Executive Summary: Selective Waste Management and Waste Pickers’ Organizations: Indicators and Sustainability Indices

This is a 5-page executive summary of a 59-page research guide (in Portuguese), Gestão da coleta seletiva e de organizações de catadores: indicadores e índices de sustentabilidade (Selective Waste Management and Waste Pickers’ Organizations: Indicators and Sustainability Indices).

The guide recognizes the challenges in implementing the National Solid Waste Policy (PNRS, by its acronym in Portuguese), established by federal law no. 12.305 in 2010 in Brazil that seeks to regulate and strengthen selective waste collection throughout the country.

One of the significant challenges the guide calls attention to is how local governments face obstacles to abide by the legislation, often resulting from a lack of use of sustainability indicators that permit a more accurate understanding of the implementation and evaluation of this service. The guide also notes that indicators are just as useful for waste pickers’ organizations. This is particularly the case when considering how organizations could benefit from ways to evaluate their management process given their goal of being recognized as service providers and of improving their livelihoods and earnings.

The guide is available only in Portuguese: Gestão da coleta seletiva e de organizações de catadores: indicadores e índices de sustentabilidade