An initiative in São Paulo is making glass recycling more attractive and creating jobs.
Although glass is a 100% recyclable material, the recycling rate in Brazil today is very low. It is full of glass thrown into landfills, along with ordinary garbage or city streets, after all for the pickers it ends up worth nothing. Meanwhile cardboard is a rotating material in the recycling market, waste pickers can sell while metal and plastic are recyclable.
The lack of economic viability, physical collection and sorting structure, professionals, information for people and reverse logistics are some of the obstacles to the growth of the sector in the country. Unfortunately, the cost of transporting glass to the few industries that recycle glass does not outweigh the amount received. But recycling glass has its advantages, taking advantage of shards means that we have energy savings, water savings and reduced pollutant emissions.
One of Brazil's largest beverage industries makes its own bottles, but only half of them from recycled glass. To recycle more, he partnered with a startup. The small company developed a project, set up a few outposts in some neighborhoods, and mapped out the neighborhood bars and cafeterias that mostly dispose of glass. The pickers ride their bikes straight to these places. They weigh and put into the mobile app how much they collected at each place, when the container is full, an industry truck will pick it up.
Waste pickers are contracted with a formal contract and receive a minimum wage per month. Currently it is estimated that over 40% of the glass packaging produced in Brazil is made of recycled material, this number is expected to increase. For this we need to collaborate by getting into the habit of sorting out the trash, put the separate glassware in cardboard boxes and forward to your city's separate collection.
