DailyGood

For the last 27 years, DailyGood newsletters have offered a daily email that inspires you to respond to life with creativity and kindness. To join a community of 149,679 subscribers, subscribe here.

Jul 5, 2005

"The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life." --Jane Addams

The Garbage Lady

Where others see garbage, Albina Ruiz sees opportunity. Twenty years ago, in a poor Peruvian neighborhood only half of the trash produced by its 1.6 million residents was processed by the municipality, causing serious health problems and a littered landscape. Ruiz developed a new model of waste management by helping small business people in the community to take charge of collecting and processing waste by providing them start-up capital and marketing schemes to entice families to use the service.