The stuff was returned, fines were levied and the Ministry of Foreign Relations notified international organizations because such shipments violate the Basel Convention on transfer of dangerous residuals from one country to another.

On August 13, 22 tons of waste from Germany arrived in Brazil at Porto do Rio Grande in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, where it was intercepted by Customs authorities (Receita Federal) and environmental protection agents (Ibama).

Upon examination, it was discovered that the shipment contained empty bottles of cleaning fluids, contaminated residuals and even dirty disposable diapers. The cargo was marked industrial residuals for recyling. The cargo came from the port of Hamburg.

Ibama immediately announced that the transporting company and the Brazilian firm that imported the cargo would be fined for illegally transferring dangerous residuals from one country to another.

The fines total US$ 1.1 million. The transportation company has ten days to ship the cargo back to Germany. Under the Basel Convention, the country where an illegal shipment of dangerous residuals came from cannot refuse to receive them back.

Crackdown

The Foreign Trade Chamber (“Camex”) has announced anti-circumvention measures to deal with imports of goods and components of suspicious origin.

Helder Chaves, the Camex secretary general, says the problem is that some goods coming into Brazil as if from one country are actually coming from another. This makes it possible to avoid import tariffs or restrictions.

Chaves also pointed out a problem with imported bicycles from China. As they have a high import surtax, they are being broken down and imported as bicycle parts (with a much lower import tariff).

According to Chaves, antidumping processes are long and drawn out. “Anti-circumvention measures enable us to extend and apply commerce protection norms faster,” he explained.

At a press conference, Chaves also announced new anti-corruption measures as part of an agreement with the European Organization of Economic and Development Cooperation.

“The idea is not so much to punish as to make exporters aware of their obligations,” said the diplomat. The new rules will require exporters who receive any government financing to report possible corruption.

Restrictions on Chicken

Brazil will begin consultations at the World Trade Organization regarding restrictions imposed by the European Union on imports of Brazilian chicken. A preliminary examination of the measure indicates discrimination, says Carlos Marcio Cozendey, at the Economic Department of the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Relations.

According to Cozendey, the new EU norms are detrimental to Brazilian chicken producers and have already caused a shutdown at a large exporter.

“Brasília sees this as a case of noncompliance with WTO rules. In fact, there is discrimination of a national product without a sanitation justification,” said the diplomat.

Meanwhile, the Brazilian Union of Poultry Producers complains that the norms could mean up to US$ 450 million in losses.

ABr

These numbers don't cover the trash that is just not collected. The destiny of hospital waste – 210,000 tons of this highly contaminated trash were collected last year – is particularlly dramatic: a mere 23% is treated adequately.

These statistics may sound very bad, but in fact they reveal an impressive progress. When I began reporting about environmental issues, 25 years ago, quality landfills were extremely rare and there was virtually no recycling in the country.

Today, 26 million people living in 405 Brazilian cities have access to some sort of selective waste collection (in 201 cities, door-to-door). According do Cempre (a non-profit sponsored by packaging industries that promotes recycling in the country), Brazil is the world leader in aluminum cans recycling (96.5% of all)- thanks to the high price of this commodity and the huge amount of extremely poor people that wander around the cities searching for trash to sell to intermediaries, that will then sell them to recyclers.

There are estimates that 800,000 Brazilians work as catadores, dragging their carts around most cities. We also recycle steel cans (46.5% of the units disposed of), glass packaging (47%) and paper (43.7%).

These numbers seem a little bit too optimistic to me, even if Cempre is considered a good source. After all, the number of cities involved in organized selective collection is still too small, and many citizens (in shanty towns, isolated communities, rural areas) don't have their waste collected at all.

The country also faces the problem of huge amounts of litter thrown by careless citizens on the streets and beaches. Every day, 8,500 garbage men collect 3,500 tons of trash in the streets of Rio (590 grams per person). In a summer Sunday, 180 tons are removed from the beaches of the city (60% are coconuts). The main avenue in Rio, Rio Branco, is cleaned six times a day and remains dirty.

Peri Pane is a journalist, singer and performer who is disturbed by this reality. In 2003, he conceived a very eloquent project that illustrates the omnipresence of trash in our lives and stresses that we should work on reducing our "waste footprint".

During his performances, he collects for a whole week everything he would normally discard – bottles, cans, newspapers. The trash is organized in a plastic apron with pockets that he wears for seven weeks, getting heavier as the experience evolves.

He has taken his performance to a few theatre festivals in Europe. I met him a few days ago, during a global warming awareness rally, in Ibirapuera, the main park of São Paulo. Pane was fully dressed in his "trashy costume". I must say, he was blending with the environment.

Brazilian born, French citizen, married to an American, Regina Scharf is the ultimate globetrotter. She graduated in Biology and Journalism from USP (Universidade de São Paulo) and has worked for Folha de S. Paulo, Gazeta Mercantil and Veja magazine as well as Radio France Internationale. Since 2004 she has lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the US. She authored or co-authored several books in Portuguese on environmental issues and was honored by the 2002 Reuters-IUCN Press award for Latin America and by the 2004 Prêmio Ethos. You can read more by her at Deep Brazil – www.deepbrazil.com.

The Brazilian government will base its complaint on the Basel Convention, which bans shipments of toxic waste from industrialized nations. The toxic trash arrived in 89 shipping containers labeled as recyclable plastic between February and May.

The containers held domestic and hospital waste, including batteries, used syringes, condoms, old medicine and soiled diapers, according to the Brazilian environmental agency IBAMA.

Britain freed on Friday the three Brazilian men suspected of having shipped the toxic trash to Brazil. The three were not arraigned, but they had their passports retained and they will continue to be investigated.

Their names were not released and their case won't be decided before October, when their situation will be discussed during a hearing.

The UK's environment agency said the three individuals – aged 24, 28 and 49 – had been arrested after raids near Swindon as part of "ongoing investigations."

The identities of the men, who face unlimited fines and up to two years in jail if convicted, were not disclosed "for legal reasons."

Liz Parkes, head of waste and resource management, said in a statement the agency was "working with the shipping lines for the return of the waste, at their own expense."

MP/Bzz

In that respect, an NGO established in the region in 1995 has many a reason to be proud. Instituto Reciclar turned thirteen years old last July. During that period, 225 adolescents in the community were trained and prepared for their second job.

Products manufactured at the NGO – notebooks, notepads, agendas, calendars, Christmas cards, among others – are usually ordered by companies and "s. The demand is strong, so much so that it is often necessary to refuse large orders, as the products are handmade.

Thanks to contacts with multinational corporations, many of which support the project, Reciclar's products have already been shipped to locations such as Martinique, United States and France.

At Reciclar, adolescents learn how to recycle paper and manufacture products using the recycled material. It is their first job. That, however, does not sum up the entire project. "Here, they learn to have responsibility, to accomplish tasks, to do teamwork, to have discipline. In a nutshell, we prepare them for the labor market," says Paulo Roberto de Carvalho, administrative and financial manager at the NGO.

Youths under 16 years of age participate in the Complementary Schooling Program – which includes lessons in math, Portuguese, computing and general knowledge. The course is taken at the headquarters of the NGO. Those aged over 16 participate in the Education for Work Program. They work from 8 am to 1:30 pm and, in the afternoon, attend reinforcement classes. In the evening, they attend regular school.

There are many requirements in order to participate in the program. One must live in the Jaguaré shantytown, go to a local public school and have good grades, good behavior and good attendance at school. Paulo plays the role of pedagogical advisor when it comes to deciding who deserves to remain in the project or not.

"The school sends the report cards straight to us," he explains. "And I make comments on all of them." If the adolescent starts to perform badly, he receives warnings and might even be expelled if he does not improve.

Every year, as new candidates present themselves to the NGO, Paulo conducts individual interviews in order to learn about the family, habits, and school performance of each of them.

"But the first question I ask is: do you know how to prevent from having children?," he says. "We want these youths to be educated and informed as well." After three years working there, the youth has to leave the project to make room for a new colleague.

Such is the case with Camila Aparecida da Silva Santos, 19 years old. She should leave the NGO in the end of this year. With a high school diploma and experience in every step of the production process at Reciclar in her resume, Camila already knows what she wants once she gets out:

"I am going to study gastronomy. I love cooking". The director-president at the NGO, Matiko Kume Vidal, is already getting in touch with restaurants and hotels, so that Camila may know up close the labor market she is dreaming of. "We always try to help them make that transition," explains Matiko.

Reciclar gained its own headquarters early this year, thanks to a donation from Carrefour – one of many companies that sponsor the project. With the new infrastructure, it is possible to cater to the 127 adolescents attending the program this year, 58 of whom are involved in the production process, and 63 only studying.

"The other six are taking an assistant entrepreneurial manager course at Senac (National Service of Commercial Learning – an entity sponsored by private commerce) with which we sustain an agreement," explains Paulo. To have an idea of the project's expansion, as of 2003, only 38 youths were involved.

João Batista da Cruz Filho, production manager and the only employee who has been in the NGO since the beginning, recalls that in the first year, 1995, production totaled 500 Christmas cards. "In 2007, we manufactured 152,000 units," he boasts.

Currently, the institute has approximately 220 clients. Citibank, KPMG, Vivo, Merck Sharp, Pão de Açúcar and Sadia are some of them. The paper used in the recycling process is donated by 60 companies.

Youths participating in the labor program are registered and earn one state-level minimum wage, of 450 reais (US$ 285). Those who attend the school program receive a basic food basket. Breakfast, a snack and lunch are offered onsite.

Nowadays, Matiko takes pride in having forwarded many of them to the labor market. There are people working at law firms, medical practices, other NGOs, and going to college. The head of the project since the year 2000, she believes that the Institute has matured and is an example of self-sustained project.

"Now, we are able to export our model. We can help train similar NGOs in developing countries around the world. We have done it before in Brazil, with other "s. Now we are prepared to go international," she says. "We also enjoy receiving visits here, in order to show our production process."

Furthermore, Matiko dreams of seeing Reciclar's products being exported in a more systematic fashion. "Why not? I have known similar products manufactured throughout the world. Ours is second to none."

Service

www.reciclar.org.br
reciclar@reciclar.org.br

Anba – www.anba.com.br

For the fifth successive Christmas, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva visited an association of rubbish collectors, many of whom live in the streets. If you walk or drive around Brazil’s larger cities you will be familiar with these “catadores,” as they are known, filling plastic bags or pulling rickety wooden carts packed with rubbish, mainly paper and scrap metal.

There are reckoned to be around 300,000 of these human scavengers nationwide. There is nothing new about poor people combing through rubbish in search of something they can salvage but, as society is starting to realize the importance of recycling, they are now beginning to gain a higher status.

In recognition of this, parts of the private sector in Brazil are now joining the public authorities to help bring the catadores into the formal economy. This is laudable not only because it will encourage recycling in Brazil, which is scandalously behind other countries in this area, but also create a sustainable income for these people.

A sign of progress is the fact that catadores are now being offered loans, an idea which would have been unthinkable only a few years ago.

It should be stated immediately that catadores are not idealists or urban greens interested in protecting the environment. Some are vagrants who spend the proceeds on drink and can be seen sprawled out under their carts sleeping off the effects.

Others are the breadwinners for their families who spend 10 or 12 hours a day pulling a cart through dense traffic, dragging it uphill and being dragged downhill by it, often in dangerous situations, sorting through other people’s trash by hand in search of empty cans or plastic bottles. People do not undertake gruelling work like this to save the planet.

It would be impossible to offer loans to such people since they have no collateral and are unreliable. However, in recent years cooperatives and associations of catadores have been formed and made great breakthroughs.

There is a national movement which models itself on the landless peasant movement, the MST, and has a strong political agenda. The National Movement of Catadores (MDC) has a flag which resembles the MST, a site showing pictures of leftist heroes like Che Guevara and a Declaration of Principles full of references to “class solidarity” and “direct action”. 

This movement has held regular meetings with Lula and members of his government and was one of the organizers of the Christmas visit. Despite its militant language, the MDC has cooperated with private companies and NGOs. 

There are an estimated 84 cooperatives in São Paulo state and they handle around 700 tons of scrap a month. A big paper manufacturer, a private bank and two NGOs have set up a fund with seed money of 360,000 Brazilian reais (about US$ 170,000) to provide resources for five cooperatives in the Greater São Paulo region. The money will be used to buy equipment, such as metal presses, weighing machines and shredders, and as working capital.

One of the cooperatives, Cooper Viva Bem in the Vila Leopoldina district of the city, is using its share of the fund – 39,000 reais (US$ 22,133) – to buy two presses to compact the 120 tons of refuse it receives every month. These presses are essential in boosting the catadores’ income because they receive a higher price if they can deliver the recyclable metal in a compact form rather handing over than millions of individual cans.

As part of its social responsibility operations, one of Brazil’s largest brewers has donated presses to cooperatives in Rio de Janeiro. Lula was shown a model of an electrically-powered cart, complete with brakes and lights. He was told that although the cost, 3,800 reais (US$ 2,156), was prohibitive for individuals it could be reduced to 2,000 reais (US$ 1,1350 by gains of scale.

The chairman of the Cooper Viva Bem cooperative, Tereza Montenegro, said it had 63 members who had an average monthly income of 620 reais (US$ 352). This might not seem a lot but it is well above the minimum wage of 380 reais (US$ 216).

I spoke to two catadores (both women incidentally) and they told me they also gained much more than the minimum wage. One sold her cans for 2.30 reais (US$ 1.30) a kilo (around 60 cans) and the other for 2.50 reais (US$ 1.42).

Paper collectors only receive around seven centavos (four cents) per kilo and need a cart to store their bulky produce. The chairman of the association said many of the members were prisoners who were at conditional liberty while others were vagrants who had no chance of finding employment elsewhere.

It should be pointed out that these resources are not donations but bona-fide loans and need to be repaid over 24 months. The cooperatives are not being charged commercial interest rates but the money has to be paid back with restatement i.e. plus the rate of inflation for the loan period.

The repaid loans will, in turn, be recycled and loaned out to other cooperatives. The public sector has also helped through lines of credit from the state development bank, the BNDES, and the Banco do Brasil Foundation.  Government programs have also been created to train the catadores and create leaders.

As always, Lula could not resist using the occasion to make a speech and show the catadores that, although he wears the presidential sash, deep down he is one of them. Not only did he say that he used to collect scrap metal when he was a boy and sell it to buy cinema tickets but he had a predicable go at those he does not like. 

“There are people who think they are better than you but they are the ones who throw litter in the street and don’t recycle properly. If there were no litter louts like them around, there would be no need for catadores,” he said.

Nice words but I also cannot resist making a cheap jibe and saying they could have been directed at many of the catadores themselves who, although they dispose of other people’s rubbish, are pretty good at creating their own.

For proof of this, check out the mess they make of places where they congregate like the Montserrat church area in Pinheiros in São Paulo.
 
Note: More on the National Movement of Catadores can be found at www.movimentodoscatadores.org.br/.

John Fitzpatrick is a Scottish writer and consultant with long experience of Brazil. He is based in São Paulo and runs his own company Celtic Comunicações. This article originally appeared on his site www.brazilpoliticalcomment.com.br. He can be contacted at jf@celt.com.br.

© John Fitzpatrick 2007

"A controlled landfill," according to the city's attorney, Rogel Martins Barbosa. In the landfill, the story is the same as in so many other cities: landfill waste generates leachate (a liquid produced by garbage), gases etc.

"Landfills are time bombs," says Barbosa. Well, before the time bomb in Maringá goes off, the city has gone after a solution. This year, a new technology will start being tested, which should virtually put an end to domestic waste.

The Biopuster technology, proposed by a consortium comprised of German and Brazilian companies, will transform 70% of those 300 daily tons into humus and recyclable waste (plastic, glass, paper, aluminum).

The remaining 30% will be filled-in. Or even less, according to the Germans who own the technology. And this remaining, unsolved waste will have gone through a "cleaning" process, so that even when filled-in, it will not liberate leachate or gases.

Humus, as an organic material, can be reused. And recyclable materials will then be available for sale by companies that already operate in the sector. Nevertheless, Rogel says it is still early to know how the humus generated there might be reused. That is due to the fact that the project is still a pilot, and tests will be conducted for nine months.

The city attorney explains how the technology works: "There are cells with processing capacity for up to 1,500 tons each. Eight-meter tall spears will deposit air enriched with oxygen into them, turning anaerobic air into aerobic air on the inside. All of this takes place at high temperatures, 176 degrees Fahrenheit."

With the presence of oxygen and heat, bacteria will act upon the waste, eliminating the leachate. "That will make the waste dry," he says.

Then the waste undergoes a screening process that separates humus from recyclables. "This is the big insight of this technology: first to treat, then to separate. When the garbage is separated first, the people who work with recyclables might come into contact with contaminated waste," he explains. In the end of this process, there remains the 30% that will be of no use. Simultaneously, a gas draining process takes place.

The Biopuster Consortium – their motto is: "We return the breath to mother earth – which closed the deal with the Maringá city hall, accepted to ink a risky deal, according to Rogel. They will manage the pilot project for nine months, at no costs to the city hall.

The counterpart requested by the group was for the city to build the adequate flooring for the 14 processing cells that will be built on the landfill site. Besides, they requested that the processed waste belong to them.

"They took a chance because they know that if it works out, Maringá will be a great example to Brazil," says Rogel. After all, this is the first initiative that promises to completely eliminate urban waste in the country.

Total cost during the period will be 3 million Brazilian reais (US$ 1.7 million). The city hall will spend 300,000 reais (US$ 167,000) to build the flooring. "And we will inspect and control the results."

In the future, should the project prove feasible, then the city hall will be able to use the money generated by this new waste to invest in other environmental actions. The initiative may even be submitted to the carbon credit market (Clean Development Mechanisms, established by the Kyoto Protocol), generating new revenues.

Rogel informed that the city of Maringá already has an ecological vocation. "Here we have 645 square feet of green area per inhabitant", he says. In a place where education is one of the main economic talents – there are 33,000 university student openings -, caring for the environment comes almost naturally. Still, the initiative of seeking a solution for the dump was reinforced by a "scolding" from the District Attorney's Office.

"They filed a lawsuit forcing the city hall to close the landfill," says Rogel. "And the Environmental Institute of the state of Paraná (IAP) was pushing us too."

One of the main problems in the area of over 250,000 square meters was the number of garbage collectors who picked through the residue to survive. After the dump was turned into a landfill, those people were forwarded to cooperatives that work with selective garbage collection in the city.

For more

www.maringa.pr.gov.br

Anba – www.anba.com.br

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

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

US-based aluminum manufacturer Alcoa announced yesterday that its Brazilian affiliate, Alcoa AlumÀ­nio, has joined Tetra Pak, Klabin and TSL Ambiental to inaugurate the world’s first carton packaging recycling facility located in Piracicaba, Brazil.

The plant uses groundbreaking plasma technology, which enables the total separation of aluminum and plastic components from the cartons.

This innovative process constitutes a significant enhancement to the current recycling process for carton packaging, which up until now, separated paper, but kept plastic and aluminum together.

The plasma process provides another option for recycling, allowing for the return of all three components of the package to the productive chain as raw material.

Alcoa, which supplies thin-gauge aluminum foil to Tetra Pak for aseptic packaging, uses the recycled aluminum to manufacture new foils.

The new plasma facility has the capacity to process 8 thousand tons per year of plastic and aluminum, corresponding to recycling approximately 32 thousand tons of aseptic packaging.

The emission of pollutants during the recovery of the materials is minimal, handled in the absence of oxygen, without combustion, yielding an energy efficiency rate close to 90%.

“This project synthesizes the best that sustainability can offer, in the form of partnering, technological innovation, environmental enhancement and social development. Alcoa is proud to participate in the roll-out of this pioneering technology,” stated Franklin Feder, president of Alcoa Latin America.

“Brazil already possesses an exemplary record of recycling aluminum and, consequently, the country now has the potential to become a global paradigm as well in the recovery and reuse of aseptic carton packages,” Feder said.

How Plasma Technology Works

The application of plasma technology for the recycling of carton packaging employs electrical energy to produce a jet of plasma at 15 thousand degrees Celsius to heat the plastic and aluminum mixture.

With this process, plastic is transformed into paraffin and the aluminum is recovered in the form of high-purity ingot. Alcoa will then use the recycled aluminum to manufacture new foil. Paraffin is sold to the Brazilian petrochemical industry.

The paper, extracted during the first phase of the recycling process is transformed into cardboard by Klabin. TSL Ambiental, responsible for the technology development of thermal plasma, is responsible for operating this new facility.

The plasma project began in Brazil seven years ago when the former Plasma Group of the IPT (Institute of Technological Research of the University of São Paulo -USP) began exploring the development of processes and technologies that could handle industrial residues enabling the reuse of the valuable metals and materials.

The use of plasma technology for the processing of plastic and aluminum in the carton packages was successful and formed the basis of the partnership between the four companies for the creation of the recycling plant.

The Partners

Alcoa Alumí­nio S.A. was founded 40 years ago in Brazil and it is a subsidiary of Alcoa Inc., a world leader in aluminum production and technology.

Alcoa serves the aerospace, automotive, packaging, building and construction, commercial transportation and industrial markets, bringing design, engineering, production and other capabilities of Alcoa’s businesses to customers.

Alcoa, through its Alcoa Recycling Company, has collected and recycled more than 300 billion aluminum cans around the world. Our efforts reduce the need for landfill space and save significant energy by producing aluminum from recycled cans.

This recycling process requires 95 percent less energy than when producing can sheet material from bauxite ore. About two-thirds of aluminum ever produced – 440 million tons of a total 680 million tons manufactured since 1886 – is still in use.

Alcoa has 131,000 employees in 43 countries and has been a member of the Dow Jones Industrial Average for 45 years and the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes since 2001.

Klabin is the biggest paper manufacturer and exporter in Brazil. The company was founded 106 years ago, and has 18 plants (17 in Brazil and 1 in Argentina) and it is the leader in the production of papers, cardboards for packaging, corrugated cardboard boxes, industrial bags and timber.

Tetra Pak is an organization that operates in over 165 countries, producing integrated systems for processing, bottling, distribution and cardboard packaging for food such as milk and dairy products, juices, coconut water, teas, tomato by-products, creams, sauces and others.

The company started in Brazil in 1957, where it generates over 1,000 direct jobs and maintains two plants, in the city of Monte Mor (state of São Paulo) and Ponta Grossa (Paraná).

It has 53 packaging plants around the world and 16 packaging machinery plants.

In 2004, over 60 billion liters of products were bottled around the world in Tetra Pak packaging and 110 billion packaging units were delivered.

TSL Engenharia Ambiental is an engineering company that focuses on sustainable and development activities. With agents in countries such as The Netherlands, Great Britain, Spain, United States and China, the company is a reference in introducing solutions for the treatment of solid residues and effluents, as well as complementary maintenance and development of leading edge technologies for environmental preservation.

The company, headquartered in São Paulo, has a staff of 300 employees distributed in their commercial units and works in the states of Amazonas, Bahia, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo e Sergipe.
 
Alcoa Alumí­nio S.A.
www.alcoa.com.br 
 
Klabin
www.klabin.com.br

Tetra Pak
www.tetrapak.com.br

TSL Engenharia Ambiental
www.tslambiental.com.br

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