“We are the engine”: Recycling workers’ healthcare

Abstract

Recycling collectors are excluded for the activity they perform (in inadequate conditions and with no social recognition). The objective of this research was to understand the health-disease-care process of people who work with recycling to help build strategies to welcome this population in Primary healthcare. It was an exploratory, descriptive, and qualitative study where eight interviews were conducted with recycling workers. The analysis was conducted based on Gadamer’s hermeneutics. The analysis evidenced three large argumentative nuclei: work routine, occupational risks, and health service relation. For most workers, recycling is their last resort to survive in the social rules of the occupational world, despite all its difficulties, efforts, and burdens. It is considered a dignified way of survival and valued as one of the greatest assets in their lives: the possibility to work.