As the first rays of golden sun peek over the horizon, Mercado de Productores Rosario is already in full swing.
Nico Lopez, in his mid-20s and towering over most others, pushes a handcart through the market’s organized chaos. A flurry of workers zoom in and out of the market that spans a few city blocks. Wooden crates coming in are stacked into towers around vendors. Crates going out are piled into cargo and pickup trucks, suspensions straining under the weight as they roll into the city with their fresh haul. Hundreds of thousands of people in Rosario, Argentina, get fruits and vegetables each day thanks to this market.
But at a far corner of the parking lot, flies swarm green dumpsters where lettuce and peaches rot.
“Since these are fresh fruits and vegetables, the market naturally generates a lot of waste,” says Gustavo Suleta, manager of Mercado de Productores Rosario. “Fruits and vegetables are a unique type of waste because there is this small window of time where it is still healthy and nutritious but doesn’t have commercial value.”
Nico and his colleagues prowl through the market looking for vendors facing this conundrum of produce they may not be able to sell.
“[Our routine is] to go out and kindly greet vendors,” he explains. “We ask them if they have something to donate, some surplus, something they’re about to throw out, as long as it’s still edible. So we put on our charm.”
He walks over to a vendor, slaps hands and laughs for a few moments.
“We like to joke with them, like ‘Come on, you’re not gonna sell that, better to donate it,’” he giggles.
Amidst the jokes, Nico knows his work is important.
“We’re also here to create awareness,” he says. “Like our logo says, ‘Don’t throw out the good stuff.’ At the beginning, nobody wanted to donate, nobody understood what we were here for. But little by little we’ve convinced the vendors.”
After the first round of the morning, Nico and his colleagues return with a cart full of fresh chard, squash and zucchini. Soon, a truck from Banco de Alimentos Rosario, the city’s food bank, part of the Bancos de Alimentos Argentina food banking network, will come collect it. From there, it gets distributed among hundreds of organizations feeding those facing food insecurity in the city.
Nico is in his sixth year at RecupeBAR, the food bank’s market recovery program. For Nico, RecupeBAR is more than a stable job. It’s more than a way to help others.
It’s a way to heal.
Growing up in a working-class family, Nico had to bring in money from an early age and began selling trinkets in local fairs at 12.
But as he entered adolescence, he felt different and began to sense that he didn’t fit in.
“I feel everything very intensely and I’d hear people say things about me, use cruel words to describe me,” he says. “I felt like part of me broke every time I heard someone use one of those words, even if it was a joke.”
By then, Nico knew he was gay but felt like accepting it would further isolate him in his community. At the same time, he felt further and further from his true self.
Depressed and isolated, he moved out of his family home and aimed to make a living by himself. At 18, he ended up at the city dump with a few dozen other informal trash pickers.
“I started separating plastics,” he says. “I’d pick them out, separate them by color and then we’d put everything together to try to sell it.”
For many in Nico’s vulnerable position, picking through trash for anything they can sell is a last option to make money. The work was brutal, and Nico felt lost. Breathing in the dump’s fumes made Nico light-headed and dizzy.
The potent fumes, largely methane, which is produced by organic waste like food when it rots, isn’t only harmful for the humans breathing it in. Methane supercharges global warming and, globally, food loss and waste is responsible for up to 10% of all greenhouse gas emissions.
In addition to concerns about food waste, the government’s waste management division knew these were unacceptable working conditions.
“At the city landfill, we identified about 60 people working informally, collecting food and other waste for their homes,” says Agustina Rodriguez, director of waste management for the municipality of Rosario. “We started working with them to bring them into the formal workforce.”
At the same time, around 2018, Banco de Alimentos Rosario was meeting with management at Mercado de Productores Rosario to figure out how they could recover unsellable produce instead of it ending up at the landfill.
Fortuitously, the city government, Mercado de Productores administrators and Banco de Alimentos Rosario joined forces. The market would give the food bank its own warehouse space for recovery. The city government would pay former waste pickers like Nico to start recovering produce at markets. And the food bank would deliver those nutritious fruits and vegetables to people facing hunger.
“Of course, proper nutrition is a basic necessity and our main objective,” says Ariel Baez, president of Banco de Alimentos Rosario. “But building social cohesion, giving people opportunities they wouldn’t have had otherwise is also important, and I think it’s something that distinguishes food banks.”
In his first days working at the market for the food bank, something clicked for Nico.
“Once I got to RecupeBAR, everything made more sense,” he says. “Now I’m not picking trash out of the dump, I’m recovering it before it ever gets there. And I’m doing it for families who really need it.”
“Good morning, Mr. Berti!” Nico calls to a fruit vendor. “Got anything for us today?”
The vendor quickly eyes his stacks and keys in on two boxes: one with bananas showing their first black spots and another with apples not quite as shiny as the rest.
“I don’t think anyone is going to buy these now, but they’re still delicious,” he says.
Nico thanks him with a handshake and loads the fruit onto his cart.
After years of building relationships, RecupeBAR is now a fixture of the bustling market. The change has happened in part because of a united front.
“This connection we have with the food bank and municipality is what enables us to address the enormous quantity of fruits and vegetables being dumped,” says Suleta, the market manager.
Since launching RecupeBAR at Mercado de Productores Rosario in 2018, the program expanded to the city’s other produce market. Over eight years, the program has recovered more than 1 million kilograms of fresh produce. Today, it employs 14 people who used to work informally at the city landfill.
With support from The Global FoodBanking Network and Bancos de Alimentos Argentina, the country’s network of 20 food banks, Banco de Alimentos Rosario has been able to ramp up recovery of fresh fruits and vegetables with new trucks and a new facility to vacuum seal and freeze fresh produce they can’t deliver immediately.
“RecupeBAR has become one of the pillars of the food bank,” says Baez.
At a market loading bay, Nico hauls crates of fruits and vegetables into the Banco de Alimentos Rosario truck and then a few hulking watermelons. He slams the cargo doors and slaps the back of the truck. It rolls into the parking lot and then out toward the food bank warehouse.
The next day, along a dirt road in a working-class neighborhood of Rosario, the apples, bananas, oranges and squash Nico recovered at the market are carried into a humble soup kitchen.
Eight people buzz back and forth inside, some tending three huge soup pots where a chicken and potato stew simmers. Other arrange crates of fresh fruits. The rest set up folding tables before lunch service begins.
Claudia Medina and several other women from the community have been feeding their neighbors at the 9 de Julio soup kitchen since 2001.
“There’s always need in our community,” she says. “The food bank supplies most of what we serve, especially fruits and vegetables, which are expensive for us.”
Back at the produce market, Nico and his colleagues Milagros and Micaela grab the hand cart and make one final round through the market. By the middle of the day, the market slows and most vendors are cleaning up and preparing for tomorrow, a perfect moment to see if someone is thinking of taking unsold food to the dumpster.
“This works heals me,” Nico says. “I’ve experienced a lot in my life, both good and bad. But I often felt unsupported.”
That’s changed in his years at RecupeBAR. His two best friends, Milagros and Micaela, work alongside him every day. The whole team is kind, respectful and playful with one another.
“I’ve met friends and confidants here,” he says. “The people who have been with me through many difficult moments in my life are here. When I wanted to give up on life, they convinced me to keep going.”
RecupeBAR has given Nico stability he never imagined before. He dreams of going back to school to get a degree teaching art to children. He isn’t sure what his future holds, but for now, he has purpose.
“Some part of me is healed by helping. If I’m in this world for anything, it’s to help others.”
