Letter 13 - Who Was The Remarkable Trash Lady??
Hello Bregdan Woman!
I love women who find solutions to the problems they encounter. Especially if it means dealing with mountains of trash!
I’m excited to tell you about this pioneering Bregdan Woman.
To understand her passion, I think you need to understand where Albina Ruiz grew up. Moyobamba, Peru is known as the “City of Orchids”. There are over 1500 varieties of orchids – growing wild in the jungle. Can you imagine? Perched in the high Amazon jungle on a cliff overlooking the Mayo River, her home was lush and beautiful. She spent her days surrounded by hot springs, waterfalls, and vibrant cloud forests.
The one thing her home couldn’t offer her, however, was an education. Life in Lima was nothing like her life in the beautiful jungle, but if she wanted to do something more with her life, she had to go to the University in Lima. Her six older brothers had come to the city before her.
Albina Ruiz faced grave culture shock after she left her home in the lush Peru jungle to go to college when she was 18. Besides the fact that she was the only woman in her Industrial Engineering classes, she was appalled by Lima, Peru’s filth. Her brothers told her to ignore the trash heaped in the city.
Albina couldn’t do that.
During her first days in the city, she hardly left the house where she was living. She couldn’t stand the gross, stinking garbage heaps that piled up everywhere in the slums. I’m sure I would have been holed up in the house with her! Albina couldn’t begin to understand how the people in Lima could possibly live with dignity when they were exposed to such filth and noxious odors every day.
Albina had never known waste. Her mother taught her that banana and cassava peels were for horses. Any leftover food was for the pigs and the puppies. Nothing was thrown away. Everything had a use. There was no garbage.
Lima was certainly nothing like her home.
People tossed their garbage in the streets, vacant lots, and on the walkways. They built mountains of putrid refuse. They threw it in the river, contaminating their only water source.
The result was not simply a smelly, ugly environment – it was causing serious health problems.
With Lima’s population of over eleven million people, accumulated trash posed a serious hazard to life.
Albina longed for her beautiful jungle home, but she was also determined to have a college education. She had to stay, but in order to survive, something had to change.
People were getting physically sick from contaminated groundwater. They were being negatively affected psychologically by the whole situation. No one wanted to live with the trash, but the city only hauled away half of it. There were no solutions for the remaining garbage – except for continually growing mountains.
What could one 18-year-old student do? Well… The beginning of a solution came to Albina in an unusual way.
One of her Industrial Engineering courses had her measure the productivity of companies in Lima. Her colleagues chose to focus on supermarkets and banks.
Albina was determined to use her course assignment to figure out what to do about the trash.
It was easy for people to complain. Albina was different.
She resolved to find enduring answers and create effective solutions. That is what makes her a Bregdan Woman.
She had already begun to send questions to the municipal government about the trash in the streets where she lived. Her school assignment offered her the chance to learn more. Albina convinced four friends to join her on a garbage truck. Of course she did… She wanted to understand how the system worked.
Rather, how it didn’t work.
She and her friends quickly realized how hard they would have to work. The days started early, the truck weaving its way through the trashy streets. She learned they didn’t actually work on a garbage truck. They ran alongside it, collecting heavy bags of trash placed on the streets, and then heaving it into the truck. The hours were long. Every day ended with an aching back, burning eyes, and intense fatigue.
And still, less than half of Lima’s trash was hauled away.
Albina’s days on the back of a garbage truck opened her eyes to the scope and severity of the problem. She wanted to jump right into sharing and implementing ideas, but she understood the big picture. As much as she wanted to change things, she knew she wasn’t ready.
She tucked away her thoughts and kept studying. She knew she would need knowledge and power to make the kind of difference she had in mind. It would take more than youthful enthusiasm.
After receiving her masters in Ecological and Environmental Management, Albina knew she was ready. She had the credential to back up her plan. She created her solution.
It all revolved around a single idea.
Her solution? A simple, but vast idea: Create a community-managed waste collection system!
I love how the best ideas are usually the simple ones. Simple doesn’t mean easy, though.
Her friends cautioned her against such a huge idea. She had waited for years to be able to change things. She ignored them. If she was going to have an impact, she was determined it would be a BIG impact!
The other sign of a Bregdan Woman!
In 2001 she founded the group Ciudad Saludable – which means Healthy City - a social enterprise that aimed to turn waste collection into a profitable business.
What a genius idea!
Albina chose El Cono Norte in Lima as her neighborhood guinea pig. She knew, from her days on the back of the garbage truck, that the community’s waste collection was processing barely half the trash.
She knew what she would discover: Mountains of smelly trash everywhere. Most people didn’t use the waste collection service. Why? They couldn’t afford it. It was more important to eat. Those who did, rarely paid their bills, making it more of a challenge for trash to be removed. It was a vicious cycle.
Albina put her plan into action. She found entrepreneurial women – locals who wanted to own a business – who would take charge of collecting and processing the garbage. I can imagine the conversations she must have had to talk them into this. 😊
Her plan would result in two things: more efficient waste management and jobs. Albina helped people (mostly other Bregdan Women) set up their businesses.
They arrived at the low fee of $1.50 a month for the service. It was an amount a family could afford, but also enough to make the businesses profitable.
Albina created many kinds of creative marketing ideas – including gift baskets – to get families to use the service AND pay each month on time. It worked!
The new business owners went door-to-door collecting garbage and the fees. They also educated people about the importance of respecting and protecting their environment. Some of these entrepreneurs even built profitable secondary businesses by creating products like organic fertilizer out of the trash they collected.
These Bregdan Women – all of them – have changed Peru!
Albina founded Ciudad Saludable in 2001. Now, in 2024, she oversees projects in 20 cities across Peru. She employs more than 150 people, has over 4,000 small business owners, and serves over 4 million residents.
Her model is so successful, she was asked to create a national plan for Peru, and her model has spread to other South America, African & Asian countries. She developed a university curriculum that teaches other people around the world how to duplicate what she’s done.
It’s amazing!
In 2022, Albina took another step – one she had resisted in the past. She became the Minister of the Environment under President Dina Boluarte - Peru’s first female president. She chose to do it because she believed it would give her a greater platform for change. If has! She served in that position for 2 years.
Albina stays in contact with the people within her organization. She still visits other cities overwhelmed by garbage, checks in on the neighborhoods involved in her program, and meets with government officials.
Albina says, “Where most people see a problem – I see a possibility.” Her ultimate goal is to change the way people think.
I’m going to repeat that.
“Where most people see a problem – I see a possibility.” Her ultimate goal is to change the way people think.
That, to me, is one of the key characteristics of a Bregdan Woman.
A Bregdan Woman looks for opportunities to change the way people think.
Albina believes every person can be a change agent. Everyone can change the world. The world will be different only if each one of us dares to be different, to make improvements.
Albina believes people need to understand that we’re not in this world to judge it, but to try to be better people and seek to do something good for others.
She believes that if all of us work together – each contributing their own unique ideas and projects – that massive change can happen.
Do you see now why I chose her as a Bregdan Woman?
Here’s the question you knew was coming… Do you see a problem you can turn into a possibility?
You don’t have to tackle it alone – ask for help!
There are many people who will come alongside you – and there will always be problems out there that need creative people to solve them!
Be like Albina and create solutions every chance you get.
Isn’t that what being a Bregdan Woman is all about?
Do you see a problem you can turn into a possibility?
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What will you do to be a Bregdan Woman?
What will you do today to impact history??
I’m on this journey with you!
Ginny
