Inclusão ampliada de catadores como estratégia para a integração do sistema municipal de gestão de resíduos sólidos

Abstract

This work aimed to demonstrate the potential development of Municipal Solid Waste Management Systems (MSWMS) by the development of an integration economy among social mobilization, selective collection, sorting and marketing of recyclable materials. The discussion was fundamentaded on an empirical study of the analysis of a case of expanded inclusion of a waste picker cooperative, that was hiring it to provide the social mobilization service of the population and the selective collection. The hiring of waste pickers´ associations and cooperatives - WPC has been discussed by several social actors, as an alternative for the inclusion of WP, which at the same time meets the requirements of Nacional Solid Waste Politic (of reduction of grounding and increasing recycling with the inclusion of WPC). This hiring results in the increase of the fixed income of WPC which contributes to their long-term stability. Also contributes to the improvement of the working and living conditions of the WP. In the case studied it was observed how they used their (prior) expertise in sorting during the mobilizing and collecting; This allowed the development of cooperation strategies between the collection team and the local residents (transverse cooperation) as well as between the collection and sorting teams (horizontal cooperation). This way of carrying out the activity based on cooperation generates positive effects on the adherence of the population served and on the quality of the material collected, in addition to allowing the development of immaterial aspects of the service such as competence, pertinence and health. These elements are invisible, but they can be made explicit, by the observation of activities in real situation from an ergonomics perspective, which allows bringing these elements to the discussion. Therefore, the analysis was performed using direct observation and verbalization methodologies, based on the activity analysis during the first year of hiring of this cooperative in Belo Horizonte - MG. The main results concern: i. “Decision not to pick garbage”, ii. “Incorporate cardboard and glass pre-sorting activity” and iii. "Transverse and vertical cooperation". These results allow us to demonstrate (and in some cases measure) local, systemic and integration effects of decisions made on how to perform services, as well as immaterial gains observed in the case studied. These gains, which allow us to return the issue of long-term WPC stability beyond the industrial logic based on volume of material sold, incorporating immaterial resources and co-production with the served population, and thus enabling the development of alternative modes of production with the provision of other services outside the recycling value chain where waste pickers occupy a subordinate position.