Cartoneros follows the paper recycling process in Buenos Aires from the trash pickers who collect paper informally through middlemen in warehouses, to executives in large corporate mills. Five years ago, a severe financial crisis left Argentina reeling, putting millions out of work and into financial distress - today, in fact, more than 30 percent of the country lives below the poverty line. One particular trend borne of the economic is the increasing number of cartoneros, the poor residents of Buenos Aires and vicinity who make their living by collecting and selling recyclable paper and other materials.

Between 25,000 and 30,000 people comb through the city's 4,500 daily tons of garbage every night, picking out paper, cardboard, metal, and glass in an effort to support themselves and their families. The scope and variety of cartoneros' enterprises so intrigued Livon-Grosman that he wound up making a documentary about it, in the process discovering the complexity of recycling and its social, political and cultural implications. The film is both a record of an economic and social crisis and an invitation to audiences to rethink the value of trash.

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In 2002, three women from a fifth-generation farming family opened up ‘The Beehive’, the first high-end hair salon in Walla Walla, Washington. Like many small businesses in the Pacific Northwest, they were highly successful until the national press, wealthy wine aficionados, and Corporate America began to ‘discover’ the sleepy little town. The women’s attempt to make it in the new economy is a quintessentially contemporary boomtown story.