Eloisa Cartonera

Struggling to keep up with a blog here. There's something about working at internet cafes on shared computers that makes keeping a blog exceedingly difficult. That and I can't post photos - not that I've been taking very many.

Finally made it to Eloisa Cartonera yesterday. It's a social, comunity, art project in Buenos Aires, but appears to exist in other parts of South America. The cartoneros are men, women and children who scour the city collecting cardboard which can be sold to cash to factories and recycling centers outside of the city. There's a fair bit of documentation about cartoneras online, if you want to learn more.

Eloisa Cartonera works differently. They buy the cardboard (I think at a higher rate than the recycling centers - my Spanish isn't good enough to totally understand the website). The cardboard is recycled into book covers for written works donated by authors. Sometimes the authors donate the sole publishing rights of the piece. The covers are all hand painted and unique and you could really spend hours in the little studio, checking out the different volumes. They also have blank notebooks and a few other, more professionally printed items. I'm a bit scant on a all of the details, but it's an interesting website even if you don't know Spanish.

I was awesome and only had a 100 peso bill to pay for the books we were buying. The poor woman couldn't find change and had to go somewhere on her bike to get change for me. Usually I'm careful about breaking large bills, but just missed it this time. They were so nice though and invited us to paint book covers with them, and with some nudging, I painted a pretty hideous one. My friend's was much nicer, probably because she put some thought into it. I have photos, and will try to post them somewhere along the way.

Anyway, it's a great organization doing positive work in the community through art, books and recycling.