Brazil is one of the world leaders in recycling.
In plastic bottles, for example, only Japan recycles more than Brazil.
In aluminium, too, Brazil is out in front. Brazilians reuse 96.5 percent of all cans sold, a number far superior to Europe’s 62 percent or the United States’s 54 percent.
In solid plastics, Brazil is the fourth largest recycler in the world and in glass bottles it is fifth. In steel cans, it is third behind Belgium and Sweden.
Unfortunately, much of that recycling is not done by people picking through rubbish. It is not always carried out on an industrial scale and house to house collection is not common.
There are a few companies trying to change that. Coelce, the power company in Fortaleza, is one of them. There, more than 300,000 people hand over paper, glass, cooking oil and a host of other products in return for money off their electricity bill.
The model is such a success that Light, the Rio de Janeiro power utility, is aiming to reproduce it, starting in the city’s favelas, as I explain here in a recent Financial Times story.
Some 68 of Rio’s close to 1000 favelas have been pacified in recent years and Light’s project is part of that process that attempts to bring a certain normality to these areas. As I write in the story:
A pilot progam run by Rio’s electricity company Light started last week in the Santa Marta favela. Police entered the favela at the end of 2008 and expelled the armed drug traffickers who controlled the area. The 6,000 residents now live in relative peace under the command of community police officers.
“You don’t see drugs and guns any more but you do see lots of rubbish,” said Fernanda Mayrink, Light’s community outreach officer.
“This project encourages recycling within the company’s concession area and at the same time contributes to sustainable development and the consumer’s pocket. Light wins, the customer wins (and) the environment wins.”
Good luck to them. More such projects would result in more win-win situations.
ANDREW DOWNIE'S BRAZIL BLOG 
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August 23, 2011 at 12:34 am
Rafa Santos
I would like to leave a comment on the Straight Pride thread. I would like to address the oft-repeated assertion that 260 LGBT people have been killed in Brazil during the last year because of their orientaton – which is not true.
These are my points:
– There’s no official agency in Brazil dealing with hate crimes against LGBT persons. As such, there are no official estimates regarding the number of LGBT persons who have been killed or otherwise physically hurt by bias-motivated persons.
– The 260 deaths figure was instead produced by a gay NGO, the Grupo Gay da Bahia (GGB). A gay NGO shouldn’t be trusted to conduct this sort of service just as an Evangelical NGO shouldn’t either. And this specially so when it comes to an NGO that operates under such a complete lack of transparency as the GGB.
– The GGB derives its estimations from media reports. If, for example, some local daily reports on the murder of a local LGBT person, the Grupo Gay da Bahia will consider that murder on its report. It should be noted however that the Grupo Gay da Bahia doesn’t release the names of the victims who comprise its sample of murdered LGBT persons. Whether they have been killed because of bias, no one knows – we only have the Grupo Gay da Bahia to trust. On its press releases, the GGB discloses someof victims’ names – but usually nothing is said on the crimes’ motivations, only the way they have been killed (which is usually gruesome). Once I googled the name of one of the victims – it was a a local TV entertainer in Minas Gerais – disclosed on GGB’s press releases, and found that he had been killed by his lover because of jealousy reasons – not bias. Others have also found, by employing the same methodology as GGB – to look for LGBT murders on the news reports – that the great majority have been killed because of non-bias reasons: jealousy for gay couples, unpaid debts with drug gangs for transexual individuals, etc.
– The Grupo Gay da Bahia has come along with some very wacky reports/positions. For example, it has once estimated that 16% of the Brazilian population is LGBT. Other estimates, however, have put the figure at 10% of the population in 10 Brazilian capitals. Moreover, a São Paulo hospital has calculated 5% for the overall population. The latter numbers fit international reports which usually find that LGBT persons comprise 2 to 5% of the total population, though that percentage increases in large urban centers. The GGB numbers, on the other hand, suggest either that its methodology is poor or that it is biased and willing to produce fake numbers to promote its agenda. GGB’s president and founder, Luiz Mott, is also on the record calling for affirmative action for gays (I’m gay and pro-gay, but c’mon!).
– The 260 figure is so far ahead that of any other country in the world, that it should raise people’s suspiciousness. According to a 2007 Pew poll, Brazilians are among the most likely persons to say that society should accept rather than discourage homosexuality. They were the 3rd most likely non-European group after Argentinians and Canadians. Besides, the government has since the mid 90s passed loads of pro-LGBT legislation – from immigration to adoption rights – and they have never elicited negative reactions from the larger society: hardly anyting on the level of anti-gay activism seen inthe US. It is hard to believe Brazil is the most homophobic country in the world, as GGB numbers suggest and its leaders have often said in their campy pronouncements.
August 23, 2011 at 1:08 am
Rafa Santos
PS – I’m only leaving this message here because I couldn’t on that other thread.
I was giving a look at older posts on this blog, and God I got say this: you do an awesome job at slinging mud at Brazil. Keep it up, I guess.