This study examines the structural conditions that determine the phenomenon of solid waste recycling systems in contemporary society, focusing largely on work relations and on the logic of production. From this perspective, it analyses the relation among waste production, ecological imbalance and the current stage of the development of production forces within the production system of advanced capitalism, which is based on the exacerbation of consumption and waste disposal. It was found that, in the hypothesis of a real process of sustainability, controlled by the State (apart from the socio-technical and economic regulation by an integrated management system, from the production of garbage-waste-supply until its final disposal and reintroduction in the productive chain), it would be necessary to have effective public management aiming at implementing collective processes that would act upon the cultural and educational dimensions of sustainability, changing thus the social patterns of production and consumption.
solid waste; work relations and logic of production; sustainability; shadow financial system