Among the poor in Brazil you often find people working in a more or less coordinated way making a living from picking through the waste dumps. The first project I ever saw in Brazil was at a neighbourhood centre in Joao Pessoa, in such a context: on my recent trip I had the chance to see it again, and the improvements in the quality of life were very visible, thirteen years on.
A few days later I was in a satellite city outside Brasilia, visiting a co-op called ‘100 Dimensao’ and listening to some extraordinary stories of those involved. About six years ago they lived in homes that were really just shelters, and spent their time sifting through the city’s waste to re-use or sell-on what they could. They formed a co-operative and managed to get a building from the authorities.
About one year ago they moved to a better site (three single-storey structures) and things started to happen. For instance, they recently won the contract to clean up after a music festival in Brasilia attended by 80,000 people. They have two trucks and they bring all the litter back to site, sort it, recycle and make things. All this sounds straightforward; then you see what they’ve got and what they’ve made. They make recycled paper, using banana-leaf fibres to strengthen it; they make pictures, crafts and furniture, clothes, table cloths from sweet wrappers, high-quality bags from ring-pulls, and so on. Some of this stuff is fashionable and of such high quality that, I was told in hushed tones, the project was on the point of securing a deal to have a shop in Brasilia airport. If that doesn’t impress you I’m not telling it right. 
100 Dimensao has a library of a few thousand books and journals – all of them, every single printed item, retrieved from the waste. People from the neighbourhood come in and browse, reading at the tables and benches which of course are also salvaged. Supported by one of the local universities, the project runs courses, particularly literacy courses but also Spanish, French and English: for local people the condition of entry on the course is that they have to sort their litter into wet and dry. Environmental education is also a theme, and the project is about to start running computer courses: it was curious to see the machines still in cardboard boxes, making you wonder if some of the packaging had originated here, in these people’s hands.
And people are very conscious of how their lives have been transformed. We heard several very moving testimonies – we were lump-throated at the story for instance of one pregnant woman who had dragged herself from a simply destitute street life with one child, and convinced the co-op members that she was serious in her commitment. But her husband had felt unable to stay, he’d gone back to the street and recently been killed. That’s how close their lives are to the edge. Others testified to the sense of belonging and solidarity that the project offers. In all my experience, the power of collective support and action has never been more forceful than it was here.
Three points left me pondering the future. First, I can only describe an odd sense of discontinuity in the way we had difficulty finding the place as we drove round the area. Our driver didn’t know exactly where it was and we asked several people – as it happened, within less than a kilometre of the site – who seemed not to have heard of it. There’s no doubt that 100 Dimensao has transformed the lives of people in the neighbourhood on the fringes of the city. It was odd that such a stunning project should seem so low in the consciousness of some local residents, but there may be reasons for that – for instance, ‘I don’t know’ may be a conditioned response to questions from middle class folk cruising round in a car.
Secondly, the recycling industry is beginning to be a big deal in Brazil, and the co-op is concerned about some big players moving in. It helps that they have the support of a national enterprise support agency, Sebrae, which apparently has contributed a great deal in terms of capacity building (but no funding, I was told). Sebrae can be counted on I think to help share the lessons from this project’s achievements.
Thirdly, it was very clear that much of the progress was significantly down to one charismatic and dynamic individual, the remarkable Sonia Maria da Silva. This is an old issue for community development – we’d all like to think that successful projects simply should not have to depend on exceptional people, otherwise obviously social change is constrained by their availability. It was heartening to learn afterwards that Sonia is moving on to another role in the region, and hearing the other members talk made it clear that they intend to carry on where she leaves off.
Special thanks to Cristiane Gomes Dias from the Ministerio da Educacao, Brasilia.
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