Posts tagged garbage
Sustainable Glass
Jan 28th
Climbing one of the many slopes of Morro da Pedreira in Costa Barros in Rio de Janeiro’s North Zone, you might not guess you’d find a father up here with a great talent for folk art and a passion for recycling and the environment. The material this man has chosen for his beautiful work is glass.
Often carelessly thrown away, glass becomes one of the villains in this season’s all-too-common flooding. Glass takes hundreds of years to biodegrade, which is why it is commonly recycled, or at least should be.
The artist Alex Sandro, or “Cabeludo” as he’s known in the community More >
Sitiê: From Dump to Eco-Park in Vidigal
Jul 5th
Dull concrete, broken equipment and sparse vegetation compose Vidigal‘s official “Ecological Park.” Like many residents, Felipe Paiva of Cidade Unida (“United City”) wasn’t impressed. His voice carried more than a hint of irony as he detailed its construction: “The Prefeitura (City Hall) tore down some buildings to clear out this square, left the trees around the edges, and called it an ecological park.” An unfinished swing set framed the scene in tired themes of half-hearted government investment that define too many favela communities. But Felipe continued on a brighter note: “Down there, residents built a proper ecological park for ourselves.”
After our More >
Sewers and Symbols in a Pacified Rocinha
Jun 27th
By official count, 102,000 residents animate the streets of Rocinha, Brazil’s most populous single favela community. 10,000 mototaxis buzz up and down the uneven landscape. But what called my attention this past Friday was the litter, which had been rendered chaotic by the force of the evening’s downpour. Bottles and cans floated at the edges of a large open sewer – just a few minutes’ walk from the R$15 million Niemeyer passarela (footbridge) and the 2010 sports complex attached to it.
In Rocinha, as in many favelas, we find government investment rooted not in public need but in political imagery. “Rocinha is Ours,” O Globo (the More >
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Waste Land Pickers Struggle from Landfill Closure
Jun 21st
As the closing of Rio’s giant Jardim Gramacho landfill is presented at Rio+20 as an example of substituting an untreated open facility for a modern waste treatment plant, the community that worked there as the city’s recycling force for the last three decades face an uncertain future.
The largest garbage dump in Latin America, the metropolitan landfill of Jardim Gramacho received Rio’s daily 9,000 tons of trash up until its closure on June 3rd. Catapulted into the international limelight by the 2010 Oscar-nominated documentary Waste Land, the landfill’s 1,700 registered recyclable material collectors – catadores in Portuguese – are receiving a lump sum More >
Environmental Education for a Healthier Future
Jan 22nd
To the benefit of humanity, there exist many people who dedicate their lives to causes for the common good, and it is always a pleasure and inspiration to meet them.
Maurilio Rodrigues de Araújo, better known as Birimbau, is one of these people. Environmental studies teacher at the Programa Art Luz in Macaé, a couple of hours outside of Rio, he is also an environmental educator in Morro dos Macacos, a favela in the North Zone of Rio de Janeiro. He volunteers there teaching children from the community to create art from the rubbish which is not usually recycled – while many More >
