Dawn Images

Colombian influencer Sara Samaniego braids her long straight hair, checks her make-up in a mirror, places her phone in the centre of a ring light and flashes a big smile for the camera.

“Hola mis recicla-amores [Hello my recycling loves]!” the 32-year-old, who is on a mission to teach Colombians how to sort their waste, says to greet her half-a-million Instagram followers. Samaniego, who wears blue overalls and a baseball cap on backwards as part of her “Marce, la recicladora” (Marce, the recycler) social media alter ego, has also become an unofficial spokeswoman for the 74,000 people who rummage through the garbage of Latin America’s fourth-biggest economy every day.

Colombian cities have no public recycling systems. Instead, they rely on informal waste pickers to go through bins and garbage left out for collection to salvage cardboard, glass, plastic and other reusable materials.

Across the world, between 20 and 34 million people play a crucial role in environmental protection by collecting and sorting waste recyclables — dirty, dangerous work for which most are paid a pittance.

Throughout the developing world, waste pickers can be seen pulling carts laden high with bric-a-brac through dense traffic. Samaniego tries to boost their visibility by profiling waste pickers on her YouTube and Instagram accounts.

She “encourages people to understand the work of recyclers from the inside,” Zoraya Avendano, the manager of a warehouse where the recyclers sell their wares for a few pesos, said.

Originally published in Dawn, March 19th, 2025