**6. Conclusions**

It can be proved that waste pickers when organized into cooperatives can gain some economic and social benefits that improve their quality of life. Moreover, as they become involved in social movements that are concerned with their work, they begin to perceive the important role they play in preserving the environment and discover that they have the right to citizenship. On the other hand, the interviews with the waste pickers showed that they work in a permanent condition of coercion by multiple social subjects, in addition to the veiled competition between the waste pickers themselves. The study also found that the political organization of waste pickers and awareness of this group, together with other relationships that the cooperative has built with the public authorities, enable the development of social technologies, although this is still in its early stages. This study reaffirmed that isolated programs do not totally alter the perverse social exclusion of waste pickers via

inclusion through precarious work. In this sense, there must be guarantees of the universalization and integration of public policies in all spheres of public administration.

The issues raised in this study indicated that the organization of the work of the waste pickers, serves the interests of the capital involved in the chain of purchasing, recycling, and selling all the collected waste. In this context, the theme is understood as being highly relevant to scientific research, managers of public administration, and cooperatives of waste pickers, who are partners in the process of improving social inclusion and gaining citizenship, for these most important environmental actors in large urban centers.

Among the suggestions for future studies, is the need to produce researches that have the cooperative network as a study object. It could also be interesting to understand the gender implications that permeate the activity, since most of the collectors were women and most of them suffered or had already suffered domestic violence. It could be seen that this influences the construction of the identity of the activity, and there are direct relationships between the work and the autonomy of women. Further works on the recycling industry are needed, with emphasis on the cooperatives experience after the National Solid Waste Policy has been sanctioned. Research needs to be done on other less costly and more efficient processes and recycling methods, which consider the collectors activity. It is also necessary to analyze public projects, such as the Cataforte, and the methodologies applied by the institutions in the development of these projects.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, C.L.d.S. and C.B.; Methodology, C.L.d.S. and C.B.; Formal Analysis, C.L.d.S. and C.B.; Investigation, C.B.; Resources, C.L.d.S.; Writing-Original Draft Preparation, C.L.d.S. and C.B.; Writing-Review & Editing, C.L.d.S.; Visualization, C.L.d.S.; Supervision, C.L.d.S.; Project Administration, C.L.d.S.; Funding Acquisition, C.L.d.S.

**Funding:** Please add: This research was funded by CNPq (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico) gran<sup>t</sup> number 308634/2013-6.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
