Name not classified · greenpeace.org
Type / language
web-page · language not classified
Published
2005-11-24
Updated
Not recorded
Source last checked
No source-level check date
Record last verified
2026-07-26
Dossier created
2026-08-20
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

Fetched 2026-07-26. NGO campaign source, used only for the amended schedule and the baseline shift: Ley 5966 sets 50%/2021, 65%/2025, 80%/2030 and takes 'como base a 2012, año en el que se enterraron 2.131.072 … toneladas … en vez de 2017, cuando la cantidad fue aproximadamente la mitad'; also 'en 2017 se llegó a un 26% de reducción'. The consolidated text of Ley 5966 on argentinambiental.com returned HTTP 503 and cedom.gob.ar failed DNS resolution, so the amended article was not read in the original.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
Background source; no baseline claim points here
Schamber & Tagliafico, 'El Sistema de Recolección Diferenciada…', Laboreal 17(2) (2021) journals.openedition.org · 1 linked claim

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-d64c801eda6f7b29
Publisher
Name not classified · journals.openedition.org
Type / language
web-page · language not classified
Published
Not recorded
Updated
Not recorded
Source last checked
No source-level check date
Record last verified
2026-07-26
Dossier created
2026-08-20
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

Peer-reviewed. Carries the impact sentence by sentence: 'el conjunto de los Centros Verdes donde, en 2018, se ocupan 809 trabajadores recibe 87.175 toneladas/año'; '12 organizaciones cooperativas que nuclean a más de 5.500 recuperadores urbanos'; 'un estipendio mensual (que se denomina «incentivo» y oscila en torno a los 200 dólares americanos)'; on child labour, cooperatives 'se comprometen a no trabajar con menores de edad, para lo cual el GCABA ofrece la instalación de guarderías'.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
Buenos Aires Data — 'Infraestructura de gestión de residuos' (open geodata) data.buenosaires.gob.ar · background

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-66105121a45e1cf0
Publisher
Name not classified · data.buenosaires.gob.ar
Type / language
web-page · language not classified
Published
2026-01-20
Updated
Not recorded
Source last checked
No source-level check date
Record last verified
2026-07-26
Dossier created
2026-08-20
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

CC-BY, last modified 22 Jun 2026. The resource CSVs were fetched directly: Zona_Cooperativas_RSUsecos_clean.csv names all 12 cooperatives and their assigned zones ('asignado a 12 Cooperativas de Recuperadores Urbanos'); Centros_clasificacion_RSU_clean.csv lists 14 green centres with an 'administra' column naming the operating cooperative. This is the data layer the entry rests on. The older human-facing page /dataset/centros-clasificacion-residuos returns HTTP 404.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
Background source; no baseline claim points here
Buenos Aires Data — 'Recuperación de residuos' (monthly tonnage) data.buenosaires.gob.ar · background

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-f7d5ca2ddd1d9862
Publisher
Name not classified · data.buenosaires.gob.ar
Type / language
web-page · language not classified
Published
2026-01-20
Updated
Not recorded
Source last checked
No source-level check date
Record last verified
2026-07-26
Dossier created
2026-08-20
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

CC-BY. Monthly recovered tonnage by plant type — green centres, composting centres, Centro de Reciclaje and the TMB plant at CEAMSE Norte III — and by material. Checked specifically for a per-cooperative or per-centre breakdown of green-centre tonnage: there is none. Supports the lesson field.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
Background source; no baseline claim points here
Infobae — city ends funded transport for cartoneros (23 Jul 2025) infobae.com · background

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-30fd4eeb04e05786
Publisher
Name not classified · infobae.com
Type / language
web-page · language not classified
Published
2025-07-23
Updated
Not recorded
Source last checked
No source-level check date
Record last verified
2026-07-26
Dossier created
2026-08-20
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

Fetched 2026-07-26. About 3,100 recuperadores in cooperatives used the subsidised transport; more than 6,000 recuperadores work across 12 cooperatives; the service cost 'alrededor de 6.000 millones de pesos anuales'; mayor Jorge Macri calls it a 'privilegio'. Source for the 2025 cut in the snippet.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
Background source; no baseline claim points here
La Nación — the city's plan for recyclable waste (19 Jun 2025) lanacion.com.ar · background

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-4391d9c606c0c14d
Publisher
Name not classified · lanacion.com.ar
Type / language
web-page · language not classified
Published
2025-06-19
Updated
Not recorded
Source last checked
No source-level check date
Record last verified
2026-07-26
Dossier created
2026-08-20
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

Fetched 2026-07-26. Puntos Verdes fall from 80 (2021) to 41 (2023) to 22 (2025) on 'criterios de eficiencia administrativa'; containers rise 4,079 to 4,589; city says 2024 recycled 6% more than 2023; a city legislator notes battery and organic collection at Puntos Verdes tripled 2021-23. The city's headline '60% recovered / 3,450 t per day' was deliberately not used — it mixes rubble, forestry and organics with dry recyclables and is not comparable to the Basura Cero burial baseline.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
Background source; no baseline claim points here
La Nación — what CEAMSE is and what it receives (5 Jan 2025) lanacion.com.ar · background

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-f53eb7873446a200
Publisher
Name not classified · lanacion.com.ar
Type / language
web-page · language not classified
Published
2025-01-05
Updated
Not recorded
Source last checked
No source-level check date
Record last verified
2026-07-26
Dossier created
2026-08-20
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

Fetched 2026-07-26. CEAMSE was created in January 1977 jointly by the city and the province of Buenos Aires and handles about 23,000 t/day, of which 6,000-7,000 t/day come from the city. Cited only to fix the destination and the jurisdictional boundary; CEAMSE's landfills are outside the city and are not part of this entry.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
Background source; no baseline claim points here
Known limits of this passport
  • Publisher names and source languages have not yet been classified; domains are recorded without guessing.
  • Existing source notes are descriptive locators, not page- or paragraph-exact citations.
  • A missing archive, publication date or content hash is shown as null rather than inferred.
  • The project-level evidence grade ranks the strongest source in the entry; it is not a truth score for every claim.

Continue exploring

Compare this project

🇵🇪 Recicla Lima · Lima Lima names the recycler assigned to your address; Buenos Aires has named the cooperative for every collection zone since Ley 992 in 2002. 🇮🇩 TPST Bantargebang: Jakarta's Metered Landfill · Jakarta Jakarta weighs every lorry and prices none of it; Buenos Aires publishes tonnage by plant type, so no cooperative's haul can be counted. 🇧🇷 Comlurb's Tracked Waste Collection Fleet · Rio de Janeiro Rio put the data layer on its lorries; Buenos Aires put it on the workers — a public register of recuperadores and the zones they hold.

What does a resident get for separating their waste?

The topic guide asks where the meter sits. This asks the question from the kitchen: four cities, four completely different things offered to the person doing the sorting — and one of them is nothing at all.

ProjectSinceStatusOutcomeEvidenceRun byCostWhat the resident gets
Weight-Based Food Waste Fee (RFID Smart Bins)Seoul, 🇰🇷 2013 Live Succeeded Peer-reviewed City government not public A bill. The resident taps an ID card, the bin weighs the deposit and charges by the kilogram, replacing a flat fee folded into building charges.
Suroboyo Bus — Plastic-Bottle Fare TransitSurabaya, 🇮🇩 2018 Live Scaled back Media City government, Utility or public operator not public A bus ride — bottles for a two-hour ticket. The entry's own verdict is that the gimmick drew the attention and an ordinary cash fare kept the line running.
Buenos Aires's Registered Recuperadores Urbanos & Green CentresBuenos Aires, 🇦🇷 2002 Live Ongoing Peer-reviewed City government, Civil society not public A livelihood. After the crisis the city stopped policing its waste pickers and registered them instead, writing them into the collection service.
Optical Waste Sorting by Bag Colour (Haraldrud & Klemetsrud)Oslo, 🇳🇴 2009 Live Ongoing Official City government, Private company not public Nothing. Bag colour chosen at the kitchen counter is the whole interface, the machine sorts what arrives correctly, and the bottleneck stays upstream.

Explore the wider context

🗑️ Pipes or pennies📖 Pay-as-you-throw (PAYT)📖 Pneumatic waste collection📖 Building performance standard (BPS)
📎 Cite this project

1001 Smart Cities (2026). “Buenos Aires's Registered Recuperadores Urbanos & Green Centres” — Buenos Aires, Argentina. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/buenos-aires-recuperadores-urbanos/ (last verified 2026-07-26). Data: CC BY 4.0.

The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.

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