Albina Ruiz and "Healthy City"

Industrial engineering student Albina Ruiz was disturbed by the trash she saw around her in Lima, Peru. It was the late 1980s, and uncollected trash was a huge problem for many of the poorer urban areas, creating health problems and contaminating the city's water supply. Foul odors and toxic fumes emanated from the piles of trash, which were breeding grounds for rats and diseases such as cholera. Determined to address the problem, Ruiz established a microentrepreneurial enterprise, hiring the unemployed to pick up the garbage. After a number of years, she expanded the program, creating the nonprofit Ciudad Saludad, or "Healthy City," in 2001, thus continuing the microentrepreneurial, community-managed model that had been so successful. Over the years, other cities and countries adopted the Ciudad Saludad model. By 2012, Ruiz's enterprise was vast—with over 1,500 waste collectors—and had improved the lives of more than six million people in poverty-stricken areas. Excerpt UVA-E-0384 Rev. Mar. 12, 2013 ALBINA RUIZ AND “HEALTHY CITY” As she walked each day to the National Engineering University, where she was studying industrial engineering, Albina Ruiz was horrified by what she saw around her in the streets of Lima, Peru. Trash was piled high, spilling into the streets and covering the sidewalks in many places. The smell was so bad that people covered their noses with handkerchiefs and scarves, yet Ruiz saw children playing in the garbage, clambering atop piles of debris as though they were forts. It was the late 1980s, and while Ruiz was aware that trash collection was a municipal task, it was clear that the job was, for the most part, not being done. The research she had done into the problem made her all the more concerned. Sprawling mounds of uncollected garbage were a problem throughout Peru, but Lima's poorer areas were particularly hard-hit. In Cono Norte—a slum in northern Lima that was home to almost 1.5 million residents—an estimated 1,000 tons of garbage were generated daily, less than half of which was being picked up by municipal workers. Not only did that create health problems for city residents, but residents dumped the waste in rivers, thus contaminating the city's water supply. Foul odors and toxic fumes emanated from the piles of trash, which were breeding grounds for rats and diseases such as cholera. Poor and densely populated areas suffered the most because they had far more uncollected garbage than more affluent neighborhoods did. “The government in Peru,” said Ruiz, “like in other countries, spends a lot of money collecting garbage, but it's only where the well-off live. In those neighborhoods, they collect garbage every day.” Inspired in part by the massive amounts of waste she saw daily, Ruiz—the only female student in her class at the university—wrote her thesis on microenterprises and environmental sanitation in Cono Norte. She also organized her fellow students to pick up garbage from along the riverbeds and beaches. As she neared graduation, Ruiz began to formulate a plan as to how the city might deal with the trash and all its hazards. . . .