Curitiba - reycling as a popular and heroic activity

Adapted from an article by Thomas Kamm of the Wall Street Journal (USA), monitored for the Institute by Mrs Cook.

Jaime Lerner, the mayor of Curitiba, a Brazilian city of 1.6 million inhabitants, is trying to invent the city of the future, with efficient bus systems, mobile schools for the poor from converted old buses and two thirds of the city's wastes being recycled.

Lerner favours small-scale, cheap and practical solutions to urban problems. Instead of building costly new recycling plants, for instance, he set out to 'turn each home into a factory', with a determined effort to get households to sort their garbage before putting it out.

'He distributed pictures of children's heroes in return for rubbish'

Instead of a costly advertising drive to promote the plan, Lerner launched the campaign in schools. He sent out people dressed up as trees to make the point that recycling paper could save forests. He distributed pictures of children's heroes in return for the children's turning in non-degradable rubbish like batteries and toothpaste tubes. The efforts turned children into 'secret agents inside each home.'

In slums that dustcarts could not enter, Lerner gave away bags of vegetables, fruits and dairy products or bus vouchers to slum-dwellers in return for their rubbish. In this way he made the city cleaner while also improving nutrition and boosting public transportation.

The city's recycling plant for non-organic rubbish is on the grounds of a foundation for indigents. 'We don't just recycle garbage, we recycle people here,' says Enrique Goldenstein, the foundation's head.

By stressing to the public that the recycling of paper goods saves an estimated 1,200 trees a day, 'we transformed the garbage man into an environmental hero,' says the mayor, who went to work as a dustman to launch the programme.

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