Semiótica de la moda: sentido, significados y función de la moda

Brazil shares some commonalities with South Africa. For instance, both countries are locomotives for economic development on their continents, but both also struggle with high levels of poverty and are among the most unequal societies in the world (although inequality in Brazil has decreased sharply in the last decade while South Africa‘s level of inequality has remained on a high level).²⁹⁶ As is true for India and most of the developing world, increasing consumption of goods has generated a huge vol-ume of waste in Brazil. Thus far Brazil is the only country that systematically captures data and keeps statistics on waste pickers.

Historically, waste pickers in Brazil collected organic material for feeding animals. Garbage picking and pig farming was only later gradually replaced by waste recovery when recyclable materials such as plastic waste, scrap metal etc. were collected. For decades people performed this informal collec-tion of recycling materials in two main ways: it was either street dwellers engaged in street waste picking activities by using trash bags, which they found on the roadside or took from offices and shops; or it was people picking waste at open dumps in major cities.²⁹⁷ Because they lacked the mon-ey to go home at the end of a working day and because thmon-ey had no means to store their collected

294 Lakshmi, ‗In India, a mountain of trash is a means of living‘

295 Ibid.

296 Khadija Patel, ‗Brazil and South Africa: United in inequality‘, Daily Maverick (15.08.2012).

URL: http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2012-08-15-brazil-and-south-africa-united-in-inequality#.UUGRQzeoDKc Accessed: 14.03.2013

297 Gerdes and Gunsilius, The Waste Experts, p. 11

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materials (like the skarrelaars of Coastal Park), street waste pickers were forced to live in improvised cardboard shacks since they could not leave their material unguarded. Their use of public space as a workplace and a home, resulted in many problems, especially because the street pickers were seen as people who ‗dirtied the city‘ with their activity. Not surprisingly they were treated as ‗part of the rub-bish‘ and were regularly expelled from the wayside to ‗beautify the city‘. As part of these cleaning actions their materials were often confiscated. On the other hand, waste pickers at the open dumps were socially ‗invisible‘ since their ‗workplace‘ is usually out of sight on the periphery of the cit-ies.²⁹⁸ (This similar to Muizenberg, where the landfill is enclosed by townships and part of a nature reserve and thus largely sealed off from the public eye, esp. the middleclass).

This for both sides unsatisfactory situation eventually led to the formation of municipal recycling scheme partnerships between many waste picker organisations and local governments in Brazil. Rela-tions are regulated with specifically designed contracts, covenants and arrangements, adapted to local circumstances. Recycling is formally assigned to cooperatives of informal recyclers and recycling centres in some cities. Additionally, they often receive subsidies from the municipality and are some-times combined with public-private-partnerships.²⁹⁹

Thus waste picking in Brazil evolved from individual recyclers largely working on their on streets or dumpsites to more varied arrangements in recent times. According to Sonia Dias of WIEGO, three types of waste pickers can be distinguished today: there is (1) the unorganised or autonomous waste picker who makes a living picking or buying recyclable materials on the streets or in waste dumps and selling it to junk shops; then there are (2) the organised waste pickers who are members of coop-eratives and associations; and lastly (3) those waste pickers who have a contract and mostly work in junk yards or in the metallurgic industrial sector, but also in the public municipal sector or in associa-tions and cooperatives.³⁰⁰

The Brazilian ragpickers (catadores de lixo in Portuguese) – like their counterparts in cities across the Global South – collect, separate, classify, and sell all types of recyclable materials.³⁰¹ The data for the number of waste pickers in Brazil vary significantly. In a 2003 study it was estimated that there are 500,000 waste pickers in Brazil³⁰². Data collected by Brazil‘s official statistical system a few years later counted just over 250,000 people engaged in waste picking, of which 11,781 had a formal

298 Ibid.

299 Ibid., p. 12

300 Sonia M. Dias, ‗Statistics on Waste Pickers in Brazil‘, WIEGO Statistical Brief, No. 2, 2011, p. 2

301 M. C. da Silva, A. G. Fassa, C. E. Siqueira, and D. Kriebel, ‗World at Work: Brazilian Ragpickers‘, Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Vol. 62, No. 10, 2005, pp. 736-740, here: p. 736

302 Ibid.

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tract.³⁰³ The president of the Jardim Gramacho Cooperative of Collectors, Sebastian Carlos dos San-tos, stated in 2012 that there are about one million catadores all across Brazil.³⁰⁴ One explanation for the discrepancy in numbers might be that the official statistic does not include all waste pickers; or that the number of catadores has increased significantly in the last half decade, in particular since the start of the worldwide economic crisis (although it did not hit Brazil as hard as other countries) .

Following data from Brazil‘s environment ministry, which revealed that only 18% of the country‘s recycling is done as part of a formal program, means most recycling is done by catadores.³⁰⁵ For in-stance, in 2008 nearly 92% of aluminium and 80% of cardboard was recycled in the country. When one takes into consideration that only 7% of municipalities had implemented official source-segregation schemes, it becomes clear that it is for the most part the catadores Brazil‘s who are re-sponsible for Brazil‘s high recycling rates.³⁰⁶

Since this thesis is a case study of a landfill site, it seems fitting to look with more detail here at a landfill site in Brazil, which was shut down last year (esp. since CPL also faces closure within the next decade).

The Jardim Gramacho dump, formerly Brazil‘s biggest open-air landfill on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, has been closed in 2012 after 34 years in operation.³⁰⁷ The decision to close Gramacho, which had been postponed several times, came only weeks before the UN conference on the envi-ronment (Rio+20) in June 2012.³⁰⁸ The landfill, whose name means ‗Gramacho Gardens‘, is almost 100 metres high and spreads out across 1.3 million square metres, and was the largest landfill in South America. Since its opening in the late 1970s it has received between 8,000 and 10,000 tons of garbage per day³⁰⁹, which was about 70% of all the trash in the Rio metro area.³¹⁰ In the final years the number has declined to less than 2,000 tons, but at its peak, Jardim Gramacho had enough work for about 5,000 catadores. They were the backbone of the city‘s recycling, looking for cans, plastics,

303 Dias, ‗Statistics on Waste Pickers in Brazil‘, p. 2

304 Marilia Brocchetto and Azadeh Ansari, ‗Landfill‘s closure changing lives in Rio‘, CNN (05.06.2012) URL: http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/05/world/americas/brazil-landfill-closure

Accessed: 27.03.2013

305 Ibid.

306 Dias, ‗Statistics on Waste Pickers in Brazil‘, p. 2

307 Unkown author, ‗Brazil‘s biggest rubbish dump closes in Rio de Janeiro‘, BBC News Latin America & Caribbean (03.06.2012).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-18318714 Accessed: 27.03.2013

308 Ibid.

309 The articles used in this section vary in their statements on the amount of daily rubbish; some state a daily amount of 8,000, others 9,000 or even 10,000 tons.

310 Brocchetto and Ansari, ‗Landfill‘s closure changing lives in Rio‘

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paper and other recyclable materials – and anything else that can be sold to recycling companies – in appalling conditions. The pickers were paid to collect the recyclables and the government estimated that the workers‘ income has supported close to 15,000 residents living near the landfill. During good times the catadores were able to earn up to R$3,000 a month, but have been struggling to make more than R$800 (US$400) a month for the recycled materials they collect at the end³¹¹ (which however is two to three times as much as the skarrelaars earn). The Jardim Gramacho pickers have gained some fame in the media, especially since they were the subject of the Oscar-nominated 2010 documentary

―Waste Land‖, which helped to raise funds for the catadores.³¹²

Despite the improvements in their situation, catadores working on landfills still often have to deal with dangerous conditions and receive little or no benefits. Like their counterparts in other developing countries, pickers at Jardim Gramacho often suffered from diseases such as dengue fever, spread by mosquitoes that breed in the landfill‘s stagnant water, as well as respiratory ailments and infections attributable to rats, birds and other vermin. In addition, medical waste from all the hospitals in the area was dumped at Jardim Gramacho.³¹³

The landfill will be replaced by a modern recycling plant, while the remaining waste goes to other, more modern dumpsites. The greenhouse gases created by the rotting waste will now be turned into fuel. As explained in the previous section, the closing down is good for the environment, but had meant for more than 1,700 people that they needed to look for alternative work opportunities.³¹⁴ Thus the words of Brazilian environment minister Izabella Teixeira that ―Gramacho will become a refer-ence in sustainable development and an example to be followed by other dumps in Brazil‖³¹⁵ has a positive ring for environmentalists, but might threaten the livelihoods of thousands of people. None-theless, it will decrease the pollution in Rio‘s Guanabara Bay, which was also caused by run-off from the piles of waste leaking into the nearby sea³¹⁶ – also an important factor in anticipation of tourists flocking to the beaches during the 2014 football World Sup and the Summer Olympics in 2016. The closing down of Gramacho is part of a continuing effort led by Rio‘s state environment minister to close all of Rio‘s five official open-air landfills (plus the unknown number of clandestine ones) by 2014.³¹⁷

311 Fiona Hurrell, ‗The End of Jardim Gramacho Landfill: Daily‘, The Rio Times online (14.04.2012).

URL: http://riotimesonline.com/brazil-news/rio-politics/the-end-of-jardim-gramacho-landfill-in-rio/#

Accessed: 27.03.2013

312 Brocchetto and Ansari, ‗Landfill‘s closure changing lives in Rio‘

313 Ibid.

314 Unkown author, ‗Brazil‘s biggest rubbish dump closes in Rio de Janeiro‘

315 Ibid.

316 Ibid.

317 Brocchetto and Ansari, ‗Landfill‘s closure changing lives in Rio‘

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And it seems that the waste pickers are not entirely cast aside by the sustainability efforts. At the time of the closure, Rios‘s mayor Eduardo Santos promised those who used to work at the landfill com-pensation of about R$14,000 (US$7,000).³¹⁸ But at the time disputes had already arisen as to how many are eligible. Furthermore, the city promised to pay a scholarship and R$500 for six months to reorganise the pickers.³¹⁹ Moreover, it is intended to spend a part of methane gas sale proceeds on rehabilitation of the drug-infested slums (favelas) that have sprung up around the landfill.³²⁰ How well all these plans can be implemented in the crime, drug and gang ridden areas, is a different mat-ter. Here one can draw parallels to the townships that surround the CPL site, where skarreling seems to be one of the few options left between unemployment, crime and gang life.

When it comes to legislation, recognition, and efforts to organise waste pickers and to improve their situation and livelihood, Brazil holds a vanguard role,³²¹ which is also due to the country‘s long histo-ry of social activism in social life and the strong influence of the Catholic Church on charity and care for the poor. This could explain the highly-developed forms of organisation within the informal waste sector.³²² One could raise the question here why is this not the case in Cape Town or South Africa in general, with a history of anti-apartheid activism and the strong influence of religious leaders.

Moreover, for many years there has been research and activism by NGOs and worker cooperatives on behalf of waste pickers, which led to the official recognition of waste picking in the Brazilian Classi-fication of Occupations (CBO).³²³ However, despite the waste pickers‘ high degree of organisation in formalised cooperatives, these cooperatives are still far from being protected employment for their associates. This brings the GTZ to conclude that waste picking in Brazil today can best be described as semi-formal activity.³²⁴

The level of organising both in India and Brazil is higher than in South Africa, where only very few co-operatives exist. In the selected case study, the skarrelaars are not organised at all and only about half work in groups of two to three pickers. ASMARE (Associação dos Catadores de Papel, Papelão e Material Reaprovitável), formed in 1990 in Belo Horizonte, was the first waste picker organisation in

318 Unkown author, ‗Brazil‘s biggest rubbish dump closes in Rio de Janeiro‘

319 Hurrell, ‗The End of Jardim Gramacho Landfill: Daily‘

320 Unkown author, ‗Brazil‘s biggest rubbish dump closes in Rio de Janeiro‘

321 Dias, ‗Statistics on Waste Pickers in Brazil‘, p. 1

322 Gerdes and Gunsilius, The Waste Experts, p. 12

323 Dias, ‗Statistics on Waste Pickers in Brazil‘, p. 1

324 Gerdes and Gunsilius, The Waste Experts, p. 12        

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Brazil, which was rather late. But since then more than 500 organisations with about 60,000 members have sprung up across Brazil.³²⁵

ASMARE was the product of a ―revolutionary experiment‖ when the new city government wanted to tackle the issue of informal waste picking. After negotiations the city signed an agreement with the activist pickers in 1993, which entailed that it would pay rent and electricity on the waste pickers‘

very own warehouse space, where the waste separation was to take place. In the course of the agree-ment, the city then amended its constitution declaring that collectives should be given priority for the collection of recyclables. ASMARE can be viewed as a success story that began with 20 and has nearly 300 members today.³²⁶ These recycle 500 tons of material a month.³²⁷ The city not only suc-cessfully regulated informal recycling, but also dealt with the social issues of the urban poor, which enabled many catadores to move from the streets into warehouses.³²⁸

In another well-known cooperative called COOPAMARE (Cooperativa de Catadores Autônomos de Papel, Aparas e Materiais Reprovitáveis), founded in São Paulo in 1989, collects and sells about 100 tons of recyclables a month through its 80 members and 200 independent waste pickers. The mem-bers earn $300 a month, which is twice the minimum wage.³²⁹

The benefits of forming cooperatives are not far to seek for waste pickers: apart from better bargain-ing powers and protection, one of the main advantages is to circumvent (at least in part) the exploita-tion by so-called middlemen. It is often these intermediary traders who make the greatest profits, alt-hough the problem seems to be far more prevalent in India than in Brazil. In the South African case study it appears that the local scrap dealers act as middlemen, but do not exploit the skarrelaars, with their profit margins being rather low (see chapter IV).

In any case if waste pickers form collectives instead of selling their recyclables individually, they can combine their collected materials and sell in larger quantities to bigger buyers, which generally brings higher prices (also because fewer middlemen profits have to be sustained). Where waste pickers are paid very low prices, it often is the result of a monopsonistic market (markets where there is only one buyer, as opposed to a monopoly, where there is only one seller). This leaves the door wide open for massive exploitation of the waste pickers. Informal recycling on landfills is particularly susceptible to

325 Deia de Brito, ‗God is My Alarm Clock: A Brazilian Waste Picker‘s Story‘, WIEGO Workers’ Lives, No. 1, 2012, p. 5

326 Ibid., p. 6

327 Medina, ‗The informal recycling sector in developing countries‘, p. 4

328 Sonia Dias, ‗Integrating Informal Workers into Selective Waste Collection: The Case of Belo Horizonte, Brazil‘, WIEGO Policy Brief (Urban Policies), No. 4, 2011, p. 8

329 Medina, ‗The informal recycling sector in developing countries‘, p. 4  

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the development of monopsonistic markets, because of the relative isolation of many dumps, which often makes it almost impossible for waste pickers to transport materials to the nearest town. Award-ing concessions for the recovery of materials is another possible factor for the emergence of monop-sonistic markets.³³⁰

However, even the waste pickers belonging to cooperatives have little financial stability. Even though Brazil was not hit that hard by the global economic crisis, the waste pickers felt the effects. Accord-ing to a study they suffered the sharpest economic decline in the informal sector, because the prices for raw materials kept on falling and with it the waste pickers‘ salaries.³³¹