Colombia’s top waste management influencer, Marce la Recicladora, recently visited Copenhagen as part of Danida Fellowship Centre’s “Solid Waste Management and Technologies” learning programme at the Technical University of Denmark. She met with Copenhagen’s Lord Mayor, Lars Weiss, to explore how citizens in both cities can take greater responsibility for managing waste.
By Vibeke Quaade
Copenhagen Municipality and Bogotá, Colombia’s capital, have an ongoing collaboration on waste management. This partnership focuses on integrating Bogotá’s thousands of informal recyclers into the formal system and shifting from a linear waste management model to a circular one.
Read the article and watch the video The first steps in a waste management revolution in Bogotá – Danida Fellowship Centre.
As part of this partnership, Copenhagen’s Lord Mayor, Lars Weiss, will visit Bogotá in November. To give him a preview, Marce took half a day out of her learning programme to meet with the mayor. Together they visited one of Copenhagen’s waste management facilities, Bispeengen, and discussed the role citizens play in recycling. The same day, Marce also got to explore Copenhagen’s household waste handling first hand, meeting local recycling guides and waste collectors. She even got to ride in one of the city’s waste collectors’ trucks to gain direct experience of the collection system.
Most of her three weeks in Copenhagen were, however, devoted to Danida Fellowship Centre’s Solid Waste Management and Technologies learning programme, facilitated by the Technical University of Denmark, DTU. The programme offered a comprehensive introduction to urban waste management technologies, regulations, financing, and stakeholder engagement within the Danish model. It included exposure visits to some of the most important waste-to-energy plants in the Copenhagen area. Marce said that during the learning programme she felt like a sponge, absorbing as much knowledge as possible. Receiving so many new ideas and so much inspiration from the lectures, visits and the other participants was like being in a dream come true.
Marce is not the first Colombian to participate in this learning programme. So far, a total of 11 professionals from Bogotá have taken part, in addition to two from Cali and two from Medellin.
Read the article and watch the video: Next Stop Copenhagen in Bogotá’s Waste Management Revolution – Danida Fellowship Centre.
Like her predecessors, Marce’s experiences in Denmark will inform her work back in Colombia, where she plans to collaborate more closely with officials driving Bogotá’s waste management transition.
With nearly 600,000 Instagram followers, Marce, whose real name is Sara Samaniego, has built a social media career highlighting the lives of Colombia’s recyclers, who collect recyclable waste from bins and containers, often pulling hand-drawn carts to make a living.
Her work is an important factor in Colombia’s national conversations about waste management and on environmental and social issues. She is already sharing insights from her experiences with Denmark’s waste management practices with her Colombian audience.
Watch some of the reels from her Instagram documenting her experiences in Denmark.
“What to many is “garbage”, here is a resource that moves an entire country.” See Instagram Reel
“5 Things I liked about Denmark!” See Instagram Reel
“Seaweed Converted To Energy? They do it in Denmark!” See Instagram Reel
“Heartfelt tears!” See Instagram Reel
