Chileans do not give used things to charity like Americans do. Goodwill and the DAV would quickly go under here.

Things like used clothes are given to friends, family members, or church members. Things like broken vacuum cleaners and electric kettles are fixed or given to people who might be able to sell them at a street fair.

Even my egg cartons and glass spaghetti sauce jars have to be saved for a friend who gives them to someone she knows. That person sells eggs and jelly at farmers' markets. Recycle, Reduce, Reuse could really be a description of a cultural value here.

So when I have clothes that I consider to be well-used, and I would normally put them in the box for Goodwill, what do I do here? I put them out at the curb on top of the trash containers on trash day so that the cartoneros can come get them.

Technically, a cartonero is someone who collects cardboard from the trash. I'm not sure what they do with the cardboard boxes, but they drive these tricycles/delivery vehicles. They have one wheel in the back and a seat with pedals like a bike, but in the front there is a three-foot-square platform with three-foot sides and a wheel on each side. In the "basket" (for lack of a better term) this person collects their boxes, any useful trash, and anything people leave out (whether or not they intended to). They might also carry a passenger in the basket, especially a 10-year-old-ish child who can jump out and help look for good stuff.

So when it is trash day and the apartment building trash cans are rolled out to the curb, we can count on it all being gone through by at least two or three cartoneros before the garbage truck comes by. Tonight I left a bag of very used children's clothes and a 7-year-old pair of Mark's pants that finally gave up the ghost. Tomorrow someone in Santiago will be getting them ready to sell at one of the street markets.

It is true: one man's junk is another man's treasure.