Ricardo Coco Niz: Recycling life | Ricardo Coco Niz | TEDxRiodelaPlata

When I came from Entre Rios I thought I was coming to the best place of the world, Buenos Aires. No family, not knowing how to read or write, as a child. The cemetery was the first place I lay down, in Chacarita, to start looking around. I marveled at the city of Buenos Aires. I had to decide quite fast how I was going to live. So rather quickly, Coco, the "cartonero", garbage digger, was born. A bridge was the place I found to find peace, so no one bothered me. And that's how I started this obstacle race, like a marathonist. Jump, jump, jump, jump. In one of those jumps is when I decide to go to school. Under the bridge I attended catechesis, politicians came, they came looking for cheap labor to steal, for example. The offspring came under the bridge. That's when I become aware of human irresponsibility. That was a very important event in my life, I was able to decide that this was no longer my way of life. I was bringing human beings who were going to get a car to dig garbage, a bridge to live, and I decided carry out a project called "The Roadrunner Cooperative". It wasn't easy, I knew nothing about management. But I could read already, and I found a magazine that talked about cooperatives. I fell in love with the tool. And I followed that cooperative tool. I attended several courses. I got among coaches. I got in international studies. I mingled with entrepreneurs, with courses in bill of materials that allowed me to discover how to understand the point of equilibrium in a project. In order to interpret what the entire project community needs to be able to sustain the project. This is the start-up and infrastructure of a cooperative of "cartoneros" called The Road Runner, in which we are dedicated to waste management. More than 20 products in the chain, derivatives of nature we recover, classify and provide to the industries to make new products for the consumer market. Our idea isn't just to recycle ecologically but to try to recycle life. There are many people who are like human waste, scattered in our country, with no employment, no housing, no health, no good nutrition, and we found an enabling scenario in waste to generate a real circular economy that can meet those needs our community has. And we also realized that it's not just the cartonero, the homeless, the unemployed, the one in trouble. People with consumer power has a great need of care, too. And that's where we aim to be useful with a service to the community that recover materials for recycling. And we do it from the extreme of begging. We were born in the landfills, in the slums, the settlements. And our goal is, why not, to fill Argentina with productive cooperatives focused on ecology. You might say: Why did you come up with this? I didn't come up with it. Necessity buried me and, as I didn't want to become a criminal, as I didn't want to become anti-social, a counterweight in my society, I decided to create an option in life, and work... I got proposals and such since I started going to school. I learned how to read and write, and there I found in the tool, in the management of the cooperative format, a huge solution to a community that screams everywhere: "I need you to help me". Now, the cooperative has a format in which you don't have to put money, you have to fill it with problems. We got to work on the vulnerability. I started looking at myself. And once I found myself, well, I discovered myself and I started to have different self-proposals, initiatives, and I started putting them into practice. And I ended up in an institution called The Road Runner, I hope I can replicate it at a global scale. My roots are homelessness. I come without a family. I don't know my parents, I grew up in a priest school. That's where I was educated in the culture of work. From a very young age I took on responsibilities. It wasn't easy to achieve social inclusion. So, that lack of affection, that lack of culture, but with a strong culture of work, allowed me to start living in the community and start earning the respect of the community. I don't see garbage, I see treasures. And I want to train a lot human beings, families, who believe that the train of life has passed. And I want to motivate the community who is suffering, to start over with something new. For example, in recycling waste, that can be re-industrialized, and be able to live with an activity within the law. That's why we educate in recycling people. Because if I recycle myself it is possible to achieve what I intend. That's why I think we should, instead of looking at what's wrong with others, or what others have, start looking at what we have, to invest it positively to achieve what we need to live with quality. The Road Runner is a kind of occupational antibiotics, I say, because it allows us to heal different social impurities, such as eradicating conflicts. Also we recycle behavior, we throw away our prejudices, and start to understand that what I don't do, nobody will. I decided to carry out an inclusive project that thousands of people can replicate, copy easily, without franchises, an opportunity to create an option to live. The Road Runner is an institution of vulnerable people, coming from the most extreme of vulnerabilities, but we recycle life in this place. Starting to take on commitments, change behaviors, a place -- an environmental, human and ecological operating room -- to live better. The goal of the cooperative is to recycle people. What is the way to recycle people? Identifying the most vulnerable people that exist in our society. For example, someone who is buried in addictions, alcohol, comes out of jail after 10 years, they enter your ID number in the system and you are over. You can't get a job. Who is going to hire an ex-convict? Someone who is a drug addict can't sustain a life story. Someone who's into alcohol, domestic violence, well, that is what we work at the cooperative. And the kind of resume with priority to get in the project is that kind of people, the person no one's going to give a chance to get better. A person who went through different institutions, ended up in the streets seeking peace, we go looking after them. Today, the cooperative works with companies. The companies offer to pay the cooperative for what we used to do for free. I do the same I did with a cart. But now we do it at a greater scale where we've managed to evolve and organize work teams. For example, the administrative area, is managed today by a cartonero's daughter who keeps the records in an Excel sheet of the cooperative's movements. Evolution found me paying taxes. A homeless man is becoming a taxpayer. Many homeless people must become taxpayers. Managing and not pushing is one of the cooperative's merits. It manages what it needs to develop, without exerting pressure to any institution. We don't eat from the trash today. It's a great evolution. Today, we buy what we need to eat. We're studying how to feed ourselves. What is the healthiest diet for the kids? What is the prevention we generate with the economic resources we generate in the cooperative to prevent disease in a child who are just born? For example. Things we couldn't do before. Today, it's a big evolution for the cooperative. The idea is to access quality of life. You don't have to have a lot to access quality of life. Now, not many can achieve the surpluses that perhaps these projects such as cooperatives achieve by working collectively to help others. My idea is not to become a millionaire. My idea is to be able to help as many people as possible, families, children, so that they study, understand how to declare freedom but autonomously, with autonomy. The freedom of debauchery doesn't work. I don't want to cut a street, I want to cut the vicious cycle that abuses of people like Coco, who were born without a family, were raised in a priest school, who lived under bridges, who can't read, can't write, and don't have a trade. So, I want to cut the vicious cycle of abusing people who is culturally vulnerable. If I show you a valid option, that the return is profitable with the effort you generate, we have a free country, individually, and working collectively. We can help by targeting waste adequately. They have no idea they can become employers. Because they're resource generators and not garbage generators. Everyone charges to bury and pollute our planet. If we properly allocate the waste we're generating jobs massively. While recycling the life of millions of people.