Social Responsability

The idea is to teach people how to fish and not just grant them the rod and hook. The objective is to create a decentralized system of small ventures that produce objects with discarded PET bottles and to work with them in the commercialization of their products.

Contenido-Neto is a strategic design concept with environmental, social and economic impact. In the city of Buenos Aires alone, more than 100.000 argentine families make their living out of urban waste. The so called “Cartoneros” (recyclable materials collectors) are organized in cooperatives that subsist on the collection and sale of urban waste at very low prices. The project aims to insert these cooperatives of “Cartoneros” into the production system. Contenido-Neto applies simple technical processes to multiply the reselling price of the collected materials. Thus, instead of selling bottles according to their weight, cooperatives will be able to sell designed products made out of the materials found in containers, increasing the sale value between 1.000 and 10.000 times.

TransForma is the name of the project implemented with the support of Coca-Cola and Coca-Cola FEMSA with the objective of gathering groups of “Cartoneros” and training them on cutting and weaving with PET tapes. The program lasted two years and was carried out mainly in greater Buenos Aires. It was first implemented in a neighborhood named Las Tunas and continued in some newly organized small cooperatives. Those who participated in the project were responsible for selling their own products in different events that took place in La Rural or the Campo Argentino de Polo. The project was a huge success; some people got their first job and others started their own ventures. Coca-Cola granted them a diploma that certified the training.