Brazil recycling rate merely 4%

The country generates 27.7 million tons of reusable waste a year

Published on 06/06/2022 - 11:25 By Alana Gandra - Rio de Janeiro

In Brazil, four percent of the recyclable solid waste undergoes recycling—well below countries with the same income range and level of economic development, such as Chile, Argentina, South Africa, and Turkey. These nations show an average recycling rate of 16 percent, as per the International Solid Waste Association (ISWA).

“Our rate is four times lower than these countries’. We have to speed up,” said institution head Carlos Silva Filho, who is also director-president of Brazil’s association of cleaning and waste companies ABRELPE.

The road towards developed countries is longer still. In Germany, for instance, the recycling rate stands at 67 percent. “Brazil is 20 years behind those countries,” Silva Filho remarked.

Even though the country has great potential to step up recycling, a number of factors keep rates stagnant, starting with the lack of consumer awareness and engagement in the elective sorting and discarding of trash. Another major issue is the cities’ lack of infrastructure for bringing material with recovery potential back to the productive cycle.

“We lack the facilities for selective collection and disposal and we lack a tax structure to make this recyclable material attractive to the industry,” Silva Filho noted.

Brazil’s National Recycling Day, observed this Sunday (Jun 5), aims to make people aware of the role of selective collection, including the separation and distribution of materials for recycling and reuse, mitigating the impact of incorrect disposal on the environment.

Dry and organic

Dry recyclable materials amounted to 33.6 percent of the total 82.5 million tons of municipal solid waste produced every year during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020–2021). According to the Solid Waste Panorama 2021, published by ABRELPE, Brazil totaled 27.7 million tons of recyclable waste a year.

Although dry recyclable materials have grown within the total amount of municipal solid waste (31.7 percent in 2012 to 33.6 percent in the last survey), the organic portion remains atop the list, with 45.3 percent—slightly over 37 million tons a year.

According to the survey, dry recyclable waste is composed mainly of plastics (16.8 percent, with 13.8 million tons a year), paper and cardboard (10.4 percent, or 8.57 million tons a year), glass (2.7%), metals (2.3%), and multilayer packaging (1.4%). Refuse, on the other hand, corresponds to 14.1 percent of the total and chiefly includes sanitary materials that cannot be recycled. Regarding the other slices, the study reveals that textile waste, leather, and rubber reach 5.6 percent, and other waste 1.4 percent.

The numbers indicate that selective collection initiatives have been reported in over 74 percent of Brazilian municipalities, but are still incipient in a large number of locations, which is made clear by the overload facing the disposal system and on the extraction of natural resources—many approaching exhaustion. Nearly 1,500 municipalities are reported to have no selective collection programs.

Translation: Fabrício Ferreira -  Edition: Lílian Beraldo

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