Environmental performance of waste pickers in Esteio (RS)

ABSTRACT

Urban waste pickers collect part of the mass of recyclable solid waste in the cities. The activity has been considered informal, but it is recognized as the basis of the recycling's production chain. This paper discusses a research developed with 29 waste pickers in Esteio city, Brazil. The data were compared to the public research data available. The results indicated that PET, aluminum, paper and cardboard are the most economically attractive solid waste for the waste pickers. The data also indicated that the average individual recyclable materials collected by waste pickers is 1,200 kg/ month, and the minimum and maximum mass of recyclable materials for all municipality's waste pickers are respectively 102.5 and 257.3 t/month. These results showed that the environmental performance of waste pickers is from 2.3 to 5.7 times higher when the data are compared to the indicator of formal selective collection in Esteio city.

Keywords:
environmental management; waste picker; solid waste recycling; environmental performance