4.2. The Recycling Cooperatives and the Recycling Rates of the Municipality
As previously exposed, in the municipality of Londrina there are currently seven recycling cooperatives responsible for the management of MSWRP. All the cooperatives have a national registration in the Cadastro Nacional de Pessoa Jurídica (CNPJ), constitutive act (bylaws), board of directors, minutes of their assemblies, environmental license, sanitary license, fire prevention license, operation license, pest control program (rats, cockroaches, flies, etc.) and fiscal regularity (including payment of taxes and formal issuance of invoice). In addition, all seven cooperatives provide transportation vouchers to their members, who are also insured by social security.
At first, the cooperatives perform the weekly collection of MSWRP by the door-to-door system, in accordance with the contract signed with the CMTU. Such collection is executed by the catadores (one driver and two or three collectors) with a truck known as a trunk or cage (vehicle with vertically elongated body by a wire mesh). The catadores then proceed to sort and classify the MSWRP, based on its characteristics, using, for that, sorting mats or tables (usually built by the catadores themselves with pieces of wood and remains of materials, without any standardization in their dimensions). In the sequence, the selected materials are pressed in order to add value for subsequent commercialization.
Nonetheless, the cooperatives report some common difficulties, such as: (i) ergonomic problems related to body posture, because during the sorting of the materials, the catadores called “yard” handle heavy containers (plastic bags with a capacity of 60 L or more, large bags with dimensions equal to or greater than 0.90 m × 0.90 m × 1.20 m, cylindrical-shaped plastic drums, pressed bales, etc.); (ii) complaints from buyers due to the mixing of materials, evidencing problems in sorting; (iii) resistance of catadores in using PPE; (iv) some SC have inadequate ventilation, lack of luminosity and strong odor; (v) many of the sorted waste have no commercialization due to lack of buyers or have low commercial value, as the cost of the transport freight is higher than the commercial value of the product; (vi) instability in the contract signed with the municipality, since at each contract renewal there are significant changes in the form of valuation of the materials and the amount transferred to the cooperatives.
Analyzing the number of residences covered by a collector, it is verified that the cooperatives with the smallest (203 residences/cooperative member) and the largest (597 residences/cooperative member) proportion are Coop2 and Coop6, respectively (
Table 1). This discrepancy is due to the fact that the distribution of the quantity of residences per cooperative is executed by the CMTU according to the following criteria: coverage area, socioeconomic issues of the neighborhoods, volume of MSW, quantity of large waste generators and affinity of the cooperative with the neighborhood served.
In administrative terms, Coop1 is the most organized of the seven cooperatives, as its administrative activities are performed by departments (sales, finance, production, human resources, contracts—which acts in the search for incentive notices for recycling cooperatives) composed of qualified catadores or specialized hired employees, whereas in the other cooperatives all the administrative functions are executed by the president of the cooperative or by the person in charge of the SC. All the seven cooperatives have a formalized board of directors but only the members of the Coop1 board of directors have active participation in its management.
Concerning the management of the SC, at Coop2, Coop3, Coop4 and Coop5 each SC has independent management autonomy. In practice, it is as if there were sub-cooperatives within a central cooperative. In this configuration, each SC defines its layout, material flow, sorting methods, remuneration of the
catadores, quality in the sorting, standard of the building used as SC, list of buyers, amount obtained in the commercialization of the products and so forth. This structure corroborates the IPEA statement that cooperatives have different levels of organization and management difficulties, which restricts their performance in the recycling chain [
4].
Regarding the commercialization of the products, some factors contribute to the distinction of the amount obtained by the cooperatives in relation to the same material (
Table 2): (1) the aggregation of value to the products through the standardization of pressed bales and loads for transportation, the volume of materials commercialized, the punctuality in deliveries, the correct separation of materials by type of waste and the quality in customer service; (2) the commercialization directly with the processing industries, avoiding middlemen. In this sense, Coop1 usually obtains the commercial value on the sale of its products, because it commercializes predominantly with the processing industries, a fact that is not observed in the context of other cooperatives; (3) the differences in their governance; and (4) the ownership of the equipment used. In this direction, as Coop1, Coop3 and Coop6 have more equipment of their own property (scales, forklifts and presses), they present less dependence on middlemen that lend equipment in a loan-commercialization relationship. Due to the fact that Coop1 has a contractual department that operates in the search of incentive notices for recycling cooperatives, most of its equipment was obtained through such notices issued by the federal government and private companies [
9,
34].
As exposed in
Table 2, in the period 2019–2020 Coop1, Coop3 and Coop6 commercialized their products for an average amount superior to US
$ 93.00/t, while the other cooperatives commercialized their products for an average amount inferior to US
$ 75.00. The biggest difference between the two medium amounts commercialized is 43.7% (between Coop1 and Coop5) and 42.7% (between Coop6 and Coop2).
In turn,
Table 3 demonstrates the monthly amount commercialized by cooperative and by type of material in 2019 and 2020. Coop1 has the highest amount per ton commercialized, followed by Coop3 and Coop6. The percentage differences between the lowest and the highest commercialized amount in 2019 for long life packaging, metal, paper, plastic and glass materials are 35.7%, 79.9%, 12.3%, 49.8% and 79.7%, respectively. In 2020, the percentage differences for the same materials (in the same sequence) are 42.4%, 84.4%, 26.3%, 77.1%, 94.5%, respectively.
With regard to data related to the individual and family revenues of the catadores, in order to demonstrate their representativeness in the context of the Brazilian economy, the local currency (real) was converted to the US dollar, using the exchange rate of July 2020 and the national minimum wage in force in Brazil at the same time (July 2020), in the amount of R$ 1045 or US$ 200.96.
The average monthly revenue of the members of all seven cooperatives was over 50% of the Brazilian minimum wage (
Table 2). With positive results, Coop1 and Coop3 achieved an average monthly revenue 35% and 3% higher than the national minimum wage in force in 2019 and 34% and 10% higher than that in force in 2020, respectively. On the other hand, with negative indexes, in 2019 Coop4, Coop6 and Coop7 and in 2020 Coop4, Coop5 and Coop7 obtained average monthly revenue corresponding to 70% of the Brazilian minimum wage. Also, Coop2 and Coop5 had an average monthly revenue close to 60% of the national minimum wage in force in 2019 and Coop6 close to 53% of that in force in 2020.
In a survey conducted by Fidelis et al. [
24] with 88 cooperatives it was noted that members of 8% of them (among which Coop1 and Coop3) owned average monthly revenue above or equal to the national minimum wage. In addition, the members of 40% of the studied cooperatives presented an average monthly revenue below 50% of the national minimum wage and, even worse, the members of 8% of the cooperatives had an average monthly revenue 25% below the Brazilian minimum wage. These data demonstrate that the cooperatives analyzed in this study present better results concerning the average monthly revenue of their members if compared with the cooperatives examined by Fidelis et al. [
24]. However, it is evident that the cooperative members do not have an ideal financial situation, so it is necessary to employ efforts to improve their average monthly revenue.
Still in relation to the amounts earned by the cooperatives,
Table 4 presents the average monthly amount transferred by the municipality of Londrina to the recycling cooperatives as payment for the environmental service provided. The municipal government, through the CMTU, transfers the total amount of the lease of the SC, the partial amount of the social security of the cooperative members and the amount corresponding to the remuneration per residence covered, according to the contract signed with the cooperatives (the Brazilian currency was converted to the US dollar using the exchange rate of July 2020). Such financial resources are extremely important for the cooperatives, as they correspond to a portion of the average monthly revenue of the cooperative members.
According to the data presented in
Table 4, the municipality of Londrina transferred to the cooperatives the amounts of US
$ 1,233,890.64, US
$ 1,361,257.82, US
$ 1,199,216.20, US
$ 1,059,500.35, US
$ 1,065,370.10, US
$ 1,062,400.15 and US
$ 1,068,868.07 in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 (projection), respectively.
In order to obtain the proportion between the average monthly revenue of a
catadores and the amount transferred by the municipality, the ratio between the “amount commercialized (US
$/cooperative member)” and the “average salary (US
$)” described in
Table 2 was calculated. The results indicate that in 2019, the proportion was 36.3%, 34.6%, 5.6%, 31.8%, −41.4%, 9.2% and 43.1% in relation to Coop1, Coop2, Coop3, Coop4, Coop5, Coop6 and Coop7, respectively and in 2020, the proportion was 51.8%, 44.3%, 34.7%, 66.2%, 1.7%, 35.2% and 51.6%, concerning Coop1, Coop2, Coop3, Coop4, Coop5, Coop6 and Coop7, respectively. The positive results demonstrate that the cooperative is able to afford all its financial obligations using just the amount received for the environmental service provided and the surplus is distributed among the cooperative members. The only cooperative that had to complement the amount transferred by the municipality with the revenue obtained by the commercialization of its products was Coop5, in 2019. It is also worth mentioning that the higher results indicate a better management of the cooperative in relation to the available resources and, moreover, a lower quantity of loaned equipment (loan-commercialization relationship) (
Table 1).
Another important factor related to the revenue of the cooperatives is the productivity of the
catadores. As stated by the IPEA, the cooperatives that collect and process over 1800 kg/
catadores/month of MSWRP have high efficiency [
4]. Based on this reasoning, in 2019 and 2020 only Coop7 would have been considered inefficient (
Table 4), since the other cooperatives were very close to this objective.
The “total production” indicator presented in
Table 4 corresponds to the totality of materials commercialized by the cooperatives, disregarding rejects. It should be noted that, after sorting, many MSWRP are destined to landfills, either because of the low commercial value of the product, the high cost of transportation, the small quantity of manufacturing industry of some types of materials (for example, plastic packaging with laminate: packaging of some chocolates, snacks, candies, etc.) or even the great distance of manufacturing industries.
In terms of the quantity of MSWRP collected, the cooperatives experienced their peak in 2016 but a serious political crisis in Brazil, followed by an economic crisis, resulted in a decrease in the commercial value of the materials and, consequently, prevented some catadores from remaining in the cooperatives, increasing the number of informal catadores (not linked to cooperatives). It is worth mentioning that even before these crises, Londrina already had informal collectors. Such informal catadores are known as “garbage pirates,” since they act previously to the cooperatives, selecting and collecting the materials with higher added value, which creates conflicts between these two categories. The informal catadores do not desire to join the cooperatives, because the cooperative members have their remuneration taxed. On the other hand, the cooperative collectors are legally supported, including by the social security, while the informal catadores do not have any government help, besides their working conditions are very precarious and inferior to those provided by the cooperatives. Although there is no official information concerning the number of informal catadores, it is estimated that they collect about 600 tons of MSWRP per month.
In this context,
Figure 2 presents the quantity of MSWRP commercialized by recycling cooperatives (the quantities for 2020 are projections calculated from data collected between January and August of the mentioned year) and reveals fluctuations along the years analyzed in this study. Some factors contributed to these fluctuations, among them: (i) the great variability in the number of cooperative members, due to the flow of admissions and dismissals of
catadores; (ii) the interruption, by the municipal supervisory agency (CMTU), at the end of 2016, of the supply of 100 L green garbage bags, discontinuing an old local custom (until then, the
catadores collected MSWRP and concomitantly distributed new green garbage bags to the population) and, therefore, generating a decrease in the separation of MSWRP in the covered residences; and (iii) the increase in the number of informal
catadores.
Moreover, as presented in the
Figure 2, the largest volume of MSWRP concerns paper, followed by glass, plastic, long-life packaging (Tetra Pak) and metal. The long-life packaging are carton containers used for milk, soups and other liquid products. The commercial value of each type of material fluctuates over time and the greater the quantity of material to be commercialized, the greater will be the cooperative’s ability to negotiate with the manufacturing industries or middleman.
Analyzing the quantities commercialized per type of material and per cooperative, described in
Table 3, it is noted that the proportions remain close to the rates presented in
Figure 2, with few exceptions. In 2019, Coop4 and Coop5 commercialized more glass than paper and Coop7 commercialized more plastic than glass. In 2020, the most commercialized material by Coop5 was metal, while Coop7 commercialized more plastic than glass.
It is important to emphasize that the quality of the sorting performed by the cooperative is directly related to the quantity of types of waste commercialized (
Table 1). Coop1 is the cooperative that presents the best quality on waste sorting and classification (resulting in 30 different types), followed by Coop4, Coop2, Coop3, Coop7, Coop5 and Coop6. The greater the amount of different waste commercialized, the smaller the number of rejects destined to landfills.
Fidelis and Colmenero [
9] studied the performance of all seven cooperatives in their operational activities in the recycling chain. According to the authors, Coop1 stood out in all performance rates, so that its organizational practices (waste collection and processing method, method for obtaining financial resources, budget planning, sales method, expenses control, among other actions) can be used as reference model for other cooperatives.
4.3. The Profile of the Catadores Organized in Recycling Cooperatives
Regarding the actors involved in the management of MSWRP, this section presents the socioeconomic and professional profile of 135
catadores linked to one of the seven cooperatives object of this study. The line “interviewed” in
Table 5 indicates the percentage of
catadores interviewed in each cooperative. The column “% total” illustrates the sum of the percentages of the cooperatives in relation to each variable. The columns “Coop1 (%)” to “Coop7 (%)” demonstrate the percentage of each variable in relation to the corresponding cooperative.
According to the data analyzed (
Table 5), the majority of the
catadores are female, corresponding to 71.11% of the total number of members, whereas 28.89% are male. In addition, there are a large number of single
catadores (35.56%), of which 57.36% have more than 2 children and 34.88% have more than 3 children.
The data also revealed that most
catadores (76.87%) are between 21 and 50 years old. However, when analyzing the beginning of their professional life it is noted that 63.7% of them started working before the age of 15 and 26.7% started even before the age of 9. This fact can be directly related to the low schooling of the
catadores (
Table 6). In this regard, it is observed that 63.70% of the interviewees have low education (no schooling and incomplete elementary school), while 89.63% were unable to complete high school (considering the interval between no schooling and incomplete high school).
In terms of revenue, 68.5% survive only from the activity as a catadores, while 31.4% have some financial supplement, such as pension, retirement or government assistance. It is worth mentioning that all the interviewed catadores have housing: 59% have bought, donated or borrowed homes; 32.8% have financed or rented/leased homes; and 8.2% live in informal settlements. Moreover, the portion of catadores who own cars corresponds to 21.8%.
With regard to the activities performed in the cooperative, 71% of the catadores work directly in the processing of materials (yard, sorting and general services) and 11.11% operate in the collection (driver and collectors), with many members of the board of directors accumulating activities in the administrative and operational sectors, as declared in the questionnaire.
In addition, the data exposed that 56.6% of the cooperative members have been working as catadores for more than 3 years, of which 37% and 12.3% have been working for more than 10 years and 15 years, respectively. However, it is noted that many of them worked informally for a period, since only 41% reported being linked to some cooperative for more than 3 years. Furthermore, 37.31% of them have already switched cooperatives, indicating a high turnover of the catadores among the recycling cooperatives.
The quality and safety of the work are important factors for the catadores. Nevertheless, only 46.7% of them affirmed to have received some type of training related to the use of PPE, customer service, cooperativism, management, body posture, relaxation, traffic legislation, handling and risk of materials, personal hygiene, social economy solidarity and so forth. Another issue that deserves to be highlighted is that 45.7% of the catadores have some health problem, of which 39.5% and 8.5% have diabetes/hypertension and/or respiratory problems, respectively.
4.4. Summary of Results
The
catadores associated to the recycling cooperatives analyzed in this study have a profile similar to that mentioned in the literature [
7,
31,
33]: they are poor people, have many children, started working at a young age, earn low revenue, have low schooling and face difficulties to be allocated in the formal labor market (
Table 1 and
Table 2). Their activities are predominantly manual and involve low technology [
9,
32,
34,
37]. Moreover, they have only essential equipment for the performance of their activities: presses for compacting waste, whose purpose is to add value to products; trucks for collection; scales and forklifts for the internal displacement of waste. However, some of this equipment is rented/leased (increasing operational costs) or lent by middlemen in the loan-commercialization relationship (resulting in the reduction of the amount obtained in the commercialization of the products) (
Table 1).
Some common difficulties were reported by the cooperatives, such as: ergonomic problems related to body posture during the collection and processing of MSWRP; complaints from buyers due to the mixing of materials (sorting issues); resistance of catadores in using PPE; some SC have inadequate ventilation, lack of luminosity and strong odor; many of the sorted waste have no commercialization; at each contract renewal there are significant changes in the form of valuation of the materials and the amount transferred by the municipality to the cooperatives.
Furthermore, the cooperatives do not have many fiscal incentives, a fact that burdens their activity, impacts negatively on the revenue of members and renders difficult the organization of
catadores in cooperatives. This issue also has repercussions on the industrial sector, as few products made from recyclable materials are exempt or have reduced taxation, which indicates that Brazilian legislation does not seriously encourage the use of such materials. Additionally, investments in recyclables are less attractive in some regions of the country, a fact that explains the geographical concentration of industries (73% of the recovering industries are in the South and Southeast regions, while 27% are in the North, Northeast and Center of Brazil) [
58] and the increase in the costs of commercialization of recyclable materials in regions less attractive in terms of recycling.
Despite the difficulties reported by the analyzed cooperatives, the living and working conditions of their members, although not ideal, are much better than those presented by
catadores from other regions of Brazil [
24]. In this context, the members of Coop1 had an average monthly revenue 34% higher than the minimum wage in force in the period 2019 and 2020; the majority of the cooperatives presented monthly revenue of approximately 70% of the Brazilian minimum wage; and no cooperative obtained an average monthly revenue below 50% of the minimum wage, a sad reality observed in many other cooperatives in Brazil [
24] (
Table 2). According to a study based on data from 16 cities in the state of Espírito Santo, Brazil, 82% and 17% of the cooperatives of
catadores operated with very low and average efficiency, respectively [
59].
Another important fact is that 91.8% of the
catadores have decent housing (with access to water, electricity, sewage, etc.) (
Table 6), unlike the reality of so many other collectors who generally reside in suburban geographic spaces [
29,
32]. It is also worth noting that the profession of “
catadores” is common to several members of the same family (62.3%) and that only 0.75% of them declared to be ashamed of their profession, which demonstrates that such workers are aware of their importance in the management of MSWRP. However, there are still issues related to the prejudice experienced by these workers, as 39.6% stated to have already suffered some prejudice and 17.9% affirmed to face difficulties in their relationship with the community (
Table 6).
At the moment, although the seven cooperatives meet the collection needs of the municipality, some of them do not efficiently optimize their inputs in products [
9], so there is still a great potential to be explored. Therefore, in case of future exploitation of the total potential offered by the municipality in terms of recycling, problems may arise. According to CMTU [
54], in 2018 (the data for 2019 and 2020 are not complete) the municipality generated 128,977,746 tons of MSW, while and the cooperatives collected approximately 18% (7,375,287 tons) of the total MSWRP produced by the municipality. In Brazil, it is estimated that 31.9% of the MSW generated is composed of MSWRP [
60], in the case of Londrina, 31.9% of 128,977,746.
It is noteworthy that the municipal supervisory agency (CMTU) is committed to reducing the number of informal catadores by including them in existing recycling cooperatives (there is no official information concerning the number of informal catadores but it is estimated that they collect about 600 tons of MSWRP per month). Notwithstanding the fact that the municipality of Londrina has 100% of its urban and rural area covered by MSWRP collection, the system is still underused, since, according to the CMTU, about 30% of the MSW collected and destined to landfills could be recycled. This may be associated with the environmental education of the local population, which does not perform the correct separation and destination of MSW.
In a sense, recycling is the reverse channel of reverse logistics, since it aggregates value to the product after its consumption and prevents the life cycle of the product from ending with its final consumer, thereby promoting environmental and economic awareness, as well as social responsibility of consumers [
61,
62]. Therefore, it is undeniable that
catadores perform a fundamental role in the management of MSWRP in developing countries, acting directly in the process of revalorization of residues, which are no longer considered useless waste and are now recognized as economic resources [
32]. Moreover, this category of workers has the potential to transform environmentally, economically and socially an entire value chain, which begins with the performance of the
catadores, goes through the processing industries and ends with the return of the product to the consumer market [
9].
In the context of developing countries that aim to implement CE actions, it is essential to ensure the inclusion of
catadores in an adapted CE structure, as stated by Gutberlet et al. [
26], considering the EE and the SSE, expanding in this way the social and political aspects of the CE concept (rendering social benefits more sustainable and less paternalistic), under a lens of the Global South and in the context of
catadores.
According to Gall et al. [
25], it is important to have CE business models that are adjusted to regional specificities and also socially inclusive, combining a human-centered and technology-oriented approach. The author also highlights that the quality of post-consumption plastic waste collected by informal collectors authorizes its processing with other materials that are comparable to state-of-the-art recyclates (in terms of composition and basic engineering properties) and states that whether the right model of cooperation was found, it could bring socio-economic improvements for people who work and live in the informal sector.
Regarding the above and although the problems reported by the cooperatives, the MSWRP management system implemented in Londrina, Brazil, can be considered as an example of the inclusion of recycling cooperatives in the formal recycling system. It is important to highlight that the formalization of the
catadores in collective organizations was essential in this context, because the cooperatives became legally responsible for the management of MSWRP (with the imposition of fines in case of non-compliance with legal and contractual obligations), fact that encouraged the professionalization of the
catadores. Strategies for the inclusion of collective organizations of
catadores in waste management in a CE can be achieved by promoting the economic sustainability of these organizations through improved governance tools [
63].
The factor responsible for this improvement is the recognition, by the municipality, of the environmental service provided, through its remuneration. In this sense, when municipalities give more importance and recognition to the work performed by
catadores, there are improvements in MSW management services and in quality of life and work of these workers [
7,
8,
10,
22,
31].
Coop1 stood out in comparison to the other cooperatives and can be indicated as a benchmarking. Its organizational practices, methods of collecting and processing waste, method of obtaining financial resources, budget planning, sales method, expenses con, among other actions, can be used as a reference model for other cooperatives. This cooperative has a sales department that commercializes directly with processing industries and the amount obtained by selling its products is according to the market value, a fact that is not observed in the context of other cooperatives. Due to the fact that Coop1 has a contractual department that operates in the search of incentive notices for recycling cooperatives, most of its equipment was obtained through such notices issued by the federal government and private companies.
It is important to mention that the path followed by Coop1 was long. It was founded in 2009 and received assistance to build its organizational identity: financial and managerial support from the municipality of Londrina; and support from researchers at the State University of Londrina and the Federal Technological University of Paraná.
For example, the extension project financed by the Araucaria Foundation, an institution linked to the government of Paraná, performed in 2010/2011, aimed to provide technological and commercial support for Coop1. This project included two researchers of the Federal Technological University of Paraná, three recently graduated professionals (two from the administration area and one from the law area) and two trainees from the administration area. This project executed an operational diagnosis of the cooperative (to verify the processes that should be improved) and proposed layouts for the SC (to optimize the internal flow of materials), a report proposing training courses and a logistical report (indicating the existing failures in the collection process and proposing new routes). In addition, at that time only Coop1 was formalized as a cooperative in the municipality.
For the aforementioned, Coop1 has adapted its knowledge and academic and professional supports to build its own identity, considering the cultural issues of its cooperative members and their know-how, enabling improvements in its governance.
Nonetheless, the municipality of Londrina faces challenges in the management of MSWRP. Due to the lack of professional training, formal education and financial resources and also due to cultural issues inherent to the catadores themselves, there are problems in the relationship between the cooperatives, which difficulties the intercommunication and exchange of experiences between them.