Cartwrights work harder for recycled waste than city halls

It’s around 1 pm on a Tuesday, near the Amaral Gurgel bus terminal, in Santa Cecília, in the central region of São Paulo. Cartwright Joaquim Silva Santos, 63 years old, “Bahia”, as he is known, rests sitting on the curb, under the elevated President João Goulart, the Minhocão, after having lunch at the restaurant Bom Prato – program of the government of the state of São Paulo Paulo that offers meals for R$1.

Soon he will leave for the second round of the day in search of cardboard, plastic, aluminum cans and whatever else he can negotiate in a downtown junkyard. “I can’t carry much weight, I have a hernia operation,” says Bahia, who complains about the amount paid for recycled material. “After the pandemic, everything got worse: today they pay BRL 0.25 for a kilogram of cardboard, BRL 0.40 for a kilogram of iron, BRL 0.40 for a kilogram of plastic bottles. “, he says, who is moved to remember that he started to live on the street also in the pandemic.

While wiping her tears with a piece of printed cloth, Bahia says that she was unable to stay in the pension, “which used to charge R$12 a day, then went to R$14 and now it’s R$16”. She would also have to shell out another R$10 per night to store the wagon in a parking lot. “That way, there wouldn’t be any left over for me to eat,” says the cart driver, who earns around R$150 a week.

“At night, I take my wagon, line it with cardboard and cover myself with the blanket. I can’t keep a single coin, what else is there here is a thief”, he says. The strong smell of urine pervades the environment, where puddles of rainwater accumulate near the wagon, his only possession, along with the woolen blanket, which during the day is kept in the bar in front of his “house”.

The economic situation and working conditions of thousands of carters like Bahia could be different if these agents were remunerated for the voluntary collection they carry out – and not just for the sale of the material, whose price is unstable and depends on a chain formed by several middlemen, between the industry and the collector.

According to data from Ipea (Institute for Applied Economic Research), 75% of the total earnings of the recycling sector are destined to industries, but 90% of the recycled garbage passes through the hands of collectors, either organized in recycling cooperatives, or working alone in the streets and landfills.

In São Paulo —the largest city in the country, with 12.3 million inhabitants, which also make it the largest generator of national waste—, two concessionaires, Ecourbis and Loga, together received around R$ 10 billion to explore for 20 years , until October 2024, the selective collection service.

In 2020, companies collected 94.5 thousand tons of garbage for recycling in the city of São Paulo, according to data from SNIS (National Sanitation Information System). In the same year, a universe of 1,875 teamsters and collectors (which are just a part of the total that work in the capital) collected 161.2 thousand tons, or 71% more than the selective collection companies.

With the difference that the collectors do not charge for the service, they only get paid for the sale of what they collect. Most of them (43%) earn less than R$1,000 per month in the capital.

The data belong to the Cataki 2022 survey, carried out by Plano CDE with waste pickers from São Paulo, Belo Horizonte and Rio at the request of Pimp My Carroça, a social movement that seeks to value the work of cart drivers and recyclable material pickers in the country. Also in the capital of Minas Gerais, collectors collect 59% more material than official selective collection companies.

“They are numerous, have flexible working hours and travel many more streets than the companies hired for the selective collective”, says Sonia Dias, PhD in political science, specialist in solid waste management at UFMG (Federal University of Minas Gerais ).

Alongside Mathilde Bouvier, a master in development economics, Sônia is the author of the article “Recyclable material collectors in Brazil: a statistical profile”, published by the global network Wiego (Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing). According to the document, the estimated number of material pickers in Brazil was 281,025 in 2019. Men are the majority (70%).

“Brazil recycles 97% of cans and 67% of cardboard. But only a quarter of all municipalities in the country have a selective garbage collection, which indicates that these high rates are due to the work of collectors of recyclable materials”, says Sônia.

Only 4% of the 381 kg of garbage generated by Brazilians per year are recycled

The recycling potential is immense. According to the Panorama of Solid Waste in Brazil 2022, by Abrelpe (Brazilian Association of Public Cleaning and Special Waste Companies), each Brazilian produces, on average, 381 kilos of garbage per year.

But only 4% of this is recycled in Brazil, according to ISWA (International Solid Waste Association). This is much lower than the average of other Latin American countries, such as Chile and Argentina (16%), and infinitely lower than that of some European countries, such as Germany (67%).

The rate of 4% of recycled garbage is the same observed in the city of São Paulo. “However, more than 30% of the volume collected per day can be recycled, which does not happen, as the population discards a lot of material that can be recycled along with common waste”, he informed the Sheet the City Hall of São Paulo, in a note.

The municipal government also informed that it develops training programs for collectors, such as SP Coopera, which serves around 2,000 people in vulnerable situations. According to the City Hall, the program will formalize 20 new collectors’ cooperatives in the capital of São Paulo, in addition to strengthening the 30 that are already installed.

“It’s a recurrent discourse of the government: making the citizen responsible for recycling. But without offering structure for the collection of recycled material, nor incentive for residents to separate the material”, says the graffiti artist and activist Murano, founder of Pimp My Wagon.

According to the City Hall of São Paulo, “selective home collection is present in the 96 districts of the municipality, covering about 76% of the roads”. But the report found that in several streets in the center of the capital the recycling truck passes, but does not collect the garbage.

“Try to find a dumpster for recyclable material on Avenida Paulista, one of the richest addresses in the city. You won’t find it”, says Murano. “Much less on the periphery.”

Fund backed by companies to offer electric wagons in 2023

According to the Cataki 2022 survey, most waste pickers in the surveyed cities live in extreme economic and social vulnerability. They are homeless, they sleep in hostels, shelters or shelters.

“The City of São Paulo estimated the homeless population at 32,000 people. If most of this contingent were encompassed by a robust public recycling policy, to work as cart drivers or collectors, we could solve two major problems, one social and one another environmental one, all at once”, says Murano, who founded Pimp My Carroça in 2012, after realizing that teamsters were discriminated against and the target of prejudice for their work, instead of being valued.

Five years ago, Pimp My Carroça launched Cataki, an application to connect waste generators –consumers or companies– to registered carters. The generators agree with the collectors on a price for them to remove the garbage to be recycled. The app has 300,000 downloads.

Now, Pimp My Carroça wants to equip professionals with electric carts that can lighten the weight carried, which often reaches 400 kilos. The format is similar to the traditional ones, but the carters don’t need to make an effort to pull them, they just drive them, like an electric bicycle.

A fund will be created in 2023 by the movement with the aim of raising funds for the “Carroças do Futuro” program. Five of them are already being tested in the city of São Paulo since last year, thanks to the partnership with ICS (Instituto Clima e Sociedade).

The idea is that companies that need to increase the reverse logistics of their packages participate in the fund and, with that, manage to reduce their carbon footprint.

“We are in the stage of formatting the fund, defining quotas, to gain scale and reduce manufacturing costs”, says Murano. “But we already have encouraging results with the ones that are being tested: there was a 200% increase in the collectors’ monthly income, because they don’t get so tired and manage to cover more routes, and thus collect more material”, he says.

In the graffiti artist’s opinion, the electric wagon brings dignity to a professional who is often cursed in traffic, has his work tool seized by public agents and is the target of prejudice. “But without them, the cities would suffer much more with the garbage carried away by floods and dengue, with the proliferation of mosquitoes in the water pooled in cans and bottles. We owe them part of public health.”