Now, after seven years working as a collector, he takes pride in his job. It was garbage that afforded him his house, after 26 years of paying rent. José, his wife and their two kids work at the same cooperative.

José is one of 500,000 recyclable garbage collectors in Brazil. His story resembles that of so many other unemployed people who discovered garbage as a solution for the lack of employment. Presently, more than 500 cooperatives are estimated to be operating in the country.

They work in partnership with NGOs, companies and the government – since they help remove garbage from the streets. Whatever generates work also generates profit. Recycling generates approximately 7 billion reais (US$ 3 billion) and increasingly fuels industrial investments in the sector.

Besides, society is getting more involved every year, separating domestic garbage and demanding public policies for residues. This model, which involves the entire population, generating jobs and profit, has been attracting the attention of other developing countries, including Egypt.

In November, André Vilhena, of the Entrepreneurial Commitment for Recycling (Cempre), was in Cairo to make a presentation of the NGO, which has existed in Brazil for fifteen years. Sponsored by 20 companies, Cempre guides and organizes cooperatives in the entire country. It also has a complete database on recycling, and it promotes campaigns to encourage Brazilians to separate their garbage.

"The recycling model here is an example because it transcends the environment. Here, it plays a socio-economic role that is as much or more important than the ecological one," says Vilhena. "That is why countries with large unqualified workforces come here for inspiration."

Established in 1991, one of the NGO’s main roles is to help organize cooperatives. The Cooperar Reciclando – Reciclar Cooperando (Cooperate by Recycling – Recycle by Cooperating) project distributes kits including booklets and videos containing step-by-step explanations on how to put a cooperative together.

According to Vilhena, it also guides associations that have trouble with implementation. Beginning in 2003, the organization started donating machines and presses. Since the project was established, twelve years ago, over 5,000 booklets have been distributed.

Brazil is still far from recycling as much as it could – and should. Of the 140,000 tons generated daily in the Brazil, 50% is still sent to dumps. Still, the model involving the civilian population, companies and the government, which generates jobs for recyclable material collectors, is attracting the attention of other countries worldwide.

The positive results of Cempre started attracting the attention of the headquarters of some multinational companies sponsoring the project, such as Coca-Cola, Unilever, Alcoa, Nivea and Tetra Pak, among others.

The headquarters of these companies, in turn, communicate with their branches in developing countries that seek to establish local "Cempres." This way, Thailand, Russia, China, Mexico, Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, and now Egypt have created similar models, in which large companies provide support to cooperatives and collectors associations.

According to the Egyptian Samaan Sameh, from Tetra Pak Egypt, the Brazilian model is perfect for his country, as both nations are similar with regard to unemployment levels. In Egypt, 80% of the household garbage is already recycled.

"Egypt is considered one of the largest recyclers in the world," stated Sameh. So what do they have to learn from Brazil? "We don’t yet have this model of cooperatives, which is just starting to be implemented," explained the Tetra Pak director, who visited Brazil to learn about the Cempre and about some cooperatives.

Now, according to Sameh, Tetra Pak Egypt is seeking other partners to establish an NGO similar to Cempre and thus help organize cooperatives. "We also hope to count on the help of the government," he said.

If garbage has already attracted the attention of businessmen, it has also already attracted the attention of public organizations. On October 25 this year, days before being re-elected president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva met with representatives of the National Movement of Recyclable Material Collectors, an organization established four years ago.

At the occasion, he released the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) line of support to collector cooperatives. The program is going to finance from infrastructure projects to the acquisition of equipment and training of cooperated workers all around the country.

The Federal Savings Bank (Caixa Econômica Federal, CEF) also has programs to support collectors, like a special line of micro credit. Last year, however, the bank took a great leap: it launched a line of credit for habitation that is specifically turned to garbage collectors.

The first contract of the "Solidary Credit Program" was released in July 2005 in the city of Formosa, in the midwestern Brazilian state of Goiás, with the 60 workers of cooperative Cooper Recicla, a local association.

The program is promising as a large part of the collectors, citizens under the line of poverty, live in the streets or in precarious housing like slums and invaded buildings.

More than helping eliminate garbage in the streets of large cities, all this movement has been making collectors, normally seen by the society as an extension of the garbage they collect, gain a little status as citizens. And what was previously just an occupation has become a profession.

Anba – www.anba.com.br

The shop, which is functioning in the Marist Social Center (CESMAR) in the northern zone of the city, was set up in partnership with the federal government. The plan is to receive, fix, and redistribute 5,000 computers per year.

"Most of the machines sent here for recycling come from federal government agencies, which get rid of more than 250 thousand computers each year," affirms the director of the CESMAR, Miguel Antônio Orlandi.

Orlandi reports that, after the center was inaugurated, they have received telephone calls from people who want to donate computers and other defective or idle equipment.

"There have been donations from communities close to the state capital," he says. 70 young people are responsible for fixing up the old machines. Most of them are from the Mário Quintana Villa, one of the areas in Porto Alegre where young people are most socially vulnerable.

The Brazilian Recycling Center is based on the Canadian Computers for Schools (CFS) project which began in 1993. "The project envisioned a computer factory. In our negotiations, we proposed that a school be developed first," Orlandi stated. Another model for the program was the Colombian Computers for Education Program (CPE), which got underway in 2000.

The institutions and communities interested in receiving recycled computers should send their digital inclusion requests to the Department of Logistics and Information Technology in the Ministry of Planning.

"The proposals will be chosen by a council in Brasí­lia comprised by representatives of the Ministries of Planning, Education, and Work and Employment," informed the secretary of Logistics and Technology, Rogério Santanna.

Santanna went on to say that other reconditioning and recycling centers will be inaugurated this year in Brasí­lia, São Paulo, Curitiba, and Recife.

ABr

The main product recycled is plastic, processed by 577 of the 722 recycling companies. Following are the companies that operate with metal (60), paper (54) and long life packages (14). Glass, batteries and tires are recycled by another 15 companies.

These are the main results of the Recycling Map of Brazil, released yesterday September 29 by the Brazilian Micro and Small Business Support Service (Sebrae) in southeastern Brazilian state Rio de Janeiro and the Entrepreneurial Commitment for Recycling (Cempre), non profit association dedicated to promoting recycling within the concept of integrated management of garbage.

The study, carried out by the market research company MaxiQuim, was presented during the seminar ‘The Ecoefficiency in the Business Sector’, at the Sebrae auditorium in Rio de Janeiro.

The research gives an up-to-date record of the cooperatives and companies that buy, sell and separate recyclable materials from north to south of country.

According to the manager for Environment and the Ecobusiness Nucleus at the Sebrae, Dolores Lustosa, the idea is to stimulate business in the sector bringing closer the great recycling factories and separation of small suppliers, such as cooperatives and associations of materials collectors.

Good part of the companies acting in the sector is small and micro sized, focus of the Sebrae’s actions. The great novelty in this study is the significant number of cooperatives and associations of collectors and recyclers (364), which demonstrates an increase in people seeking this sector, especially the people of lower education," analyses the executive director at the Cempre, André Vilhena. According to estimates of the NGO, the companies in this market generate 500,000 work posts.

According to Cempre, the country recycles about 10% of its urban solid residues (5.2 million metric tons per day, an average of 0.7 kg per inhabitant/day). The total aluminum cans recycled reached 95.7% of the total produced in 2004, while cardboard reached 79%.

Brazil recycled 49% of their total production of steel cans, 48% of PET, 46% of glass packagings and 39% of the tires produced in the period. The recycling of paper was of (33%), followed by the long life packages (22%) and the plastics (16.5%).

In spite of representing 60% of the total weight of urban solid residues produced in Brazil, only 1.5% of organic garbage (food and gardening leftovers) is composted, in other words, goes through the biological process called composting, through which the micro-organisms convert the organic part of the solid residues into a stable material like humus, known as composite.

Agência Sebrae

Big populations generate a lot of waste. Modern big societies generate a huge amount of waste which, in certain sectors, especially recycling, is valuable.

This has led to the appearance of the independent trash picker (or catadores de lixo – trash scavengers – as they are called in Brazil) and now Belo Horizonte is inaugurating the first recycling plant to be run jointly by no less than eight independent garbage collector associations.

“The plant will mean an end to the exploitation of the trash pickers by unscrupulous middlemen. It will mean an immediate increase in income of around 30%, benefiting some 580 trash pickers and their families,” explains Luis Henrique da Silva of the Asmare (Associação dos Catadores de Papel, Papelão e Matérias Recicláveis – Association of Paper, Cardboard and Recyclable Material).

Silva revealed that the association had to work hard to raise the US$ 1.9 million (4.5 million reais) needed to build the plant, getting assistance from the Banco do Brasil Foundation, BrazilPrev and Petrobras.

“This is a victory for the little guy. The trash picker will be the one who keeps the profits,” says sister Maria Cristina Bove, of the Catholic Street Pastoral aid group.

Agência Brasil

Brazil is a global standard for the recycling of materials, according to the executive director of the Brazilian Packaging Association (ABRE), Luciana Pelegrino.

“We count on a solid foundation that gives continuity and growth to this activity,” she said.

She states that recycling activities have expanded. “Industries have an economic interest, and the income generated by the sale of these materials returns to the market.”

The plastics industry is one of those that invest the most in recycling. According to Pelegrino, 48% of plastic wrappers and containers are currently recycled.

The director of the ABRE emphasizes the creativity with which Brazilian industry employs, for example, fresh coconut fibers.

“Fresh coconut fibers are being used by the textile industry to manufacture cloth and by the automobile industry to produce automobile fabrics.”

She points to investments made to recycle other materials, such as worn tires and milk cartons, and notes that Brazil is already exporting the technology that is utilized.

ABr – www.radiobras.gov.br

Brazil’s Ministry of Science and Technology’s Mineral Technology Center (Cetem) is beginning a project for the Recycling of the Mineral Portion of Construction and Demolition Rubble.

The project represents a pioneering initiative in the country to combat environmental pollution and lower the costs of mass housing.

According to data provided by the Cetem, Brazil produces 68.5 million tons of rubble every year. The coordinator of the project, Salvador Almeida, says that only 5% is recovered.

A substantial portion of the rubble is dumped illegally in public spaces, especially in the big metropolises, contributing to urban environmental problems, such as the silting of rivers, blockage of storm sewers, and degradation of urban areas.

The project’s pilot program will be executed over a two-year period at the Macaé Recycling Plant, in the northwest region of the state of Rio.

The municipality produces 80 tons of construction and demolition rubble every day, a result of the growing urbanization stimulated by the development of the petroleum industry.

According to Almeida, a National Environmental Council (Conama) law determines that the mineral portion of demolition rubble be separated and recycled.

“The idea is to create an alternative, especially in the big metropolises, where there is a lack of sand and gravel,” he said.

This means that the rubble will be transformed into two products, sand and gravel, he explained.

Almeida informed that plants for processing or recycling rubble exist in Brazil, in the cities of São Paulo, Piracicaba (state of São Paulo), Belo Horizonte (capital of Minas Gerais), and Londrina (Paraná state), but the operation is still very rudimentary. The project will help to improve and modernize these plants.

The Cetem project for the Recycling of the Mineral Portion of Construction and Demolition Rubble will receive a total of US$ 151,000 (360,000 thousand reais) in funds from the Studies and Projects Finance Agency (Finep) and the Federal Savings Bank.

The professors who are acting as co-administrators of the project are already in touch with scientists from the Netherlands and Belgium, the two most advanced countries in this area, Almeida said.

The project will make it possible to obtain better quality products at lower costs for mass housing and public works, with positive environmental preservation effects.

ABr – www.radiobras.gov.br