Supporting a rural community to recycle
in North East Brazil

Volunteer Jolana is leading a team of ICS volunteers who are
working with our local partner in Brazil CHAPADA to support a rural, agricultural community in growing nutritious food and making a living from organic farming.

Here's her account of how it's gone so far:

"We have started a recycling project here in Sítio Brejo!

The people from the village themselves expressed their interest in recycling at one of the community meetings. It is a completely new experience for the local people. We are the first community around to start to separate and recycle their waste.

However, the road from good will to concrete results has turned out to
be a bit complicated!

At the moment, rubbish is either burnt (best case), or just thrown away (a heap of rubbish in the streets and people’s garden is a very common sight here). But there simply hasn't been any other way of dealing with it.

The recycling dustbins, if properly used, will significantly reduce the amount of rubbish people will have to deal with. However, the non-recyclable rubbish will still have to be burnt.

First, we visited the recycling station in Feitoria (the neighboring community) to find out what rubbish they accept and how often they could come to carry it away.

Next, we got the containers. We managed to get some plain metal barrels about 1.5 meters high from the Secretary of the Environment
in Bodocó.

We bought some paints (with the support of CHAPADA, the NGO we are working with) and painted them. It took us almost 2 days, but it was fun and we were really pleased with the results. 

After this, we organized a Saturday drawing class for the local kids, during which they drew recyclable objects (plastic bottles, drinks cans etc). Then we organized voluntary rubbish picking.

Our objective was to remove at least some of the rubbish from the streets of Sítio Brejo, and involve the community so that they got their first experience of recycling.

The results were shocking. We picked about 100kg of rubbish, of which approximately 70kg was sold to the recycling station for about £8. The money will be kept and the community will use it to buy things they agree on.

After this, however, the recycling bins haven’t been used much.

Every time I passed to check whether people are actually using them, the only rubbish they contained was mine. I came to the conclusion that the only way is to start at their homes. We bought 5 smaller plastic bins, and provided labels showing what can be put inside and what cannot.

I talked to several families and asked them whether they would be interested in receiving a recycling bin in their home in exchange for taking the rubbish to the dustbins when it is full. The families that showed interest are mostly our volunteers’ host families, which will make it easier for us to monitor whether the bins are used properly.

I will evaluate whether this method proves to be successful. In case it does, I will try to get more dustbins into more households of Sítio Brejo.

One of the most important things is to make the people aware that rubbish is a problem - it can attract animals or be a source of infection. We will try to get someone from the townhall in Bodocó to talk on the subject during one of the local meetings.

However, I am convinced that many of the local people only need some concrete instructions on recycling, and they will do it by themselves if they are given the chance.

Although this is a project for the long-run, I hope we will see positive results before our departure in mid-September!!"

www.chapadararipe.org.br