Recycling can reduce the scarcity of natural resources and the negative environmental impacts of an increasing waste production, also contributing to the global effort to mitigate climate change. Innovative and low-cost methods of waste recycling have been developed by vulnerable and marginalized waste pickers who constitute the informal recycling sector (IRS), which is part of waste management systems in many developing countries. The IRS's working procedures differ from those implemented in EU recycling schemes, defining a “social” tech-nology (ST) that helps reduce overall recycling costs and amplifies amounts recovered as well as provides in-come to a poor and jobless population. This article presents a comparison of the Brazilian ST IRS with the EU recycling model, focusing on Packaging Recycling Systems. The goal is to analyze the differences and similari-ties of both models and discuss how they can learn from each other to improve the recycling rate in the world towards a Circular Economy
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)