Unep Info

other regions. A. Topic a: Waste Reduction

Materials recovery is widespread in Latin America and the Caribbean. Recycling occurs in all large cities and in most medium-size cities. By contrast, small towns and rural areas generate highly dense wastes (containing mainly organics and soils) that are not recyclable other than via composting. In addition, there are not any markets for therecyclable materials in these areas.
Materials most often recycled are paper and cardboard, glass, metals (mostly aluminium), and plastics. All of these materials, except plastics, are recycled by large-scale industries. In the case of plastics, recycling industries are usually small. These industries shred the plastics and manufacture toys, plastic bags, and containers.
Large-scale recycling programsof non-hazardous industrial solid wastes have been established in Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela. Wastes (mostly paper, cardboard, bottles, plastics and ferrous metals) are separated in the industrial premises and sold to specialised private recyclers. In Colombia, this program resulted from a cooperative effort to find jobs for former landfill scavengers. Generally, except for plastics, this typeof recycling is profitable and environmentally adequate. The recycling of plastics generally is carried out on a small scale and is highly polluting. In the case of domestic wastes, materials recovery occurs at all phases of the management chain (at the source, during collection, during transportation, and at the disposal sites), though there is a trend toward source separation. This trend hasbeen driven by three factors: 1) an improvement in the management of disposal sites, which has forced scavengers to find work elsewhere; 2) factories that pay more for cleaner materials; and 3) households in the poorer countries getting paid a small amount of money for their recyclable materials.
In some large Argentine, Brazilian, Colombian, and Mexican cities, recycling bins have been set upoutside supermarkets, where glass and paper products can be deposited. One of the most successful experiences is that of glass recycling in Colombia. In this case, the recycling bins were placed by a specific glass manufacturer, which also carried out a public education program. Other experiences have not been as successful, mostly because of the lack of public education on the benefits of thispractice.
Collection of materials at the source is done in a variety of ways, ranging from individual itinerants to municipally managed, segregated source collection. Although the number of itinerant scavengers is decreasing, their presence is widespread and, in general, they handle the largest volume of recyclable materials. It is not known how many people are involved in informal recycling in theregion, but the number of people picking wastes on the streets is quite high. It has been estimated that approximately 100,000 people pick wastes at dumpsites.
Street pickers usually own a pushcart or a front-loaded tricycle with which they roam the streets calling for recyclable materials. The itinerants deliver the wastes to intermediaries who then sell the recyclable materials in bulk to theindustrial plants. The social and health conditions of the itinerants are very poor. They are exploited by the intermediaries, who receive significant amounts of money from the industrial plants. Ignoring the intermediaries is considered to be very dangerous due to the strong economic interest that this group has in the recycling chain.
Kerbside pickup of recyclable materials is being practiced onlyin Brazil (a few cities have such a program) and in Mexico. Although waste management authorities acknowledge that additional costs are incurred in this effort, these are partially compensated for by the reduced amount of waste that has to be transported and disposed of in landfills. These efforts appear to have succeeded in these Brazilian cities in part because there was no tradition of...