Street Scavenging in Arroyo Seco: Implications for Transboundary Waste Governance in the Rio Grande Basin
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This study examines the role of street scavenging in municipal solid waste (MSW) recovery and its implications for transboundary waste governance in the Rio Grande Basin. Fieldwork was conducted in Arroyo Seco, Monterrey, between May and December 2022, using qualitative methods, including covert observation of 49 scavengers, a case study, ethnographic analysis, and the Circularity Assessment Protocol for waste traceability. Findings show that, despite being 200 km from the U.S.-Mexico border, Arroyo Seco connects hydrologically to the La Silla, Santa Catarina, and San Juan rivers in Region RH2, which may contribute to transboundary pollution. While scavengers operate informally and focus on recyclable materials of market value, their practices constitute underutilized social capital. The research highlights the need to align binational waste governance strategies and strengthen environmental justice frameworks to support inclusive recycling practices. It contributes to the broader understanding of waste governance in urban and borderland settings.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".