IRS-CESC · THE ROLE OF THE INFORMAL RECYCLING SECTOR ON CLOSING THE LOOPS TO SUSTAINABLE CITIES
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2018-06-01 → 2020-07-07
- EU contribution
- €146,591
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-EF-CAR
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
THE ROLE OF THE INFORMAL RECYCLING SECTOR ON CLOSING THE LOOPS TO SUSTAINABLE CITIES
As a result of a linear economic model based on infinite growth, waste has become a major global environmental problem. Reducing waste generation and diverting as much waste as possible from landfills and incineration, increasing reuse and recycling are strategies for organizing integrated sustainable solid waste management (ISWM) and support Circular Economy (CE) strategies worldwide. In developing countries, where ISWM is hardly implemented, packaging recycling is being carried out by waste pickers (WP) who have created a social technology for the management and recycling of urban waste based on their practical knowledge, organized in a Solidarity Economy framework. Their action increases the amount of waste recovered and reduces the costs, contributing to ISWM and transforming waste into income and jobs, and social inclusion for millions of people. The research aimed to find out how these informal operators should be invited to work with, not against, WM systems to strengthen CE, making cities sustainable and inclusive. The Brazilian experience of Extended Producer Responsibility for packaging waste (BR P-EPR), implemented with WP playing a central role, was investigated using the European experience (EU P-EPR), the world's first and most consolidated experience as a reference. Qualitative and quantitative methods were combined to collect data from different sources for discussing how the two models could learn from each other and the main constraints for applying them in different countries in order to suggest an inclusive approach for the EPR scheme. That could support ISWM implementation in low and middle medium-income countries (LMMIC), in addition to offer solutions to the concerns in dealing with plastic waste and in strengthening CE worldwide.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
It is widely recognized that waste recycling can reduce both natural resource scarcity and negative environmental impacts of increasing trash production. Expanding the waste recycling is a key to construct Circular Economy (CE) approaches, contributing significantly to the global climate-change mitigation effort, at both local and national scales. Integrated Sustainable Waste Management (ISWM), of which waste recycling encompasses one part, is essential on a global scale. Innovative, low-cost methods of waste recycling was developed by vulnerable and marginalized waste pickers , which have led to the creation of an informal waste recycling sector (IRS) which are currently being used in Brazil and others LMIC, and have the potential to be more widely deployed. The IRS has developed work procedures that diverge from those deployed in EU recycling, setting a social technology (ST). This IRS ST is beneficial to ISWM, as it diminishes overall costs and amplifies quantities recovered, besides providing income to a poor, jobless population.This research will validate the possible gains from disseminating the Brazilian IRS ST to other LMIC countries as an ISWM policy and in support to CE strategies, which will involve a comparison of the Brazilian IRS with the EU recycling model; as such, it will consider how to make social and ecological value visible in value-analysis methods. The research will be carried on by the ER, whose ten years’ research has driven to a crossing point of economics, engineering, and environmental disciplines, the same scope of University of Leeds’ Cities theme. These will enable the ER to acquire the new skills and experience to achieve a position of an independent and professionally mature researcher in the field of CE at international level, leading interdisciplinary action-research groups to support international organizations on initiatives to more sustainable and inclusive cities, in direction to a Green Economy.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS · LeedsCoordinatorUnited Kingdom
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union