Aquí no se bota (casi) nada. Waste, value, and the economy of discards in Havana

In Havana, a significant economic phenomenon takes place, centred around the recycling and transformation of discarded materials into newly usable objects. This semi-submerged local economy provides the population with items that are otherwise unavailable on the market or too expensive to purchase for the population. The variety of materials and objects recovered from waste is vast, as are the potential social biographies they might carry, having been rescued from the piles of discards that accumulate in Havana’s streets. This phenomenon has largely escaped public discourse and the attention of Cuban authorities. Instead, individuals engaging in waste-related activities, particularly those seen rummaging through the garbage, often face derision and social stigma. Their sustainable practices, driven primarily by necessity and scarcity, are not recognized as positive contributions to Cuban society, nor have they been the subject of ethnographic inquiry until now. This thesis, Aquí no se bota (casi) nada, is the result of about eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork aimed at analysing Havana’s waste and the social practices that give rise to what I term the waste economy. Through this study, I contribute to the growing field of Waste Studies and to anthropological works about Cuba. Regarding the former, this thesis offers rich reflections and insights about the concepts of waste and value and how they are interconnected. In particular, I address how people create value from waste. I understand value as something meaningful to humans, as anthropologists like Graeber (2013) and Taylor (2024) have sought to define analytically. This study focuses not only on the monetary value that discarded items acquire once recovered and processed but also on the immaterial, unique values that emerge from social interactions and life experiences within Havana’s waste world.