Signposting Change

Now when someone asks us what work we do we tell them we recycle waste. It was not like this many years ago. Then we would say “Nothing”. Then we would say we just rummage through waste. Then we did not know that there would be other takers for it. Yes we did earn money from selling the scrap that we managed to collect. None of us really thought of it as work. Just as something that we did to make ends meet.

Now we proudly call ourselves recycling workers. Now we know that the work we do saves the municipality a lot of money in garbage management. Now we know it prevents the cutting down of trees and extraction from mines. Now we know that recycling saves energy and we mitigate climate change. Now we know that big companies are plotting ways to get at the waste that we have made our own.  

We have all been together as a Union for over a decade. We have had small victories and occasional setbacks. Collective successes and some challenges. We move forward with a shared vision and a common perspective. We feel a strong sense of togetherness and solidarity. Along the way we have changed our ways of being, working and living. We have marked the many crossroads on this journey...