The process of globalization has increased inequality at every geographic scale and has led to the effective exclusion of vast segments of the world population from economic and social life. Facing the failure of centralized economies and evidence of the negative impact of neoliberalism, communities, governments, and progressive organizations in Latin America and other parts of the world are gradually recuperating the tradition of associative thought and the practice of cooperativism.

In order to raise the discussion about emancipatory economic alternatives in the context of globalization, this chapter examines the case of garbage recycling cooperatives in Colombia. For twenty years, a sector of recycling workers, supported by some private and state entities, has managed to establish and drive forward 94 cooperatives, as well as regional and national cooperative networks, in order to change the exploitative conditions of the recycling market and improve the quality of life of the recycling workers. This study analyzes the emergence, the achievements, and the difficulties of these cooperatives with the aim of answering more general questions about the conditions for the emergence of economic organizations which, like workers' cooperatives, challenge the division between capital and labor that characterizes capitalist enterprises, and which at the same time are able to survive in an increasingly globalized market.

The case study shows that the recycling cooperatives have generated substantial economic and social benefits for their members, such as the creation of bonds of solidarity that have enabled them to organize in order to defend their interests, and the access to social security and health services which they had never had before. It is true that the research also shows that the cooperatives were unable to change the structure of the recycling market, which continues to work to the advantage of large enterprises that buy recycling material. Furthermore, the decision process that characterizes the collective administration of cooperatives generates constant internal conflicts that cause instability in the social base of the cooperatives.

Throughout the chapter, emphasis is given to the need for cooperatives in general, and recycling cooperatives in particular, to join networks of mutual support with other cooperatives, with state entities, and in certain conditions with capitalist enterprises, both at home and abroad. Since cooperatives all over the world have been increasingly compelled to compete with transnational capital, this kind of alliance is fundamental to their survival. The cooperative movement-which has had an international vocation since its inception-is particularly suited to establishing bonds between the local and the global, and thus to fulfilling its unfinished promise of a counterhegemonic globalization.