Zero Waste City
Councilors Designing the Material Metabolism of the Municipality

First-Person Consciousness – Brain Bee

I was born as a single egg cell, before any trash.

Before plastic, before advertising, before “buy now”.

At the beginning, everything in me was perfect metabolism:
nutrients in, waste out, nothing left rotting, nothing piling up.
Every cell knew what to do because information came from DNA and the immediate environment – a silent intelligence with only one purpose: keep the flow of life going.

Later came words.
I learned “mine”, “all mine”, “throw it away”, “this is trash”.
But my body never learned “away”:
for the body, everything that enters must become energy, tissue, or be returned in a way that keeps the whole system working.

Today I am an adolescent / citizen in a city that produces more garbage than belonging.
My brain is shaped by endless feeds telling me to desire the next object and despise what “no longer serves”.
My prefrontal cortex – meant to plan – is hijacked by notifications.
My interoception – the capacity to feel my own body – is dulled by screens and ultra-processed food.

And yet, my Damasian Mind still knows:
when the city is sick, it is because its material metabolism has slipped into Zone 3 –
a state where the flow of matter and energy serves profit, not life.

If my body needs clean metabolism to exist,
why doesn’t my city?

From that question, I – Brain Bee in first person – begin to imagine a Zero Waste City:
a JIWASA collective organism, where the “I” only makes sense inside a shared metabolism,
and where councilors, deputies and senators stop managing political trash and start acting as architects of the material metabolism of the territory.

Trash, the brain, and Zone 3: when discarding becomes an ideology

From a neuroscientific point of view, “trash” is not a neutral category.
Every time we treat objects, people or territories as disposable, we reinforce synaptic pathways linked to indifference and de-responsibilization. It is implicit learning: if everything is replaceable, nothing deserves care.

Social media amplifies this logic.
Advertising, influencers and rapid consumption cycles train the brain to seek dopamine in purchases and status, not in belonging or JIWASA.
The result is a sick social metabolism:

• materials circulate poorly,
  
  

• products have ridiculous lifespans,
  
  

• the final destination is the dump, the landfill or the river.
  
  

At the same time, we already know that Zero Waste and circular economy policies create more jobs, more innovation and more health than landfill-incineration models. Cities that invest in reduction, reuse, repair, recycling and composting consistently create many more jobs per ton of waste handled than those that simply bury or burn it. Circular systems also spur new local businesses and skills in repair, remanufacturing and redesign.

In simple terms:

A smarter material metabolism is not a “cost” –
it is an investment in robust economic and social development.

Bribri prosperity: where “waste” barely exists

To imagine a JIWASA Zero Waste City, we need to look at peoples who have lived for centuries inside a territorial metabolism: Indigenous nations.

Among the Bribri of Talamanca, Costa Rica, prosperity does not mean piling up money. It means living well with the mountain, the family, the spirits and the territory. Bribri women have organized, since the 1990s, associations such as ACOMUITA (women producers of cacao in agroforestry systems) and Stibrawpa, a community-based tourism initiative led by women that combines agroforestry, food sovereignty, language, culture and local circular economy.

Recent research shows that:

• Bribri agroforestry, often led by women, is an act of resistance and resilience against agribusiness – restoring biodiversity, food security and community income at the same time.
  
  

• The Stibrawpa tourism model strengthens the Bribri language, values women’s work and organizes the economy around family, territory and a non-accumulative notion of prosperity – prosperity as flow, not as stock.
  
  

• In matrilineal Bribri contexts, women play a central role in defending land and managing resources, weaving together climate action, agroecology and gender justice.
  
  

Notice the key point:
in many Bribri communities, “trash” barely exists as a cultural category.

• Organic residues go back to the soil.
  
  

• Materials are reused for as long as possible.
  
  

• What arrives from outside as plastic or scrap is experienced more as threat than as a sign of “progress”.
  
  

Bribri prosperity is an ecological-cultural attractor: when territory, kinship, spirituality and exchange are in balance, the system converges toward “good living”; when monocultures, indebtedness and imposed projects enter, the system falls into another basin of attraction – poverty, conflict, loss of autonomy.

This is not romanticism; it is systems thinking applied to a real society.

When we talk about Bribri prosperity, we are talking about a material metabolism where:

• matter circulates in short, local cycles;
  
  

• value lies in relationships between people, territory and spirits;
  
  

• consumption is a means to sustain life, not an end in itself.
  
  

Bringing this concept into the city is not folklore.
It is recognizing that there are working models of low-waste, high-belonging development that can inspire urban policy design.

Zero Waste City as JIWASA policy

If we combine:

• the economic evidence on Zero Waste and circular economy;
  
  

• the Bribri experience of non-accumulative prosperity;
  
  

• and the neuroscience of the Damasian Mind, showing how habits of care and belonging reshape attentional and emotional networks;
  
  

we reach a strong claim:

JIWASA Zero Waste Cities tend to be more economically and socially prosperous
because they organize material metabolism in favor of life, not discard.

In your vocabulary, Jackson:
a Zero Waste JIWASA city is a Metabolic Municipality in which the citizen is not a “beneficiary of social programs”, but a co-owner of the State and a co-author of the rules that govern the flow of matter and energy.

The focus shifts from “income” to metabolic yield:

• yield in health (less pollution, fewer disease vectors);
  
  

• yield in time (less hauling waste long distances, more local solutions);
  
  

• yield in work (more jobs in reuse, repair, recycling, composting);
  
  

• yield in meaning (the felt sense of belonging to a territory that takes care of itself).
  
  

This links directly to constitutional principles:
the duty of the State to guarantee an ecologically balanced environment, to reduce inequalities and to protect common goods. Municipal waste management, reverse logistics, public procurement and local carbon projects become hard infrastructure of JIWASA, not decorative “green” policies.

Councilors as designers of material metabolism

In a JIWASA State, the ideal councilor is not only a law-maker, but a designer of the municipality’s material metabolism. Practically, this means:

1. Mapping the city’s metabolism
   
   

• Tracing the origin, type and fate of all material flows: organics, recyclables, construction debris, electronic waste, medical waste.
  
  

• Identifying “hot spots” of waste and inequality: neighborhoods with open dumps, polluted streams, no collection services.
  
  

2. Building legal frameworks for Zero Waste and circular economy
   
   

• Adopting a Zero Waste municipal plan with progressive targets to reduce landfill disposal.
  
  

• Creating fiscal and regulatory incentives for cooperatives, reuse and repair businesses, reverse logistics and local circular hubs.
  
  

• Reforming public procurement rules to prioritize reusable, repairable and recycled products.
  
  

3. Linking carbon credits and Metabolic DREX Citizen
   
   

• Measuring emission reductions from composting, recycling and circular systems.
  
  

• Converting part of these gains into metabolic yield for citizens – for example, micro-payments in a Municipal DREX Citizen scheme, conditioned on verifiable behaviors like sorting waste, participating in community clean-ups, joining urban gardens.
  
  

4. Turning education into lived metabolism
   
   

• Schools as Zero Waste nuclei: composters, gardens, repair workshops, circular design projects.
  
  

• Children and teenagers tracking, in first person, the cycles of materials in their own street and neighborhood.
  
  

5. Bringing Bribri prosperity into the master plan
   
   

• Recognizing that urban prosperity is not “more malls and traffic”, but neighborhoods where material flows are short, nature is integrated and local culture is alive.
  
  

• Creating circular economy zones inspired by experiences like Stibrawpa: community-based tourism, peri-urban agroecology, craft and repair economies based on recovered materials.
  
  

In short: legislate so that the city’s “nervous system” (laws, budgets, institutions) supports a healthy material metabolism, rather than normalizing discard.

Closing in first person: from “I-trash” to “We-metabolism”

When I, Brain Bee, look at my city through my own interoception, I see that:

• my body does not know what “trash” is;
  
  

• my brain suffers when everything around me is treated as disposable;
  
  

• my sense of belonging increases when I see materials, food and care circulating in short, fair cycles.
  
  

The Bribri wordless lesson and the Aimara concept JIWASA converge in the same direction:
there is no healthy consciousness without a healthy collective metabolism.

A JIWASA Zero Waste City is therefore a neuro-economic project:

• it reorganizes attention, by teaching us to see flows instead of objects;
  
  

• it reorganizes economic incentives, by paying – in jobs, health and DREX yield – for care of the material metabolism;
  
  

• it reorganizes the role of elected officials, who stop legislating for narrow interests and start legislating for the living body of the city.
  
  

The message to councilors, deputies and senators is simple and radical:

If the citizen is the basic unit of the State,
then trash is the vital sign of how much this State is failing to care for its own body.
A JIWASA Zero Waste policy is not a side “environmental” agenda;
it is proof that a responsible State can deliver better economic and social development
while healing the material metabolism we all depend on.

Selected post-2020 references (Bribri prosperity & territorial metabolism)

1. Arias-Hidalgo, D. (2023). Decolonial perspectives on gender asymmetries in Indigenous community-based tourism: the case of Bribri women in Stibrawpa, Costa Rica.
   
   

2. Arias-Hidalgo, D. (2021). Doctoral thesis on the integration of tourism development and agricultural dynamics in the Bribri Indigenous territory of Talamanca, Costa Rica, and its impacts on livelihoods.
   
   

3. Pelliccia, M. (2021). “For Costa Rica’s Indigenous Bribri women, agroforestry is an act of resistance and resilience.” Mongabay feature article.
   
   

4. Salcedo-La Viña, C. (2023). Analysis of potential risks that climate and forest initiatives pose to Indigenous women’s land rights in Colombia, Costa Rica and Panama, including Bribri territories.
   
   

5. SURCOS & Colegio de Profesionales en Sociología de Costa Rica (2022–2023). Reports on the situation of Indigenous Peoples in Costa Rica, with sections on Bribri and Cabécar territories.
   
   

6. Calí Tzay, J. F. (2022). Report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples following his visit to Costa Rica, highlighting land conflicts and community initiatives in Talamanca.
   
   

7. IWGIA (2023). The Indigenous World 2023 – Costa Rica, overview of Indigenous territories, rights and current challenges, including Bribri.
   
   

8. Batt, K. S. (ongoing, 2025). Research project on the possible impact of ecological initiatives (including community agroforestry and tourism) on Bribri mental health and well-being.
   
   

9. UNDP / GEF (2023–2024). Project documents on community-based tourism, agroforestry and biological corridors in Bribri territories of the Sixaola basin.
   
   

10. Instituto Costarricense de Turismo (ICT) (2024). Caribbean tourism guide including sections on Indigenous Bribri community-based tourism in Talamanca (e.g., Stibrawpa).
    
    

11. Canpolat, E. et al. (2022). Fostering Gender-Transformative Change in Sustainable Forest Management: The Case of the Dedicated Grant Mechanism (DGM). World Bank report with cases on Indigenous women and forest governance.
    
    

12. Various authors (2024). Papers and chapters on the Stibrawpa Community-Based Tourism Experience in collections about tourism, management and technology, emphasizing Bribri conceptions of well-being and territory.