In the breaks of MTV program, I talked to the girl working on food service. Her name is Ester Lima, 31 years old. She lives at Jardim Adalgisa, a burrough in west zone of Sao Paulo and near to University of Sao Paulo – the second biggest in Latin America.

The garbage truck passes there three times a week, and there is no recycling collect in his burrough. In her house, Ester makes the separation of paper and other materials for the cooperatives of collectors. Almost none of her relatives or friends separate the recycling part of garbage.

According to her, the garbage collect system works well, but some people leaves furnitures and dump in the squares of Jardim Adalgisa. They even burned a tree from a square to get more space to the trash. She susppects that this people are payed to do this dirty job.

Ester tries to explain the importance of recycling to her freinds, but few people gave some attention. She thinks that collectors of recycling cooperatives are like “individialist bees”: they are not thinking on environment, but in they susbsistence. In her opinion, the government should give trainning programs to the collectors, and make them conscenscious of all issues that are involved to climate changes.

Photo: Brazilian Recycling Material Collectors Movement

Comparing cities
I found some examples of how people deal with trash in biggest cities around the world. Xangai is the biggest chinese city. Like Sao Paulo, one of the issues of the city in how to deal with trash. One of the difficulties is the habit of dispend the trash by the window of the residencial buildings – including the skyscrapers. The chinese government established a fine of 200 iuans (US$ 33,00) to prevent this habit.

One way to understand the brazilian relation with the garbage is the quote “My liberty ends, where the liberty of my fellow starts”. As the street is a public space, the common sense thinks that deal with garbage is an government problem. If there is no trash bin near, the trash will end on the ground. People in the cars, dispend the garbage thru the window.

But in Tokio, is quite different. The japanese capital does not have so many garbage bins in the streets. Despite this situation, niponic people does not leave the garbage in the public ways. Just because there is a disseminated view that you are responsible for your consumption and for make the right thing with your trash.

Solutions
Once people will always generate trash, the goal is the achievement of sustainable uses of the trash. Ribeirao Preto (300 km of Sao Paulo) uses solar energy to burn the trash with no smoke and the gas produced in the process can generate electricity. The cost of this system is US$ 14 million – a new landfill will cost US$ 30 million.

In Santa Catarina State (south region of Brazil) Ituporanga city has created a Trash Processing Center, to recover 100% of garbage. After separating the recycling materials, the rest goes to an automatized composting system – with manure as main product. The goal is to eliminate the landfills in the city. The original idea was recover suine dejects. So, there are inventive ways to deal with issue. What is the solution in your region/country?