"Active Circulation "

The city makes claims for a vision of progressive urban planning and policy on a number of levels, one being their recycling program. Initiated in 1989 under the banners of “garbage that is not garbage” and “purchase of garbage”, which sought to alleviate the growing waste problems in outreaching neighbourhoods expanding in population, areas which were lacking in proper roads and waste disposal. These programs enabled local residents to turn in separated trash in exchange for money. These initial agreements led to “Green Exchange” launched in 1991, which set up local recycling centers in the poorest areas where trucks could pick up separated trash. Residents receive not only money, but transportation vouchers, produce and other food items supplied by local farmers, along with educational materials. Such programs continue today, and have further developed with respect to educational curriculum on environmental issues. To further support local businesses and residents, recycling centers employ people with disabilities and the homeless. The program has essentially led to roughly 70% of residents to recycle, adding to the city’s attempts to educate on environmental issues.

This program, while structured around different levels of waste management, from trash collection (recyclable and other) and street cleaners to park gardener’s and sidewalk sweepers (each with their own color-coded uniforms), the city in turn relies upon a culture of local collectors that spend their days sifting through people’s garbage for recyclable objects and materials. Glass, aluminium cans, paper and cardboard, are collected and loaded into hand-built, mobile carts the collectors wheel through the city and its neighbourhoods. Essentially, the collectors survive on the cash received from recycling, and it is common that city residents separate their trash, place it out front of their residence, with the understanding that these will be collected by the unofficial collectors. It is worth noting that the official trash collectors do not separate the trash, for the city has no infrastructure for home recycling, only from neighborhood collection facilities and civic trash receptables. Thus, an entire economy is structured around the city’s recycling program yet according to a certain uneven operation, which in turn maintains the balance of class, for the street collectors represent the poorest of the population. This is furthered by the fact the unofficial collectors must in turn rely upon local ‘bosses’ who rent the mobile carts in exchange for places to live: the collectors pick up trash in order to pay rent, bringing in the recyclable trash back to the bosses. In this regard, the recycling program, as representing the very image of the city and its international marketing, is only successful to the degree that trash will always be the substance of a certain part of the population’s income. This is heightened by recognizing that often collectors do not simply bring the day’s findings immediately to the recycling facilities, but instead cart the materials back home, where they sort and prepare the items before passing them along to the bosses, thereby literally living with and according to garbage.

In speaking with local residents, a high degree of ‘sympathy’ was expressed for the collectors, manifesting in a level of ‘care’ residents take in placing their waste on the street: not only do people separate and organize their trash, they often place it out front at certain times of the day, allowing the unofficial collectors time to find what they need before the official collectors come. In this sense, we began to wonder if the specifics of this economy could be viewed according to ‘gift giving’, in which residents ‘give’ their trash to street collectors who in turn receive city cash in exchange. This is somewhat furthered by what we discovered to be forms of charity given by local Christian organizations that cast the unofficial collectors as ‘angels’ or saintly figures. In addition, in speaking with Paulo, a local teacher in Curitiba who has created a volunteer ‘prep’ school to help kids living in these areas prepare for educational examinations, a sense as to what degree these communities generate dispute and discussion throughout the city, spanning all levels of class, surfaced.