Co-Opting Sustainabilities: The Transformative Politics of Labor and Extended Producer Responsibility Under Brazil’s National Solid Waste Policy

By

Talia Mestel Fox

B.A. in Linguistics Harvard University

Cambridge, Massachusetts (2013)

Submitted to the Department of Urban Studies and Planning in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master in City Planning

at the

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

June 2018

© 2018 Talia Mestel Fox. All Rights Reserved

The author hereby grants to MIT the permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and

electronic copies of the thesis document in whole or in part in any medium now known or hereafter created.

Author________________________________________________________________________ Department of Urban Studies and Planning

May 24, 2018

Certified by____________________________________________________________________ Assistant Professor Gabriella Y. Carolini Department of Urban Studies and Planning Thesis Supervisor

Accepted by___________________________________________________________________ Professor of the Practice, Ceasar McDowell Chair, MCP Committee

Department of Urban Studies and Planning

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Co-Opting Sustainabilities: The Transformative Politics of Labor and Extended Producer Responsibility Under Brazil’s National Solid Waste Policy

By

Talia Mestel Fox

Submitted to the Department of Urban Studies and Planning

on May 24, 2018, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master in City Planning

Abstract Growing levels of global solid waste production implore society to identify the actors responsible for preventing, reducing, and disposing of wasted material in a sustainable manner. Extended producer responsibility (EPR) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) are policy frameworks that hold accountable the manufacturers of goods that create post-consumer waste. National and state governments typically prescribe EPR through market mechanisms, performance standards, and disclosure requirements. CSR relies largely on voluntary programs that international bodies and corporations themselves establish to prevent or remediate socially and environmentally destructive behaviors. Responding to a paucity of research regarding adaptations of EPR to the global South, this thesis traces the origins and outcomes of the 2010 National Solid Waste Policy of Brazil (PNRS), which mandates EPR. I focus on a provision of the PNRS that prescribes CSR in fulfillment of EPR through partnerships between corporations and cooperatives of wastepickers: collectively-organized, self-employed individuals who separate, sort, and sell recyclable materials. Guiding this inquiry is a question regarding the implications of the interactions between the transnational sustainability frameworks of corporations and laborers. Through an analysis of the histories and realities of these interactions, I interrogate the dynamics that shape the structures of CSR programs and their evaluative tools under the PNRS, from the perspective of wastepickers. I assert that these CSR programs, while sources of technical and financial support for wastepickers, by design cannot actualize the concept of EPR because they fail to remunerate wastepickers as market actors. Furthermore, I demonstrate that by controlling the processes that assign and assess responsibility for waste management in Brazil, corporations have co-opted a sustainability discourse of labor that is intended to advance wastepickers’ own fight for fair pay, rights, and recognition.

Key Words Waste management; municipal solid waste; sustainability; extended producer responsibility, Brazil, waste picker; corporate social responsibility, labor, evidence-based policy. Thesis Supervisor: Gabriella Carolini Title: Assistant Professor

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Acknowledgments Quando a gente põe o pé no lixo, a gente não sai nunca mais. “Once we stick a foot in waste, we never leave again.” I am enthusiastically accepting of the fact that this popular saying among Brazilian waste researchers and advocates may in fact apply to me. I never would have stepped into any of this, however, if not for the encouragement and support of the many people mentioned and unmentioned on this page. Thank you: to Gabriella Carolini, an advisor, teacher, and mentor, for your thoughtful and comprehensive guidance, whole-hearted commitment to students’ development, and humanity, which enhances learning by grounding it in the experience of living; to Libby McDonald, for imparting on me your passion for the humans of waste, opening the doors that would lead to this research in the fall of 2016, boldly throwing me into the challenge of fieldwork; and trusting me to navigate my way through the political, social, and linguistic complexities that accompany it; to Sonia Maria Dias and Ana Carolina Ogando, for receiving me in Belo Horizonte and orienting me to the struggles and triumphs of informal economies in Brazil, facilitating crucial conversations, and reminding me to give back to the communities that give to us; to Guilherme Fonseca, for entertaining my many requests to explain the solidarity economy, wastepicker networks, rotating funds, and copious gíria; to the staff of INSEA, for your insights into the role of the advocate researcher in Brazil’s waste system, and for letting me camp out in your offices intermittently; to the staff of Novo Ciclo, for accompanying a person you had never met on long drives to various cities, sharing your honest opinions, and pursuing improvements to lives through your work; to Gina Rizpah Besen, for a single illuminating conversation that helped frame my critique; to the many individuals I spoke with, particularly wastepickers, for sharing your wisdom, time, trust, patience with my Portuguese, and unwavering spirit; to my friends in Belo Horizonte, for welcoming me into your circles and exploring the city with me, and showing me that Brazil could feel like more than a thing that happened to me that one time. to Rosabelli Coelho-Keyssar, for cheerful conversations in Portuguese and the flexibility that enabled me to craft the ideal summer for an indecisive mind; to MISTI Brazil and the PKG Public Service Center, for funding my travel to Brazil; to Kate Mytty and Jenny Hiser, waste gurus and instructors of the fall 2016 iteration of D-Lab Waste, for providing my introduction to the multifaceted world of waste through the eyes of planners and enabling me to connect it to my love for Brazil; to Foster Brown and Vera Reis, for solidifying my love for Brazil, for inviting me into your lives in a remote Amazonian city in the center of the universe in 2013; for building a home that became my sanctuary; for showing me how to confront the jaguars of life; and for preparing me to take care of others; to my fellow DUSPers, for contributing to many transformative and joyful months; to Rebecca Margolies, for your loyalty and wit, and for inspiring me to act on my values; to Tamara Knox, Laura Krull, and Martin the parrot, for creating a “nice soft home with good friends” that rejuvenates, comforts, and lifts me; to my family—Mom, Dad, Leora, Sam, Ari, and Ned, for staying close and carrying me, always; and to Eric Huntley, for a growing list of reasons.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... 2 Key Words ..................................................................................................................................... 2 Acknowledgments ......................................................................................................................... 3 Acronyms ....................................................................................................................................... 6 1. INTRODUCTION: DREAMS, DEMANDS, AND DOUBTS............................................... 9

Multiplicative Sustainabilities ............................................................................................................. 10 Research Goals and Questions ............................................................................................................ 11 Thesis Statement ................................................................................................................................... 12 Organization.......................................................................................................................................... 12 Waste Governance: Who is Responsible? .......................................................................................... 13

Wastepickers ..................................................................................................................................... 13 Municipalities ................................................................................................................................... 15 Corporations ..................................................................................................................................... 16

Case Selection ........................................................................................................................................ 18 Analytical Framework: Transnational Alliances .............................................................................. 18 Methodology .......................................................................................................................................... 20 Limitations ............................................................................................................................................ 23

2. ALLIED SUSTAINABILITIES ............................................................................................ 25 Labor and Sustainability ...................................................................................................................... 26 CSR and Sustainability ........................................................................................................................ 27 Constructed Sustainabilities ................................................................................................................ 30

3. CONTEXT FOR BRAZIL’S WASTE REGIME ................................................................ 33 Transnational Sustainability Movements in Brazil ........................................................................... 34

Labor in Brazil ................................................................................................................................. 34 CSR in Brazil .................................................................................................................................... 36

Waste in Brazil: Wastepickers ............................................................................................................ 38 The National Solid Waste Policy ......................................................................................................... 40 The Packaging Sector Agreement ....................................................................................................... 41

4. PNRS POLITICS AND PRESCRIPTIONS ......................................................................... 46 Lulalaying the Groundwork ................................................................................................................ 47 Improving the Dialogue ........................................................................................................................ 49 Businesses In, Cities Out ...................................................................................................................... 50

Developing the Packaging Sector Agreement ................................................................................ 52 Motivations for Municipal Exclusion ............................................................................................. 54 Bounding What Binds ...................................................................................................................... 56

5. PACKAGING SECTOR AGREEMENT ORIGINS AND OUTCOMES ......................... 60 From Social Responsibility to Reverse Logistics ............................................................................... 60 Sharing, or Shirking, Responsibility? ................................................................................................. 64

Data, Data, Data ............................................................................................................................... 65 Value Deprived, Derived, and Contrived ....................................................................................... 68

In Service of Sustainability? CSR Program Impacts ........................................................................ 71 Danone: Novo Ciclo .............................................................................................................................. 72

Achievements, Aspirations, Allegations ......................................................................................... 74 Experiments, Innovations, and Ideals ................................................................................................. 81

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6. “A LABORATORY OF CONFRONTATION” .................................................................. 85 EPRs…and Are Nots ............................................................................................................................ 85 Co-Opted Sustainabilities .................................................................................................................... 87 Final Thoughts, Further Inquiry ........................................................................................................ 89

Appendix 1: List of Transcribed Interviews (June-July 2017) ............................................... 91 Appendix 2: List of Meetings/Rallies Attended (June-July 2017) .......................................... 92 Appendix 3: List of Novo Ciclo Interviews/Meetings (January 2017) .................................... 93 References .................................................................................................................................... 94

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Acronyms ABIHPEC Associação Brasileira da Indústria de Higiene Pessoal, Perfumaria e Cosméticos (Brazilian Association of Personal Hygiene, Perfumery, and Cosmetics Industries) ABRE Associação Brasileira de Embalagem (Brazilian Packaging Association) ANAP Associação Nacional dos Aparistas de Papel (National Association of Paper Wholesalers) ANCAT Associação Nacional dos Carroceiros e Catadores de Materiais Recicláveis (National Association of Carters and Collectors of Recyclable Material) CBO Classificação Brasileira de Ocupações (Brazilian Occupation Classification) CDM Kyoto Protocol Clean Development Mechanism CEMPRE Compromisso Empresarial para Reciclagem (Corporate Recycling Commitment) CIISC Comitê Interministerial de Inclusão Social de Catadores (Inter-ministerial Committee for Social Inclusion of Wastepickers) CMRR Centro Mineiro de Referência em Resíduos (Reference Center on Solid Waste of Minas Gerais) CNC Confederação Nacional do Comércio de Bens, Serviços e Turismo (National Confederation of the Trades of Goods, Services, and Tourism) CNPJ Cadastro Nacional da Pessoa Jurídica (National Registry of Legal Entities) CPR Collective producer responsibility CSR Corporate social responsibility CUT Central Única dos Trabalhadores (Unified Workers’ Central) DfE Design for environment EJ Environmental justice EU European Union FNRU Fórum Nacional de Reforma Urbana (National Forum for Urban Reform) GRI Global Reporting Initiative GTA Grupo Técnico de Assessoramento (Technical Support Group) HDPE High density polyethylene IBGE Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) IDB Inter-American Development Bank IMF International Monetary Fund INESFA Instituto Nacional das Empresas de Preparação de Sucata Não Ferrosa e de Ferro e Aço (National Institute of Non-Ferrous Scrap and Iron and Steel Processors)

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INSEA Instituto Nenuca de Desenvolvimento Sustentável (Nenuca Institute for Sustainable Development)

IPEA Instituto de Pesquisa Económica Aplicada (Institute of Applied Economic Research)

IPR Individual producer responsibility ISO International Organization for Standardization LDPE Low density polyethylene MBO Membership-based organization (wastepicker cooperatives and associations) MDS Ministério do Desenvolvimento Social e Combate à Fome (Ministry of Social

Development and Fight Against Hunger) MISTI Massachusetts Institute of Technology International Science and Technology

Initiatives MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology MMA Ministério do Meio Ambiente (Ministry of Environment) MNC Multinational corporation MNCR Movimento Nacional dos Catadores e Catadoras de Materiais Recicláveis

(National Movement of Collectors of Recyclable Material) MNRU Movimento Nacional de Reforma Urbana (National Movement for Urban

Reform) MPF Ministério Público Federal (Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office) MPFSP Ministério Público do Estado de São Paulo (Public Prosecutor’s Office of the

State of São Paulo) MST Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (Landless Rural Workers’

Movement) MSW Municipal solid waste MTE Ministério do Trabalho e Emprego (Ministry of Work and Employment) NGO Non-governmental organization OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development OPNRS Observatório da Política Nacional de Resíduos Sólidos (Observatory of the

National Solid Waste Policy) ORIS Observatório da Reciclagem Inclusiva e Solidária (Observatory for Inclusive

Solidary Recycling) PP Polypropylene PS Polystyrene PVC Polyvinyl chloride PET Polyethylene terephthalate

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PKG MIT Priscilla King Gray Public Service Center PNRS Política Nacional de Resíduos Sólidos (National Solid Waste Policy) PPP Public private partnership PSDB Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira (Brazilian Social Democracy Party) PT Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party) SENAES Secretaria Nacional de Economia Solidária (Secretariat of Solidarity Economy) SINIR Sistema Nacional de Informações Sobre a Gestão dos Resíduos Sólidos (National Information System for Waste Management) SLU Superintendência de Limpeza Urbana (Superintendency of Urban Cleaning of

Belo Horizonte) TSMO Transnational social movement organization UN United Nations UNICEF United Nations Children's Fund WIEGO Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing WSF World Social Forum

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1. INTRODUCTION: DREAMS, DEMANDS, AND DOUBTS

In 2003, newly elected President of Brazil, Luis Inácio Lula da Silva (“Lula”), celebrated

Christmas with wastepickers of the Baixada do Glicério neighborhood, historically home to the

working poor and homeless populations of São Paulo. The festivities were imbued with

expectation. The symbolic and commemorative gesture, to which Lula would commit each of the

eight Christmases of his presidency, was a deliberate nod to the laborers who had carried him

and the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party, PT) to power. Lula had made promises,

specifically to leadership of the National Commission of the Movimento Nacional dos Catadores

e Catadoras de Materiais Recicláveis (National Movement of Collectors of Recyclable Material,

MNCR), that could provide continuity to the wastepickers’ decades-long fight for basic rights,

recognition, and political representation.

“The National Commission cannot go easy on us,” he said. “You have to hold the government

accountable, because if not, it will put things off and put things off…you need to hold it

accountable, so that we can do that which is the dream and great demand of yours” (MNCR

2011).

Nearly 14 years later, with their most powerful advocate sentenced to ten years in prison for

presumed money laundering involving multinational corporate actors (Londoño 2017), Brazil’s

wastepickers are still fighting.

***

I did not fully understand the relevance of these histories when I arrived in São Paulo in January

of 2017, funded by multinational corporation (MNC) Danone to research a potential mobile

phone application to improve communication among wastepicker cooperatives and associations

in the southeastern states of Brazil. Overwhelmed with the deluge of new waste-related concepts

and vocabulary that dozens of wastepickers and Danone staff generously shared, I fumbled my

way through hours of interviews in rusty Portuguese. Among the conversations and questions

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about recycling operations, cooperative structures, collection routes, finances, and technologies, I

found myself questioning the circumstances of my visit.

I knew that corporate social responsibility (CSR) could encourage private actors to channel the

rhetoric, if not the action, of other movements that unite social, economic, and environmental

causes under the sustainability umbrella. The result of environmental sustainability as a

component of CSR can be a phenomenon popularly referred to as “greenwash” (Tokar 1997).

Under this framework, corporations make amends for harmful actions with commitments to

“sustainable jobs,” resource conservation, and proper waste treatment and disposal (Aluchna

2017), without fundamentally altering destructive business models or reaching supposed

beneficiaries (Ashman 2001). In the context of waste, these grievances feel particularly

hypocritical: the occupational health and safety concerns associated with factory effluents, waste

disposal, and facilities siting are central to the histories of the labor and environmental justice

(EJ) movements (Obach 2004; Bullard 2007).

It was from these perspectives that I doubted the motivations of corporate entities working with

wastepickers in Brazil. Not only did Danone’s efforts transcend the typical CSR program, they

also seemed to be supporting wastepickers, effectively preserving their autonomy. So why was a

multinational like Danone bothering to strengthen networks of waste laborers in Brazil?

Wastepickers finally had a seat at the table, but from where they were sitting, what was in it for

the corporations?

Multiplicative Sustainabilities

The proliferation of the concept of global sustainability provokes shifting responsibilities for the

natural, social, and built environments. In the past three decades, the practice and performance of

sustainability has evolved from “[meeting] the needs of the present without compromising the

ability of future generations to meet their own needs (WCED 1987, l. 27)” to implicate new

actions, actors, and sectors. Indeed, the community to which those needs and those generations

belong can vastly change what sustainability means. Because they explicitly invoke

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environment, economy, and civil society (Munasinghe 1993), sustainability efforts provide space

for alliance-building among seemingly disparate movements. These alliances, in turn, may grant

leverage to transnational movements working to build momentum toward place-based political

or social goals (Smith and Bandy 2005).

In Brazil, for example, the PT’s rise followed the party’s successful embrace of both its labor

origins and businesses’ inclinations toward socially and environmentally sustainable practices at

the end of the 20th century (Peña and Davies 2014). This strategy permeated Lula’s programs

and policies, including Brazil’s 2010 Política Nacional de Resíduos Sólidos (National Solid

Waste Policy, PNRS). The PNRS demands that all members of society—corporations,

consumers, government officials, and waste workers alike—contribute to waste management, a

burden that historically has not been shared equally. Because of a decades-long history of power

shifts on Brazil’s political stage, the country’s approach to waste management is an opportunity

to interrogate the provisions of the PNRS that attempt to redistribute these burdens.

I offer labor’s account of Brazil’s ongoing attempts to hold corporations responsible for the

disposal of post-consumer waste from their products and packaging. The argument that

simultaneously guides and has emerged from this narrative is a product of my journey to

understand wastepickers’ experience of the policy processes and sustainability programs

designed to support them.

Research Goals and Questions The goal of this inquiry is therefore to represent wastepickers’ perspectives on the

implementation of participatory mechanisms embedded within the provision of the PNRS that

mandates a sustainability concept known as extended producer responsibility (EPR). These

mechanisms include the bidding and negotiations processes surrounding an agreement among

corporate producers of disposable packaging, and those corporations’ subsequent adaptation of

CSR programs in order to fulfill EPR. While these CSR programs provide significant benefits to

wastepickers, the programs also benefit the corporations that designed them, necessarily so.

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In the context of these processes, laborers and corporations represent transnational movements

that have organized historically around conceptions of sustainability in order to achieve

particular goals. My research questions evolved, along with my understanding of the complexity

of the interactions between these movements that the PNRS provokes. The following questions

ultimately guided my narrative and critique:

• Under what conditions does the grounded interaction of transnational movements enable

these movements to leverage particular sustainability frameworks?

• Where this leveraging occurs, whose framework legislates sustainability in practice—that

of labor, or that of corporations—and what are the consequences for the labor movement,

specifically, with regard to achievement of its goals?

Thesis Statement

I argue that, from the perspective of wastepickers, the participatory mechanisms that the PNRS

prescribes have enabled corporations to co-opt and benefit from the sustainability framework that

the labor movement itself has constructed for decades. I contend that this co-optation weakens

wastepickers’ efforts, both to earn fair compensation for their work, and to hold corporations and

government accountable through democratic processes.

Organization

In the remaining pages of this introduction, I review the relevant sectors historically responsible

for waste production, disposal, and reuse. I expand upon the importance of my inquiry for its

illumination of Brazil as a case study in the adaptation of EPR to the global South. I then discuss

my analytical framework, methodology, and limitations.

In Chapter Two, I expand upon the motivations for alliances that the CSR and labor movements

forge with one another and with the environmental movement. I also explore the construction of

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sustainability and other transnational movement frameworks. In Chapter Three, I situate the

discussion of alliance-building within the volatile politics of 20th century Brazil. Chapter Four

introduces the PNRS in the context of Brazil’s waste management history. Finally, in Chapters

Five and Six, I offer an analysis and a critique of the development of the PNRS and resulting

processes, concluding with opportunities for further inquiry.

Waste Governance: Who is Responsible?1

The following groups feature prominently in this research’s exploration of the PNRS and its

associated regulatory processes: wastepickers, municipalities, and corporations.

Wastepickers

Wastepickers assume primary responsibility for the recycling of valuable material streams in

many cities around the world, although they are not often acknowledged or compensated for

their work (Dias and Samson 2016). An estimated 80% of waste workers are categorized as

“informal,” or unregulated (International Labour Office 2013). While these waste workers are

the same protagonists I will reference continually, I will not necessarily refer to wastepickers

representing the informal sector. The activities of wastepickers, particularly those interacting

with corporations under the PNRS in Brazil, often blur the formal-informal dichotomy. For the

purposes of this research, I use a definition of wastepickers that encompasses both formal and

informal: self-employed individuals who, through the collection, sorting, resale, and repurposing

of discarded materials, earn an income while contributing to local economies and reducing solid

waste. Additional benefits to society include improved sanitation and public health and reduced

costs to municipalities through diversion of large quantities of materials (WIEGO 2013).

In recent years, wastepickers have achieved rights through self-organization, activism, and

lobbying for regulatory change (WIEGO 2011a). The global community of wastepickers,

1 This chapter adapts sections of a final paper submitted by the author for course 11.475, Navigating the Politics of Water and Sanitation Planning, in the spring of 2017 in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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however, still suffers from a lack of resources and infrastructure to agglomerate and handle

waste collection and sorting; occupational health risks; limited to no access to the market value

of materials; dependence on middlemen or intermediaries who take advantage of information

asymmetries to earn higher profits; and social stigma, among other challenges (Wilson, Velis,

and Cheeseman 2006). Because wastepickers earn incomes in most places from the daily sale of

materials, for example, fluctuating material markets (see Table 1.1) and availability of material

streams directly impact the liquid capital available to them for basic living expenses.

Table 1.1. Sale prices by material in Brazilian real per kilogram (R$/kg) in 2006 Material Min. Price (R$/kg) Max. Price (R$/kg) Avg. Price (R$/kg) Std. Dev.

Glass 0.03 0.46 0.10 0.12

Iron & Steel 0.07 0.93 0.20 0.19

Aluminum 1.70 4.45 2.93 0.59

Non-ferrous metals 2.57 8.00 5.02 1.97

Paper & Cardboard 0.13 0.31 0.20 0.05

White paper 0.15 0.50 0.33 0.10

Mixed paper 0.05 0.30 0.12 0.07

Cardboard 0.10 0.36 0.21 0.06

Newspaper 0.05 0.30 0.11 0.06

Plastic 0.28 1.09 0.60 0.21

PET 0.35 1.15 0.83 0.24

HDPE 0.25 1.15 0.66 0.27

LDPE 0.25 1.15 0.54 0.22

PP 0.05 1.30 0.53 0.30

PS 0.07 1.30 0.62 0.41

PVC 0.20 1.60 0.58 0.44

Mixed paper 0.05 0.60 0.36 0.16

Tetrapak 0.08 0.23 0.14 0.05

Adapted by author from Table 23 of (DIRUR 2010). In May 2018, 1R=0.27 US dollars.

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Glass, for example, an abundant product that at once is bulky and dangerous to process and

offers relatively few economic and environmental benefits, has low market value compared to

materials like aluminum (S.P. Silva, Goes, and Alvarez 2013). Within the categories of plastics

and paper, a variety of sub-categories of material results in a wide range of prices (DIRUR

2010).

Furthermore, many policies are designed explicitly to eliminate unregulated or arguably

illegitimate actions in waste management, barring wastepickers’ access to materials or waste

collection facilities, with the justification that informality is counterproductive to the

modernization and job potential of waste systems. Wilson et al. argue that such policies attack

systems that can in fact be quite efficient and provide the sole means of subsistence for

populations that the formal sector excludes, including individuals with physical disabilities or

little to no education. These marginalized actors seize the opportunity to invent alternative

systems for waste collection and recycling, often because publicly-funded municipal solid waste

(MSW) management systems, developed in the urban hubs of the industrial revolution, may fall

short in emerging economies (Wilson, Velis, and Cheeseman 2006).

Municipalities

Municipal-scale, organized infrastructure for waste removal (as it is commonly understood

today) arose in response to concerns around health and sanitation in mid-late 19th century

industrial cities (Louis 2004). Municipalities introduced water provision, sanitation services, and

later, refuse collection, either directly or through contracts with private entities. The expectation

of public sector responsibility for waste management has persisted in many cities for the last

century, with varying degrees of private sector involvement.

With the proliferation of disposable containers and packages in the mid-to-late 20th century, the

burden on municipalities and taxpayers for removing waste from mass consumption increased

dramatically. While cities faced costs for waste disposal of approximately 300 million dollars per

year in 1940, by 1960, that statistic had increased to one billion dollars, and by 1980, four billion

dollars (Melosi 1981). The influx of paper, plastics, and other synthetic goods during this time

exemplifies the dynamic nature of waste stream composition. Since the 1970s, however, this

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influx has also provoked questions of responsibility for the final disposal of materials derived

from commercial products.

Today, many cities have instituted recycling programs in response to the changing makeup of

waste, requiring source-separation by the residential sector. Some of these programs, however,

are the result of corporate lobbyists’ efforts to oppose regulations that more directly target the

original source of these products (MacBride 2012): the corporations themselves.

Corporations

Corporate waste consciousness generally concerns resource conservation. Several practices on

the part of companies may contribute to waste-related CSR efforts, but I choose to focus on EPR,

also referred to as end-of-life management or product stewardship, because of its direct relevance

to my analysis. EPR addresses the post-consumer waste stemming from the production and sale

of manufactured goods (OECD 2001). EPR attributes responsibility for the final disposal of

packaging and other discarded materials to the manufacturer, rather than to the consumers that

purchase products or to the municipalities that collect those products through organized waste

management systems (and the taxpayers that finance them). This idea echoes the concept of

cradle to grave product management, often part of a circular or closed-loop economy model that

promotes reuse and recycling (Geissdoerfer et al. 2017).

Various implementation structures for EPR exist (see Box 1.1). Some invoke responsibility

through end-of-life management funds to which manufacturers and producers contribute, while

others require product takeback by individual manufacturers (Kaffine and O’Reilly 2013). As

such, the literature distinguishes between individual producer responsibility (IPR) and collective

producer responsibility (CPR) schemes (OECD 2015). In the first case, single producers must

meet certain quotas or are charged fees to encourage closed-loop production and vertical

integration. In the second case, producers within a single industry respond to take-back

requirements by establishing or contracting producer responsibility organizations (PROs). PROs

coordinate the logistics of meeting the collective quotas of the producers that contract them, as

well as all communication with the various entities involved in recycling processes for a

particular product or group of products (Mayers and Butler 2013).

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The majority of EPR policies and schemes address end-of-life procedures for electronic waste

and automobiles, largely in North America and the European Union (EU) (OECD 2016). These

policies have been criticized for failing to promote behavior change, allowing companies instead

to support existing systems for recycling (Lifset, Atasu, and Tojo 2013; OECD 2004).

Furthermore, translating EPR policies that evolved in developed economies to the developing

context, where waste systems may differ significantly, presents significant socio-cultural,

political, and economic challenges (Tong and Yan 2013).

Indeed, given that the basis for EPR policies is those established in the EU and other OECD

nations, simply replicating policies may not be appropriate for distinct contexts (Demajorovic et

al. 2014). EPR policies see more involvement from larger companies, which suggests that EPR

may work to the disadvantage of smaller companies unable to handle the costs (Neto and Van

Wassenhove 2013). Finally, EPR policies may not in fact be necessary in countries where the

value of waste is already captured by unregulated players like “backyard recyclers” in India

(Manomaivibool 2009).

Box 1.1. EPR Categories The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD’s) Extended Producer Responsibility: Updated Guidance for Efficient Waste Management report identifies four main categories of EPR policies:

1. product take-back requirements: collection quotas for producers, often achieved through consumer product return at designated recycling stations;

2. economic and market-based instruments: a range of taxes, fees, subsidies, refunds, and other monetary incentives levied on consumers or on producers to encourage the reuse of post-consumer materials over virgin materials in the design and production phases;

3. regulations and performance standards: mandated industry or jurisdiction-level targets related to the materials used in production, like “minimum recycled content”; and

4. information-based instruments: public disclosure or transparency requirements regarding manufacturing processes or product components, often achieved through labels or other education campaigns.

These policies are not mutually exclusive; in combination, in fact, they can provide further incentives for more efficient and less wasteful product design (referred to as design for environment, or DfE), resource conservation, and more equitably distributed disposal costs, in addition to other environmental, social, and economic benefits (OECD 2016).

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Examples of collaboration between private and unregulated actors do exist, notably in Colombia,

where private companies have organized to form a nonprofit membership organization that

works to promote more socially responsible recycling practices (WIEGO 2016). These channels

of collaboration are seldom made explicit in the EPR laws themselves.

Case Selection

The PNRS contains an EPR provision that not only recognizes the role of wastepickers and

wastepicker cooperatives; it also requires corporations to engage with their existing efforts to

collect, sort, and sell recyclable material. This framework for EPR under the PNRS is the product

of political and historical conditions in Brazil that have reinforced a dynamic political economy

fluctuating between elite and popular control of policy development and implementation. By

exploring the individual and organizational alliances that shaped the law, I respond to the paucity

of research on models for adapting EPR to non-OECD countries.

I present a narrative of the formation of the PNRS and its resulting policy processes through the

eyes of the actors involved, with the goal of understanding the consequences of the ways in

which their conceptualizations of sustainability ascribe roles and responsibilities. I focused my

study in the city of Belo Horizonte, capital of the state of Minas Gerais, because of its historic

recognition of wastepickers through policy mechanisms that provide technical and financial

support, upon which I elaborate in Chapter 3. First, I introduce the theoretical lenses that inform

this narrative.

Analytical Framework: Transnational Alliances

Through the introduction of shared responsibility for waste management, the PNRS provokes

interactions among political, corporate, and popular groups. These groups’ development of

sustainability frameworks reproduces a phenomenon of national and transnational movement-

building at the intersection of social causes (Smith and Bandy 2005).

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International environmental governance bodies, policy-makers, and scholars promote the green

economy concept, for example, emphasizing the economic pillar of sustainable development in

order to respond to the presumed economy-environment dichotomy2 in a post-recession world

(Ehresman and Okereke 2015; Geissdoerfer et al. 2017). Another example, the circular economy

framework for sustainability, emphasizes natural resource conservation by questioning the

traditionally linear model of consumption (Geissdoerfer et al. 2017). Both of these sustainability

concepts also address the labor movement’s concern for occupational health and safety, fair pay,

and inclusion (Obach 2004).

In specific instances, the labor movement’s own uptake of environmental issues has allowed it to

forge partnerships with major international environmental non-governmental organizations

(NGOs) via alliances with the EJ movement (itself the union of six separate social movements),

which explicitly confronts the systemic discrimination that causes low-income and minority

populations to bear the burden of environmental harms (Faber 2005). Having undergone a related

awakening, the environmental movement has become more anthropocentric, as concepts like just

sustainability introduce equity more explicitly into environmental concerns (Agyeman and Evans

2004) and conversations around resilience reference the disproportionate impacts of climate

change (Schlosberg and Collins 2014).

For the CSR movement, motivations for assuming a sustainable approach to business include the

desire to comply with international standards, avoid legal liability for accidents, appease

shareholders, and reduce costs (Berry and Rondinelli 1998). A mere discourse of sustainability,

on the other hand, can allow businesses simply to appear compliant, achieving the desired

outcomes while avoiding the associated efforts (Tokar 1997). Whether or not sustainability is a

legitimate goal, these examples demonstrate that many strategic reasons exist for movements to

craft their own versions of sustainability with both distinct and shared elements.

I am most interested in theories that suggest that under specific political, social, and economic

conditions in the global South, the definitions of sustainability that these movements create

2 In his 1996 work Beyond Growth, Daly contests the idea that environmental protection threatens economic growth (Daly 1996).

20

position them on opposite sides of a power struggle. Faber, for example, asserts that

sustainability offers an additional avenue for organized labor to oppose corporate employers that

exploit a discourse they do not act on (Faber 2005). Cole contends that corporations’ blurring of

sustainability and CSR programs under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism

(CDM) threatens civil society’s initial goals to hold corporations accountable for their

environmentally and socially damaging behavior (Cole 2012).

These ideas echo concerns regarding the privatization of waste and sanitation systems in the

global South. Critics assert that the financialization of these systems through international

lenders and contracts with MNCs does not fix problems of service provision; rather, it distracts

from the underlying issues that lead to poor service provision in the first place: lack of political

will, corruption, and dismissal of small-scale service providers (Budds and McGranahan 2003).

Local, participatory solutions to infrastructure funding in the global South may be little more

than “balm-like reforms” in the face of national policy (Carolini 2017), though we can

simultaneously acknowledge their transformational capacity. To Carolini’s suggestion, we

should “examine how national economic and local political ‘development’ rationales interact on

the ground” (Carolini 2017, 131) to understand further why attempts at inclusive sustainable

development are not bearing the fruits we expect.

The case I explore in Brazil presents an opportunity to draw insights from the intersection of the

two movements, scales (local, national, and global), and various theories in question, in the face

of an ambitious and contested policy process that attempts at once to address environmental

problems, corporate responsibility, equity and labor issues, and waste management funding.

Methodology

This thesis focuses on the implementation of the PNRS in a particular moment in time—2012

through 2017—while placing the law in the context of Brazil’s political history. I use a single-

unit case study approach, the unit being the EPR provision within the PNRS, which I understand

to be one of a larger class of EPR policies. The rationale for the single-unit case study approach

21

is its usefulness for achieving analytical depth, identifying causal mechanisms, and constructing

theories in order to fill gaps in existing research (Gerring 2004; Eisenhardt and Graebner 2007).

The qualitative methods I employ are grounded in an idea of meaning-making that falls slightly

left of center on the spectrum of subjective to objective ontologies. I take a view of the world in

which “knowledge, understanding, and explanations of social affairs must take account of how

social order is fashioned by human beings in ways that are meaningful to them,” (Morgan and

Smircich 1980). Simultaneously, I acknowledge the existence of “rule-like activities” and “rule-

like actions” that operate according to patterns that individuals and groups define (Morgan and

Smircich 1980, 494). Therefore, while I considered incorporating quantitative analysis into my

research to assess the impacts of particular CSR programs, I remained skeptical, not of the ability

of data itself to represent a reality, but rather of the potential for the actors defining what counts

as evidence to confound my conclusions in this particular circumstance. Fittingly, this thesis

demonstrates the dangers of relying too heavily on a particular type of data as an objective means

of measuring outcomes in the context of a policy.

Intuition, prior experience working and living in Brazil, and discussions with colleagues in the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Department of Urban Studies and Planning and

MIT D-Lab encouraged me to adopt techniques that Leech borrows from the fields of

anthropology and journalism (Leech 2002). Under this framework, the researcher builds a

rapport with the interviewee, intentionally ordering a mix of narrow to general “grand tour”

(Spradley 1979) questions. Upon gaining a basic understanding of an interviewee’s positions,

where appropriate, I introduced arguably presumptive questions, framed cautiously and

deliberately in ways that reflected my own opinions and curiosities. Despite claims that these

types of questions draw out false perspectives, these questions may not be categorically

problematic; the acknowledgment of my own positionality facilitates an approach in which the

individuals with whom I am conversing are free to entertain opinions and doubts regarding the

nature of my interest in the information they are providing (Pawson 1996).

The primary sources for my research were 16 semi-structured interviews with representatives of

wastepicker cooperatives and associations, municipal and state government, industry, academia,

22

private foundations, and nonprofits involved in work related to waste during seven weeks in June

and July of 2017 (see Appendix 1 for a complete list of locations and dates). I observed

participants of several meetings and events (see Appendix 2), and had follow-up conversations

and email exchanges with researchers closely following the process, particularly members of the

Observatory of the PNRS (OPNRS) and the Observatory for Inclusive Solidary Recycling

(ORIS), based in São Paulo and Belo Horizonte, Brazil, respectively.

The majority of interviews occurred in the city of Belo Horizonte, with the exception of four

interviews I conducted through Skype or WhatsApp with individuals residing in the cities of

Poços de Caldas, São Paulo, and Porto Alegre. The MIT International Science and Technology

Initiatives (MISTI) Brazil program funded my travel to Belo Horizonte for an internship with the

nonprofit Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO), whose staff

helped to connect me with potential interviewees. Due to initially limited access to experts on the

somewhat controversial topic of the PNRS’s EPR processes, as well as concerns around trust that

socially vulnerable populations like wastepickers may have toward outsiders, I largely took a

snowball approach to selecting interviewees (Atkinson and Flint 2001).

I asked consent to record conversations, take handwritten notes of individual conversations, and

reference interviewees in my written product. I do not identify interviewees by name in this

document, rather referring to them by their sector or assigned number. I conducted interviews

primarily in Portuguese. I used the transcription services of Chico Araujo, after which point I

interpreted the Portuguese transcripts. During my analysis stage, I identified themes into which I

slotted conversation segments and triangulated interviews with literature, reports, and news

articles and other popular sources.

Importantly, my first foray into waste-related CSR projects in Brazil was through work I

performed with Danone. Through an initiative out of the Inclusive Recycling Working Group at

MIT D-Lab, I became involved with a project to assess the potential efficacy of a mobile

application to aid networks of wastepicker cooperatives. I traveled to Brazil for approximately

three weeks in January of 2017 for this purpose, funded by Danone and MIT’s Priscilla King

Gray (PKG) Public Service Center. During this trip, I interviewed 34 members and leaders of

23

eight wastepicker cooperatives and associations in southeast Brazil (see Appendix 3). These

visits provided me with a crucial understanding of waste systems in Brazil, wastepicker

cooperative and association functions and leadership, and challenges and successes within the

wastepicker community. The cooperatives I visited were all current or prospective participants of

Danone’s Novo Ciclo program, which addresses Brazil’s PNRS. My visits lent me insight into

the scope of the project and relationships between project staff and wastepickers. Importantly,

they provided a crucial grounding for the fieldwork I would perform the following summer for

my thesis research.

Limitations It helps me to think of this thesis as a section, if a section of a process were possible. Just as I

might choose to take a section that best represents a unique geography, neighborhood, or street, I

carefully chose the particular site, angle, and length of this section in order to represent the

perspective of organized wastepickers. To that end, while this document captures perspectives of

many actors involved—nonprofits, corporations, academics, government officials, wastepickers,

and others—my data primarily reflect wastepickers’ understanding of the situation, rather than

corporations’. I did not speak with a wide range of corporate actors and government officials

involved at higher levels of negotiations, although I did speak to several leaders of the MNCR

involved in those same negotiations. On a related note, the wastepickers I interviewed in June

and July of 2017 are all active leaders of the MNCR, who spend less time sorting and processing

recyclables than many of the wastepickers I interviewed in January.

I purposefully do not cite interviews that I conducted while working with Danone and partners in

January, however, for two reasons. The first is the uncomfortable nature of a research inquiry

that adopts a critical perspective on the company that directly supported its origins. Components

of this thesis, in particular those that discuss the impact of the Novo Ciclo program, necessarily

channel information I gathered during this time period. Moreover, having established

relationships and formed a mental picture of the landscape, I was able to ask more targeted

questions and access key interviewees upon my return to Brazil during the summer.

24

The second is the recognition of my own positionality as a result of time conducting research

with Danone in January. Novo Ciclo was my first introduction to CSR programs under the

PNRS. Danone controlled my itinerary—the cities and cooperatives I visited and, to an extent,

the individuals I consulted. The interviewees understood that despite being introduced as an

independent student researcher from MIT, I was affiliated with Danone. Because the information

I accumulated during this time was orchestrated, I acknowledge its potential to impact the results

of this thesis.

Importantly, while my command of Portuguese is near fluent, having spent over a year living and

doing research in Brazil for prior academic and professional pursuits (operating entirely in

Portuguese after studying intensively), Portuguese is not my native language. I acknowledge that

I may have misinterpreted interviewees’ words on occasion. I have done my best to represent

them accurately and confirm with English-speaking Brazilians familiar with the PNRS

proceedings, where possible.

I wish also to recognize the limitations of perspective that accompany a literature review

comprising largely native English speakers, Western thought-leaders, and male voices (Mott and

Cockayne 2017). I endeavored to achieve a more balanced representation of women and Latin

American researchers, as well as scholars from the global South whose valuable academic work

often goes uncited.

A final thought for my readers: While I remain critical of CSR efforts in Brazil and elsewhere,

the goal of this research is not to vilify private actors working to implement the PNRS. I

recognize that this work is young, messy, and courageous. Rather, in light of global solid waste

production approaching 2.2 billion metric tons by 2025 (Bhada-Tata and Hoornweg 2012), I

hope to inform and to improve future iterations of these process in Brazil; to encourage context-

appropriate adaptations of waste management policies, particularly in the global South; and to

push society to illuminate, unpack, and confront the formidable struggle that is identifying the

actors responsible for preventing, transporting, financing, and disposing of waste.

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2. ALLIED SUSTAINABILITIES

The formation of alliances within and among related causes is well documented in the literature

on global change-making and social mobilization (Khagram, Riker, and Sikkink 2002; Keck and

Sikkink 1998; Smith, Chatfield, and Pagnucco 1997). Alliances emerge in the form of networks,

coalitions, and movements—in order of increasing degrees of formality, organization, and

temporal duration—to unite actors at local, national, and international levels toward a common

goal (Smith and Bandy 2005). Transnational social movement organizations (TSMOs) are

entities that emerge out of the network and coalition-building processes to further campaigns or

change processes across political borders (Smith and Bandy 2005). TSMOs can promote

improved transparency of private or public decision-making processes or provoke governments

to take action on social issues (Smith, Pagnucco, and Chatfield 1997).

Environmental TSMOs in particular have helped to introduce issues like climate change and

biodiversity on national and international agendas through organized participation in conferences

or in the construction of formal commitments (Smith 1997). With the support of advocates and

social groups that TSMOs often comprise, transnational rule-making bodies hold their

subscribers to sustainability commitments, like the Global Reporting Initiative’s (GRI’s)

Sustainability Reporting Guidelines or the Forest Stewardship Council’s certification process

(Dingwerth and Pattberg 2009). A survey by researchers Smith and Bandy demonstrates that

between 1973 and 2000, environmentally-related TSMOs actually grew in popularity relative to

other kinds of TSMOs, especially in the 1980s, second only to human rights TSMOs (Smith and

Bandy 2005).

Over the three decades of the researchers’ study, TSMOs were also increasingly likely to involve

multiple issues, in recognition of the fact that framing issues through alliances is an increasingly

important means of fueling a movement’s evolution (Smith and Bandy 2005). TSMOs can serve

to build consensus around the nature of an issue and strategies to confront it (Smith, Pagnucco,

and Chatfield 1997). For this reason, of interest to researchers are alliances that form across

movements with histories of difference or antagonism, such as the labor and environmental

26

movements (Waterman 2005) or the corporate and civic globalization movements, the union of

which produced the World Social Forum (WSF) (Peña and Davies 2014).

This chapter explores why and how the labor and CSR movements have sought alliances to craft

sustainability frameworks. In addition to understanding the substantive benefits directly related

to stated goals, I investigate the indirect benefits to entities (public and private) that adopt

sustainability and other frameworks.

Labor and Sustainability Legitimate reasons exist for labor to share the traditional concerns of the environmental

movement. Deforestation or loss of biodiversity can threaten an industry resource base (Keck

1995), while pollution from production facilities directly impacts the well-being of employees

(Obach 2004). I am more interested, however, in what motivates organized labor to adopt

sustainability for strategic purposes, in light of research suggesting that policies protecting the

environment can threaten industrial workers’ jobs or wage rates (Obach 2004, chap. 2).

Alliances may allow organized labor to access processes that directly address its environmental

concerns. The “green jobs” agenda, for example, brings workers into dialogue with prominent

organizations and international bodies discussing climate change, resilience, and improved

resource management (Ehresman and Okereke 2015; International Labour Office 2013). The EJ

movement, whose origins link it directly to labor,3 aspires to unlock participatory channels for

low-income and minority communities that have fewer resources to prevent environmental

harms via political processes (Agyeman and Evans 2004). Reframing labor issues through

environmental alliances can also facilitate the legitimacy, visibility, and financial sustainability

of a political or social campaign. The Brazilian rubber tappers’ movement of the 1980s (Keck

1995) and the anti-oil and indigenous lands movements in Ecuador in the 1990s (Sawyer 2004)

3 Daniel Faber explains that the EJ movement arose out of the intersection of six separate movements: civil rights; occupational health and safety; indigenous lands; environmental health; community-based, social and economic justice; and human rights (Faber 2005).

27

both capitalized on connections to international environmental NGOs based in Washington, DC,

galvanizing swaths of donors at once to support labor and indigenous rights and conserve the

Amazon rainforest.

The positioning of the EJ movement in the global South may encourage its labor constituents to

solicit the support of more “traditional environmental organizations” when faced with lack of

resources and capacity, more so than in the global North (Faber 2005, 50). While EJ in the North

grew out of fights against illegal dumping of toxic waste in African American communities in

the US (Bullard 2007), in the global South, EJ issues converge around exploitation of the

working class in post-socialist regimes (Faber 2005, 46). Because, Faber explains, the EJ

movement in the global South emphasizes class more than race, the labor movement in the

global South is more likely to leverage connections with sustainability than its counterparts in the

global North. These connections facilitate an opposition to socially and environmentally harmful

corporate activities. Indeed, the labor movement and its environmental allies are often those

prompting corporate entities to adopt the more stringent labor and environmental standards that

are the basis of CSR and corporate sustainability programs (Georgallis 2017).

CSR and Sustainability CSR responds to the profit-maximizing actions of MNCs that may be detrimental to employees,

consumers, and the environment. Carroll’s corporate social performance model traces the origins

of CSR back to thinkers and businessmen in the 1950s and 1960s, who debated the reach and

merits of social responsibility (Carroll 1979). In Carroll’s framework, businesses have, in order

of priority, economic, legal, ethical, and discretionary (voluntary) social responsibilities. These

responsibilities ground a range of responses to fluctuating topical concerns, like occupational

health and safety, environment, and discrimination.

Serious calls for corporations to take responsibility for destructive behaviors arose in the final

decades of the 20th century, as publicity around environmental accidents and abuses of power

informed the growing global conscience for threats like climate change, displacement, and

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human rights violations (Idowu and Leal Filho 2009). Incentives for corporations to adopt CSR

initiatives include adherence to global principles, national laws, or voluntary standards (Aluchna

2017), as well as competitive advantage, societal expectations, and shareholder and investor

demands (Collier and Wanderley 2005).

Assuming a profit-driven business model, corporations will adopt CSR only if it carries a

financial incentive.4 Orlitzky et al. analyze 30 years of accumulated research on CSR and

corporate financial performance, concluding that the two are positively correlated (Orlitzky,

Schmidt, and Rynes 2003). The analysis distinguishes between the effects of improvements to

internal processes as a result of CSR programs, versus external perceptions of the company,

determining that perception of CSR leads to greater financial gains than process improvements.

Hill confirms that companies that are socially responsible (based on socially responsible mutual

fund holdings) are more attractive to investors in North America and Europe, particularly over

longer time horizons (Hill et al. 2007).

Environmental sustainability in the context of CSR could refer to efforts to minimize the use of

raw materials and the production of pollution, promote environmental education, or project an

environmentally friendly image (Aluchna 2017, 13). To pursue environmental sustainability,

companies may engage in partnership with conservation nonprofits, or sponsor environmental

education and clean-up initiatives (Cappellin and Giuliani 2004). Companies may also establish

special departments, institutions, or foundations to formalize sustainability initiatives or to

insulate them from the companies’ profit-driven activities (Cole 2012).

Motivations for a company to pursue environmental responsibility include many of the same

CSR incentives mentioned above (e.g., shareholder expectations and public image), in addition

to more direct links between environmental sustainability and product quality or financial

performance. To this last point, Hart argues that three pillars of environmental strategies—

4 A primary opponent of CSR on this basis is Milton Friedman; his comments in Capitalism and Freedom disparage CSR for its “subversive” nature. Friedman maintains that CSR is antithetical and harmful to the pursuit of economic gain on the part of businesses (Friedman and Friedman 2002).

29

pollution abatement, product stewardship, and sustainable development—actually contribute to

the economic prosperity of a firm (Hart 1995). Extending a resource-based model of business

strategy (Barney 1991) explicitly to natural resources, for example, it follows that if production

materials are valuable or rare, companies in fact may want to protect crucial raw materials or

land to maintain a competitive advantage.5

Companies may nevertheless choose socially responsible activities that do not directly benefit

the environment. Research suggests that firms’ demonstration of environmental responsibility

correlates less strongly with financial performance than demonstration of social responsibility

alone (Orlitzky, Schmidt, and Rynes 2003). Furthermore, a company may eschew reductions in

waste production or the reuse of materials if undertaking those activities lowers profits.

Recycling, for example, may prove costlier than using raw materials, particularly when those raw

materials are cheap, or when markets for certain recyclable materials are poor as a result of

political or economic conditions (Profita and Burns 2017). Indeed, “the most constructive

question is not whether CSR ‘pays,’ but instead when or under what circumstances” (Orlitzky,

Siegel, and Waldman 2011, 9).

The lack of certainty regarding when exactly CSR might prove lucrative creates an incentive for

businesses to advertise a false CSR agenda. Advocates and scholars have criticized corporations

for seeking the financial benefits of overblown or ineffective responsibility efforts: Osuji

emphasizes the distinction between CSR that reflects regulatory compliance and CSR that is

merely “instrumental,” or financially-driven (Osuji 2011). Ashman writes that even in the case of

community-driven CSR programs that unite corporate and local actors, the ultimate beneficiaries

or extent of the benefits do not always match those promised (Ashman 2001). For the

environmentally-inclined corporate do-gooder, whether intentional or not, Tokar asserts that the

result of environmental sustainability as a component of CSR may very well be “greenwash”: a

“cynical mixture of anti-environmental lobbying and environmentally friendly imagemaking”

(Tokar 1997, 34).

5 Diamond mining operations in southern Africa provide an example of the socially exploitative potential of profit-driven defenses of natural resources (Hamann and Kapelus 2004).

30

Control of the architecture of CSR, then, could provide businesses the opportunity to develop

standards that serve particular communities as much as private interests. Legally-driven CSR

activities might on this basis produce more reliable results than voluntary monitoring efforts that

allow private entities to craft and enforce their own codes of conduct (Seidman 2005). Through a

case study of the Sullivan Principles, social responsibility standards that enabled MNCs to

maintain good standing with shareholders despite continued presence in apartheid-era South

Africa, Seidman concludes that voluntary efforts offer mixed results. There are indeed positive

changes to internal corporate culture. The external beneficiaries, however, highly depend on who

designs and enforces the efforts. To promote systemic, measurable change, Seidman calls for

movements to “[bring] the state back in” to the processes that develop such standards (Seidman

2005, 178).

Reintroducing the state, however, assumes that public bodies are able to control effectively the

processes that determine what is sustainable. CSR may in fact allocate power and opportunity for

corporations to leverage loopholes in the very systems meant to regulate them (Aluchna 2017;

Cole 2012). As the Brazilian case I present demonstrates, this power affects the public sector’s

ability to control how sustainability-related laws translate on the ground.

Constructed Sustainabilities Drawing from Gramsci’s concept of hegemony (Gramsci and Hoare 1985), Levy and Newell

argue that the potential for businesses to exert influence over other entities in negotiation

processes necessitates the application of a political economy framework to the analysis of

environmental governance.

The development of each environmental regime is shaped by micro-processes of bottom-up bargaining and constrained by existing macro-structures of production relations and ideological formations. These structures, which themselves are the outcome of historical conflicts and compromises, ensure that the bargaining process is not a pluralistic contest among equals, but rather is embedded within broader relations of power. (Levy and Newell 2002, 84)

In this way, businesses can steer process outcomes away from their original motivations.

31

Levy and Newell’s framework facilitates connections among the discussions of transnational

sustainability alliances, CSR, and public services infrastructure. The global movement for public

private partnerships (PPPs) in the management of water, sanitation, and waste infrastructure,

specifically, provokes similar concerns about government capacity to control private sector

influence.

PPPs between governments and MNCs as mechanisms for managing water (Bakker 2007) and

sanitation (Budds and McGranahan 2003) systems in the global South, as well as in

industrialized nations like the US (Baum Pollans 2017), gained popularity in the final decades of

the 20th century. Proponents of PPPs hold aspirations about the relative efficiency of the private

sector to address problems in existing, publicly-managed systems, although privately-managed

infrastructure systems face many of the same challenges with regard to financial stability,

political viability, and local suitability (Prasad 2006).

Akin to skepticism toward CSR, critics of PPPs in the global South point out discrepancies

between what private actors profess they will achieve and the realities on the ground, in terms of

the distribution of risks and benefits of infrastructure projects (Franco, Mehta, and Veldwisch

2013). Ahmed and Ali highlight the challenges that PPPs face to incorporate unregulated actors

into waste management schemes, particularly in the global South, where the introduction of for-

profit firms in waste systems threatens to drive out existing systems and actors (Ahmed and Ali

2004). As Budds and McGranahan note, the failure of the private sector to address problems in

existing systems occurs because PPPs avoid solving those problems, not because of the nature of

the PPPs themselves. In this way, the critiques of privatization of water and sanitation are

“missing the point” (Budds and McGranahan 2003). More collaborative processes for financing

and developing these systems, some researchers suggest (as Seidman does for CSR programs),

might address those problems.

Carolini offers an account of interactions between local efforts at participatory budgeting and

external funding for large-scale public infrastructure in Maputo, Mozambique. She discusses a

recurring challenge in cities driving economic growth in post-socialist countries in the global

South (Carolini 2017, 127), whereby a participatory process meant to promote democracy is in

32

fact “premature,” a mere “light bandage” (Carolini 2017, 131) in the face of national and

international neoliberal forces. Carolini argues that such a process “presents the illusion of

democratic reform at the surface, while remaining insufficient as a transformative reform that

heals the deeper gouge of undemocratic decision making governing the larger percentage of the

public purse, which instead serves elite purposes…” (Carolini 2017, 131).

As I argue in this thesis, this phenomenon of “illusory” democratic reform exists in the context

of Brazil’s sustainability politics, specifically implicating waste management reforms. To

achieve deeper democratic transformations, we must therefore understand the contexts for the

construction of processes that may perpetuate the problems they set out to correct.

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3. CONTEXT FOR BRAZIL’S WASTE REGIME

Brazil’s political history is an important backdrop to the modern alliances among labor, state,

and corporate interests that play out in the country. The authoritarian industrialist regimes in the

post-war period featured state-supported growth and strong government-business relationships

(Colistete 2007). As economist Renato Colistete explains, the developmentalist stance of the

government, as well as the gap between profits and wages, contributed to strained relationships

between labor and government in the early 1950s. Despite the recovery of labor unions and

coalitions in the mid-late 1950s during the presidency of Juscelino Kubitscheck (1956-1961),

organized labor suffered at the expense of firms’ profits in the late 1950s, into the early 1960s.

Tension between the labor movement and authoritarian industry-backers persisted through the

post-war decades and primed Brazil for subsequent military rule (1964-1985), during which the

techno-bureaucratic military dictatorship severely, often violently, restricted organized labor and

politics broadly.

Beginning in the 1980s, the Worker’s Party (PT) of later president Luis Inácio Lula da Silva

(“Lula”) united the demands of organized labor, along with other socialist-leaning and

progressive causes (Keck 1992). The dissolution of the dictatorship and emergence of an open

state-society relationship, backed by the 1988 constitution, encouraged participatory processes.

The emergence of what Avritzer calls “participatory institutions” ensured more formal structures

for civic involvement, simultaneous with the rise of the PT (Avritzer 2009).

Military rule did not, however, transform the fabric of Brazilian politics, which continued to

swing between the influences of a more traditional elite and a strong populist movement

(Hagopian 1996). The contrast between the neoliberal agenda (including significant increases in

foreign investment, decentralization of services, and currency stabilization) of the Partido da

Social Democracia Brasileira (Brazilian Social Democracy Party, PSDB) of Fernando Henrique

Cardoso (president of Brazil from 1994-2002), and the rise of the political left and the PT,

exemplifies this political volatility. This contrast is in some ways overstated, however; the

influence of business and international financing remained strong during the Lula government,

34

which maintained many of the Cardoso-era policies (Griesse 2007; Mollo and Saad-Filho 2006).

These same political shifts and social divisions permeate the environmental space in Brazil.

Transnational Sustainability Movements in Brazil Hochstetler and Keck explain that Brazil’s particular brand of “socio-environmentalism”

emerged out of the historical and political circumstances in the final decades of the 20th century,

specifically the resurgence of democracy following the dictatorship, a strong federalist system,

and the “continuous interplay of the formal and the informal” (Hochstetler and Keck 2007, 10).

The result, they argue, is an environmental movement whose central tenets are social justice and

bottom-up processes, a “sustainable development for poor people” (Hochstetler and Keck 2007,

13), situated in Faber’s class-motivated framing of EJ movements in the global South (Faber

2005).

At the same time, frequent, often scandalous, changes to environmental leadership, centers of

power, and even laws, exemplify a lack of clarity on the part of Brazilian society and

government as to the framing of environmental problems. “This constant reshuffling tells an

important part of the story of Brazilian national environmental administration since the transition

to civilian rule…a profound uncertainty about the definition of environmental issues: Are they

basically urban? About natural resource development—or their conservation?” (Hochstetler and

Keck 2007, 39). Under such uncertain circumstances, we see an unsurprising amount of room for

advocates, lobbyists, and citizens alike to weave their own definitions of sustainability into the

implementation of regulation in Brazil.

Labor in Brazil

Political circumstances post-dictatorship gave rise to an environmentalism in Brazil that more

strongly incorporated Marxist ideologies than environmental movements in North America and

Europe, which by that time had developed critiques of the various manifestations of leftism that

had emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. Timing was therefore a major factor shaping Brazil’s

socio-environmentalism; the resurgence of the left and the development of environmentalism

35

happened concurrently and informed one another (Hochstetler and Keck 2007). Hochstetler and

Keck explain that the PT for this reason became a natural gathering place for environmentalists.

Keck also attributes the connections between environment and labor to the history of the rubber

tapper’s movement in Acre in the 1980s, and the murder of Chico Mendes in 1986. The rubber

tapper’s movement epitomized the grassroots organizing that accompanied and directly fueled

the rise of the PT, and is an example of “the unity of environmental and equity struggles” (Keck

1995, 410). She continues: “It announced the possibility of environmentalism that was not an

amenity but rather was part and parcel of a struggle around basic rights to subsistence…the poor

became the protagonists in seeking a solution rather than the objects of solutions imagined

elsewhere” (Keck 1995, 417). Indeed, several other movements supporting extractivista

livelihoods (like Brazil nut gathering and fishing) had a natural connection to the fight for

conservation of the Amazon at the same time that they empowered indigenous and traditional

forest peoples (Hochstetler and Keck 2007). Crucially, the reframing of these movements as part

of the conservation agenda, assisted by international, Washington, DC-based environmental

NGOs, as well as allies at the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), was

important to the success of what were initially fights for land rights in the Amazon.

More challenging within these framings, however, were explicit connections to urban labor

struggles (Hochstetler and Keck 2007). By the early 2000s, the conversation had shifted toward

EJ issues in cities, as dirty industrial activities degraded air quality and created unsafe conditions

for factory workers. The Rede de Justiça Ambiental (Environmental Justice Network), which,

like the North American EJ networks, promotes the concerns of low-income and minority

populations in Brazil, relied heavily on the participation of organized groups of workers harmed

by contaminants in chemical plants and other industrial facilities (Hochstetler and Keck 2007).

Forming ties with other social movements, Brazil’s EJ movement pressed for greater

accountability on the part of MNCs, who were already beginning to face pressures from

Brazilian society and the international community at-large to clean up their acts.

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CSR in Brazil

CSR in Brazil arose in the 1960s out of the country’s strong tradition of Catholic charity, but

gained momentum in the 1980s and 1990s under the influence of labor market liberalization

(Cole 2012), as well as the broader context of democratization and increased international

pressures on corporate actions described above (Cappellin and Giuliani 2004). CSR, Cappellin

and Giuliani explain, gained traction as the 1988 Constitution introduced protections for workers

and other vulnerable populations, decentralized government services and welfare programs, and

emphasized stronger relationships between public and private entities.

CSR also became important for the emergence of the Brazilian terceiro setor, or third sector,

which comprises private companies, NGOs, and certain federal and state agencies with

participatory agendas. By attending to the concept of cidadania, or citizenship, the terceiro setor

addresses the general lack of faith in government to provide basic services for its citizens

(Griesse 2007). CSR efforts in Brazil therefore aim to confront the extremes of poverty and

wealth, labor conditions, and other social and environmental problems, in part due to

government’s inability to attend to them (Cappellin and Giuliani 2004). They include the

establishment of foundations, preparation of social reports or audits, and donations to particular

programs that support causes like poverty alleviation, education, and environmental protection.

The profitability of sustainability initiatives in Brazil is, as in many places, crucial to a

company’s pursuit of them (Cappellin and Giuliani 2004). By cultivating an awareness and sense

of responsibility and company pride, employee education policies can improve work ethic and

efficiency. Certifications are another visible and popular way that Brazilian companies both

engage in sustainable action and earn favor among investors and consumers. Some, but relatively

few, Brazilian companies also participate in national and international codes of conduct,

including the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 14001 certification, Social

Accountability International’s certification, Brazil SA8000, the United Nations (UN) Global

Compact, and Atuação Responsável, a Brazilian version of international code of conduct

Responsible Action (Cappellin and Giuliani 2004). The fact of minimal participation may

represent a trend of Brazilian companies’ portrayal of responsibility through their images rather

37

than their actions. As Bandeira and Para note optimistically: “social responsibility in Brazil is a

discourse that is under construction” (Idowu and Leal Filho 2009, 310).

Knowledge of the possible abuses of CSR, however, encourages the critical researcher to

question the efficacy and consequences of these programs, particularly in Brazil, where private

influence, mistrust, and political instability permeate the government-society arena. Cole reviews

the Brazilian manifestation of the Kyoto Protocol’s CDM, which encourages developing

countries to design assessment criteria for sustainability projects (like clean energy) focusing on

greenhouse gas emissions and sustainable development. As part of the CDM in Brazil, many

companies have adapted their existing CSR programs. The corporate structure in the context of

the formal regulation, Cole argues, undermines the social forces that push corporations to adopt

CSR in the first place: “…regulatory and neo-regulatory tensions, coupled with disparate levels

of institutional capacity among corporations, civil society and local government regulators, have

given rise to an emerging corporate hegemony that has the potential to undercut the neo-

regulatory drivers underlying Sustainability Programs” (Cole 2012, 40–41). These “neo-

regulatory” norms do not derive specifically from regulation or formal mechanisms like the

CDM; rather, they are the result of societal pressures from transnational social movements.

Cole’s case studies provide a Brazil-based example of Levy and Newell’s framework for

corporate influence on the construction of environmental governance (Levy and Newell 2002)

that is useful for the present research. The power dynamic associated with private influence in

environmental governance in Brazil becomes more concerning in the context of a sector like

waste, in which small actors play a crucial but undervalued role (Wilson, Velis, and Cheeseman

2006). Wastepickers in Brazil have fought hard to achieve protections, in part through regulation.

38

Waste in Brazil: Wastepickers6

As in many places in the world, catadores (wastepickers) in Brazil play an important role in the

country’s waste management systems, collecting about 90% of Brazil’s recycled materials.7

Nearly 400,000 individuals in Brazil classified themselves as wastepickers in Brazil’s 2010

Census (IBGE 2012). Given the temporary nature of the work and its response to fluctuations in

the economy, among other measurement difficulties, this number is likely higher; estimates from

various studies account for as many as 600,000 wastepickers (S. P. Silva, Goes, and Alvarez

2013). This number is also complicated by the fact that most wastepickers are catadores avulsos,

or independent wastepickers, who may not have organizational affiliations that would facilitate

their registration in official tallies.

According to the network Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing

(WIEGO), the MNCR comprises approximately 600 membership-based organizations (MBOs),

cooperatives or associations that employ 80,000 wastepickers (WIEGO 2013). MBOs in Brazil

generally operate out of warehouses or sheds where materials are sorted, baled, and stored until

sold. Sometimes, a municipal government will pay for the warehouse, trucks, equipment, and

utilities. MBOs may also have agreements with municipalities to receive materials from their

recyclables collection. Governments often view these actions as a favor to the wastepickers,

rather than a payment proportional to the environmental services performed or amount of money

saved by diverting materials from dumps, though estimations of these numbers do exist (ANCAT

2017). MBOs are also a source of social support, in addition to employment, for wastepicking

communities (Ogando et al. 2013).

6 This chapter adapts sections of a final paper submitted by the author for course 11.475, Navigating the Politics of Water and Sanitation Planning, in the spring of 2017 in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 7 Several research reports use the 90% statistic (Ferri, Diniz Chaves, and Ribeiro 2015; S. P. Silva, Goes, and Alvarez 2013; M. do S. F. da Silva and Joia 2008). While some sources attribute this number to the Institute of Applied Economic Research (IPEA), others, including IPEA itself, cite the Corporate Recycling Commitment (CEMPRE). Although I could not locate the cited CEMPRE documents, the idea that this statistic in defense of wastepickers has come out of this corporate group is interesting in the context of CEMPRE’s control of the processes described in the following chapters.

39

Brazil’s legal and regulatory framework facilitates wastepickers’ recognition relative to other

countries (Dias and Samson 2016). By organizing, protesting, and lobbying lawmakers,

particularly following the end of Brazil’s military rule in 1985, wastepickers have successfully

advocated for and benefitted from government initiatives. Between 1990 and 2004, the cities of

Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais; Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul; and Diadema, São Paulo, as

well as the Federal District of Brasília, all passed laws that declare wastepicker MBOs the

preferred destination for municipal recyclables (Dias 2011).

Relevant to this thesis, the state of Minas Gerais and its capital, Belo Horizonte, are leaders in

policies that support wastepicker inclusion. In addition to the aforementioned 1990 law

referencing MBO processing of recyclables, Belo Horizonte’s waste agency, the

Superintendência de Limpeza Urbana (SLU), established a Department of Social Mobilization

explicitly to provide support to MBOs (Dias 2011). Furthermore, 2011 Law 19.823 in the state of

Minas Gerais introduces Bolsa Reciclagem, a program that compensates MBOs for their

environmental services according to their levels of recyclable materials production (Lima 2013).

The Centro Mineiro de Referência em Resíduos (Reference Center on Solid Waste of Minas

Gerais, CMRR) is responsible for administering the program, in addition to carrying out

inclusive waste-related technical support and educational events.

The following interventions have occurred at the federal level over the past two decades: in

2001, wastepicking was recognized as a profession in the Brazilian Occupation Classification

(CBO), the federal professional registry; in 2007, legislators passed Law 11.445, which deems

bidding unnecessary for wastepicker cooperatives, granting them a fairer chance of competing

with private entities attempting to contract with municipal waste collection agencies; and in

2006, Presidential Decree 5940 secured wastepickers’ right to source-separated materials in

federal buildings, enabling protection for wastepickers in the case that organizations or buildings

try to limit their access to materials (Dias and Samson 2016). Finally, the 2010 PNRS explicitly

prioritizes municipalities’ contracting of wastepicker cooperatives, in addition to provisions that

require corporations to collaborate with wastepickers (Câmara dos Deputados 2012).

40

The National Solid Waste Policy The PNRS, Law 12.305/2010, approved in July of 2010, mandates EPR, among other directives

that aim to strengthen waste management and collection within Brazil. Section II of Chapter 3 of

the PNRS establishes “shared responsibility for the life cycle of products” (Câmara dos

Deputados 2012, 10). The PNRS lays the groundworks for Implementing Decree 7.404, enacted

in December of 2010, which provides further detail on how exactly the responsible entities are to

fulfill the relevant provisions of the law.

Under the terms of the PNRS, product manufacturers, importers, and distributors must

implement “reverse logistics” systems, recuperating the packaging from their products according

to industry sector agreements between market and public actors. The law explicitly references

agrochemicals and their packaging, batteries, tires, lubricants and their packaging, fluorescent

lightbulbs, and electronics. Additional commercial packaging, including various plastic, metal,

and glass containers, may fall under the law. As described in Article 17 of Implementing Decree

7.404, these products are determined by an Orienting Committee, which considers the degree to

which the products represent a harm to public health, as well as the degree to which recuperation

is logistically and economically viable (Câmara dos Deputados 2012). The liable entities are then

responsible for disposing of the products in an “environmentally adequate” way.

The responsible entities must initiate reverse logistics in one of three ways, according to Article

33 of the PNRS:

1) contribute funds to buy back packaging;

2) make available deposit boxes at voluntary collection points (PEVs) for consumers to

hand in reusable containers; or

3) partner with cooperatives or associations of wastepickers, only in the case of packaging

like plastics and glass containers that accompany common consumer goods (Câmara dos

Deputados 2012, 30).

41

Implementing Decree 7.404 explains that in the third case, the partnerships must serve to support

and generate employment for wastepicker MBOs. As wastepickers perform the bulk of recycling

in Brazil, many MNCs are opting for collaboration with MBOs.

Agreements across the different industry sectors establish target quantities of materials to be

recuperated. Brazil’s Ministério do Meio Ambiente (Ministry of Environment, MMA) oversees

these negotiations and evaluates the suitability of the agreements, and a Technical Support Group

(GTA) guides the negotiation process during their formation. To demonstrate their contributions

to reverse logistics, manufacturers must submit production and recuperation data to a newly

established national database for solid waste, the Sistema Nacional de Informações Sobre a

Gestão dos Resíduos Sólidos (SINIR).

The Packaging Sector Agreement The Acordo Setorial de Embalagens em Geral, or sector agreement among “Producers and

Importers of Products Commercialized in Packaging” (Ministério do Meio Ambiente 2015),

outlines the steps that industry signatories must take to initiate a form of EPR referred to as

product takeback, or more popularly in Brazil, reverse logistics. Reverse logistics systems as

described in the agreement, to which I refer hereafter as “the agreement,” unless otherwise

specified, must prioritize cooperatives’ involvement.

The MMA issued a public call on July 4, 2012 (Ministério do Meio Ambiente 2012) for

manufacturers, importers, distributors, and vendors to propose an initial agreement. The

document provides guidelines for the development of the agreement. These include specific

requirements for signatories stated in the PNRS and Decree 7.404, as well as new goals,

including the following targets for reductions in recyclable materials discarded in landfill: 22%

by 2015, 28% by 2019, 34% by 2023, 40% by 2027, and 45% by 2031. The agreement is

required to describe penalties for signatories that fail to comply, evaluate the social and

economic impact of the reverse logistics systems, and detail the responsibilities of all

participating entities, among other requirements. The MMA further specifies that companies

42

should prioritize their activities in the World Cup headquarter cities of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo,

Curitiba, Cuiabá, Belo Horizonte, Porto Alegre, Manaus, Salvador, Recife, Natal, Brasília, and

Fortaleza.

Three of four proposals submitted in response to the call were accepted. The MMA chose the

proposal submitted on behalf of the Coalizão Empresarial, the Business Coalition that comprises

the major industry players (Besen and Jacobi 2017). After a 60-day public comment period,

followed by over a year of negotiations and refinement, the agreement was signed on November

25, 2015. Signatories comprise 20 groups of 3,786 producers and manufacturers (CEMPRE

2018a),8 which together form the Coalition. Several intermediary groups represent these

signatories for the purposes of negotiating further iterations of the agreement and carrying out

various aspects of reverse logistics:

• Compromisso Empresarial para Reciclagem (Corporate Recycling Committment,

CEMPRE);

• Associação Brasileira de Embalagem (Brazilian Packaging Association, ABRE);

• Associação Nacional dos Aparistas de Papel (National Association of Paper

Wholesalers, ANAP);

• Instituto Nacional das Empresas de Preparação de Sucata Não Ferrosa e de Ferro e Aço

(National Institute of Non-Ferrous Scrap and Iron and Steel Processors, INESFA);

• Associação Nacional dos Carroceiros e Catadores de Materiais Recicláveis (National

Association of Carters and Collectors of Recyclable Material, ANCAT); and

• Confederação Nacional do Comércio de Bens, Serviços e Turismo (National

Confederation of the Trades of Goods, Services, and Tourism, CNC).

CEMPRE, the “business association dedicated to the promotion of recycling and integrated

management of the dry portion of municipal solid waste,” is the organization that signatories

designate to:

8 For a complete list, see Annex I of the packaging sector agreement (CEMPRE 2018a).

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a) coordinate the participation of businesses in the prescribed reverse logistics system; and

b) interface with the Coalition and the MMA regarding the agreement.

CEMPRE is a nonprofit comprising Coca-Cola, Danone, Nestle, Pepsi-Cola, SC Johnson, and

several other MNCs and large Brazilian companies, and was founded in 1992 (CEMPRE 2018b).

CEMPRE educates its members and the public on the concept of integrated solid waste

management and promotes recycling.

The agreement officially establishes the Coalition, which has aspirations similar to the PROs

discussed earlier in other EPR-adopting countries and is responsible for reverse logistics

implementation on behalf of the signatories. Specifically, the Coalition must create a

comprehensive monitoring and data collection system through which companies account for the

quantities (by weight), component materials, and source locations of packaging recuperated

through the reverse logistics program. In accounting for their volumes of recyclable material

recuperated, companies may also include materials collected as a result of individual initiatives

outside of the Coalition’s efforts. In a period of no more than 36 months, the Coalition, through

this monitoring system, is to:

a) record at least 50% of the materials recuperated by the participating entities; and

b) record the volume, by weight, of the materials in the packaging produced by

manufacturers (Ministério do Meio Ambiente 2015, 10).

The agreement also establishes two implementation phases. The 24-month implementation

period of Phase I prioritizes:

i) increasing the productive capacity of cooperatives and associations;

ii) facilitating the acquisition of waste processing and sorting equipment for cooperatives

and associations;

iii) facilitating capacity building for wastepicker cooperatives and associations to improve

quality of life, entrepreneurial capacity, business acumen, and sustainability;

44

iv) strengthening partnerships between industry and business in order to consolidate and

triple the number of PEVs;

v) purchasing, at market price, recyclable materials from cooperatives and associations or

other sorting centers;

vi) prioritizing partnerships with cooperatives and payment of cooperatives, according to

market prices, but also considering location, volume, quality, and industry capacity;

vii) installing PEVs in retail locations; and

viii) investing in educational campaigns through various media (TV, radio, movies)

targeting consumers.

A specific goal of Phase I is to reduce 22% of packaging disposed in landfills by 2018, in

accordance with the goals above (Ministério do Meio Ambiente 2015, 18).

In order to accomplish these goals, the Coalition members must “make investments along with

cooperatives relative to the quantity of packaging recuperated and the labor offered by these

entities.” The amount of investment is to be determined in contracts between cooperatives and

businesses according to “regional and municipal particularities,” in order for businesses to

“respect the pre-existing models of inclusion.” Phase I, according to the agreement, focuses

reverse logistics activities in the World Cup headquarter cities listed above. The signatories also

have up to 90 days following the closure of Phase I to present a plan for Phase II, which will

include revised goals and implementation locations, based on analysis of the challenges and

lessons learned from Phase I.

CEMPRE and consultant Lenum Ambiental released the final report for Phase I in November

2017. Given the signing of the initial packaging sector agreement on November 25, 2015, Phase

II was expected to be released at the end of February 2018. At the time of drafting of this thesis,

more than 28 months following the initial agreement, a new agreement had not yet been

officially established or circulated publicly. Interviews during June and July of 2017 indicated

that discussions were underway, but even those involved in initial rounds of discussions

expressed doubt regarding the likelihood that they would occur in a timely manner, particularly

given political circumstances (e.g., the impeachment of president Dilma Rousseff, the influence

45

of the private sector within the federal government, the fall 2018 election season). The MMA

posted a press release on its website in January 2018 that announced that discussions for Phase II

of the agreement had occurred, with emphasis on the “necessity to reinforce communication with

society and coordination with municipalities” (Bardawil 2018).

Regardless of the delays, the PNRS is seen as a huge victory on the part of the leaders of the

MNCR, who fought for benefits for wastepickers and cooperatives to be incorporated into a

policy that was 20 years in the making (WIEGO 2011b). Collaborative programs with

wastepicker MBOs in fulfillment of the PNRS are championed by both MNCs and wastepickers

as providing social support within cooperatives and improving recycling rates and incomes for

wastepickers. Importantly, however, the programs provide MNCs with access to the data they

require on the quantities of recyclables the cooperatives collect, sort, and sell back to industry.

The problems surrounding the acquisition of these data are the subject of a later section.

Furthermore, as discussed, programs to fulfill CSR requirements can benefit corporations’

images while providing little incentive for behavioral change (Aluchna 2017). Several years out

from the introduction of the PNRS, the relationship between MNCs and wastepicker networks is

still developing. The data I present in the following chapters augment the limited information

available regarding the impacts of these new relationships from the perspective of wastepickers.

My analysis suggests that the politics of sustainability in Brazil have enabled corporations to

benefit from CSR programs under the PNRS, without significantly altering the status quo.

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4. PNRS POLITICS AND PRESCRIPTIONS

In this chapter, I discuss the PNRS and packaging sector agreement formation processes and

their consequences (see Figure 4.1 for an abbreviated timeline of significant events).

Figure 4.1. Timeline of events relevant to the PNRS and packaging sector agreement.

I present a narrative of these processes through the eyes of interviewees and participants of

public and closed meetings on inclusive municipal solid waste programs. These individual

perspectives ground a critique of how the PNRS and packaging sector were developed and an

analysis of the effects on the actors involved, challenges, and potential improvements.

47

Lulalaying the Groundwork

Figure 4.2. Lula’s popular appeal captured on a 2017 political sticker. Credit: Alvorada BH.

The promulgation of the PNRS, nearly 20 years in the making, was the product of a unique

political moment (Interviews 8, 12, 13). President Lula’s two terms spanned the years 2003

through 2011, and the PNRS passed just before the completion of his second term. By the time

of Lula’s election, the PT had evolved from an anti-capitalist, pro-worker movement uniting

prominent radical confederations like the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra

(Landless Rural Workers’ Movement, MST) and the Central Única dos Trabalhadores (Unified

Workers’ Central, CUT) (Keck 1992), to a party with local and national representatives

championing anti-corruption agendas (Avritzer 2009), to a political establishment with

economically moderate constituents and privately financed elected officials pushing neoliberal

ideologies and alliances (Peña and Davies 2014).

Lula’s eventual win over his predecessor Cardoso, following defeat in the previous two

presidential elections, researchers Mollo and Saad-Filho explain, was predicated on the party’s

embrace of Cardoso-era policies. These included payment of national and foreign debts, high

interest rates, and renewal of loan agreements with the International Monetary Fund (IMF),

which coincided with increased levels of unemployment and income inequality (Mollo and Saad-

Filho 2006).

48

Simultaneously, the Lula administration introduced structures for social inclusion, which spoke

to the rhetoric that had galvanized his popular base of voters. The Fome Zero (Zero Hunger)

campaign comprised more than 30 social support initiatives and conditional cash transfer

programs, including the celebrated Bolsa Família (Family Grant), which provides support to

Brazil’s working poor and rural families. Many of these programs expanded, rebranded, or

consolidated fragmented Cardoso-era social interventions (Hall 2006). To administer these

newly-integrated social programs more efficiently, Lula united several Ministries under a new

Ministério do Desenvolvimento Social e Combate à Fome (Ministry of Social Development and

Fight Against Hunger, MDS). The creation of new agencies supporting the urban poor, including

the Ministério das Cidades (Ministry of Cities), signified a burgeoning relationship with social

movements (Abers, Serafim, and Tatagiba 2014). Lula in some cases appointed leaders of these

movements to fill new ministerial positions (Interview 13, Abers, Serafim, and Tatagiba 2014).

These programs and agencies supported wastepickers, many of whom were living in urban

centers in situations of poverty. In addition to the aforementioned, presidentially-sanctioned laws

preferencing recycling in MBOs, interventions more explicitly reaching wastepickers included

the establishment within the Ministério do Trabalho e Emprego (Ministry of Work and

Employment, MTE) of the Secretaria Nacional de Economia Solidária (Secretariat of Solidarity

Economy, SENAES), which provided technical assistance to the many autonomously and

cooperatively run enterprises in various sectors of the Brazilian economy (Singer 2004); the

creation of the Comitê Interministerial de Inclusão Social de Catadores (Inter-ministerial

Committee for Social Inclusion of Wastepickers, CIISC) by presidential decree in 2003; and the

approval of Brazil’s 2007 National Sanitation Policy, which supported the inclusion of

wastepickers in recycling systems (Besen 2011).

The accumulation of these actions, reflecting Lula’s staunch support of wastepicker rights,

secured the involvement of wastepickers in the formation of the PNRS: “President Lula had a

very close relationship with the defense of wastepickers. CIISC, so that you have an idea,

gathered in the presidential palace. There was a clear signal from the president that it was a

priority, so it was more or less easy for people to arrive in Congress and say ‘look, you need to

49

put the wastepickers in [the law]’” (Interview 8). The PNRS was in fact a specific campaign

promise to wastepickers, as well as to their allies (Interview 12).

Improving the Dialogue

The PNRS also stimulated the interests of actors beyond wastepickers, particularly the

environmental community, because of provisions of the PNRS that speak to resource

conservation and mandate dump closures. Many wastepickers call themselves environmental

stewards, engaging in educational activities that make direct connections between their work, the

importance of recycling, and environmental protection.9 By some accounts, the law passed

because of the MNCR’s ability to speak to its broader benefits: “actually, it was the first thing

that we spoke about with President Lula as soon as he was elected. We had an audience with him

and we said that we wanted him to get the national policy out of the drawer and approve it. And

he said ‘would that law help you?’ and we said that it would help not only wastepickers, but also

society as a whole” (Interview 12). By framing the PNRS as a sustainability-related policy

serving the interests of additional movements that carried Lula’s government to power, the

wastepickers could achieve their own objectives.

Wastepickers had for years, in fact, engaged in cross-sector alliances through the Waste and

Citizenship Forums (Fóruns Lixo e Cidadania), a United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)

initiative officially launched with Brazil’s Ministério Público Federal (MPF, Public Prosecutor’s

Office) in 1999, in response to human rights concerns regarding children scavenging at dump

sites. These public meetings at both the municipal and federal levels united actors from the

public, private, and civil society realms to speak about integrated waste management and shared

responsibility (Dias 2009). Researchers, civil servants, and wastepickers who experienced the

rise of these forums in the late 1990s and early 2000s assert that they were crucial for shedding a

9 From author’s participation in a meeting at wastepicker cooperative COOPESOL Leste: presentation of Novo Ciclo program for the Metropolitan Region Branch of the Cataunidos Network, June 13, 2017.

50

light on the work wastepickers were doing and incorporating it into the PNRS (Interviews 2, 8).

According to one government official:

These forums also were something that ended up bringing to waste management this logic that other actors must be called upon to help, and also reinforced the logic of shared responsibility…there was a national forum that was very strong…that participated also in the discussion of the national policy…it said “no, we’re going to put the wastepickers here, in this place [in the law],” and was important to the wastepickers being where they are in the law. (Interview 8)

More than shaping the law’s inclusive components, these forums broadly improved the dialogue

between wastepickers and actors, both public and private, throughout Brazil. This, in turn,

offered wastepickers the opportunity to make connections that would enable them to earn

recognition, rights, and compensation.

Wastepickers’ current sources of income in Belo Horizonte, the result of alliances with

progressive national and state leaders during the Lula-era government as well as the municipal-

level Waste and Citizenship Forums, for example, demonstrate their recognition from various

parts of society: “our paid service comes from three sources, which are the state

government…for the environmental service we provide; the city, via payment for the recyclables

collection service that we do; and the businesses, for the service of reverse logistics” (Interview

12). And while the first occurs via programs such as the aforementioned Bolsa Reciclagem

(2011) that emerged from discussions around the PNRS, payment for service and for reverse

logistics relate more closely to debates that the formation of the packaging sector agreement

provoked.

Businesses In, Cities Out

Multinational and domestic corporations held significant sway compared to municipal

government in the development of both the PNRS and packaging sector agreement (Besen and

Jacobi 2017). This relative control seems counterintuitive in the context of a recent political

emphasis on the role of the city in Brazil. I briefly discuss the evolutions of this urban movement

51

as context for explaining the exclusion of municipalities from the packaging sector agreement

formation process. I entertain three hypotheses, to that end, all of which in some way implicate

the business sector for prioritizing profits and assign varying degrees of culpability to

government for their complicity or negligence.

Among the many social movements that elected Lula’s government was a movement to restore

popular control of cities through democratic processes. The Forum Nacional de Reforma Urbana

(National Forum for Urban Reform, FNRU),10 a coalition of civil society groups and

neighborhood associations that Avritzer refers to as a “hybrid between a social movement and an

organized lobby” (Avritzer 2007, 5), sent a delegation to the National Constituent Assembly to

ensure that urban issues would have a central place in the 1988 Constitution. Among the fruits of

this lobbying effort were a chapter on urban policy, including Article 182, which requires all

Brazilian cities to complete master plans, and Article 183, which secures property rights even in

the absence of official proceedings11 (Assembléia Nacional Constituinte 1988).

In the years following the passage of the 1988 Constitution, the FNRU and allies in Congress

worked to pass the celebrated Estatuto da Cidade (Statute of the City) of 2001. As implementing

regulation for Articles 182 and 183 of the 1988 Constitution, this statute amplifies the concerns

of the urban poor through concepts like the “right to the city” (Lefebvre 1968),12 and the right to

“sustainable cities,” no less (Congresso Nacional do Brasil 2001). Specific provisions include

progressive urban property taxation, participatory budgeting, and land acquisition processes for

urban dwellers (Avritzer 2007). These movements also influenced Lula’s establishment of the

Ministry of Cities in 2003.

10 Formerly the Movimento Nacional de Reforma Urbana (National Movement for Urban Reform, MNRU). 11 By enabling land dwellers of more than five uninterrupted years to claim ownership of property of over 250 square meters, Article 183 aims to provide protections for informal populations living on the peripheries of cities. 12 David Harvey and others popularized this concept, based on the work of Henri Lefebvre in the mid-1960s (Harvey 2008).

52

In the context of this urban era in Brazil, the business lobby nevertheless heavily influenced the

shape of the PNRS and its associated regulation, largely leaving out municipalities and the waste

actors living therein. “It took a lot of force to get [the law] out of the drawer because there was a

business side that was not interested” (Interview 8). Not only was there a lack of interest,

however. The private sector also made a pointed effort to delay discussions (Interviews 2, 4, 8,

11). Their actions undermined the goals of wastepickers to receive direct remuneration for their

service, as opposed simply to receiving a project-based investment with charitable

underpinnings. These perspectives illustrate the strength of the private sector broadly in the

public realm in Brazil. “Honestly, it’s this—the lobby of manufacturers is very strong; it’s very

difficult to overcome” (Interview 2).

Furthermore, by the time the MMA solicited proposals for the packaging sector agreement in its

2012 call, “it was already the Dilma government, which was a much weaker government than the

Lula government,” in the sense that the administration of president Dilma Rousseff (PT, 2011-

2016) prioritized wastepicker interests less vocally (Interview 8). Lula was no longer in office;

the wastepickers had lost their most powerful advocate, and with it, the ability to stand up to

industry leaders that heavily influenced the negotiations process.

Developing the Packaging Sector Agreement

The federal government tightly controlled the formation and outcomes of the packaging sector

agreement (Besen and Jacobi 2017). The initiation of these processes occurred against the

backdrop of Lula’s left-leaning social agenda and moderate foreign and fiscal policies, which

favored international investment in Brazil. Similar to private institutions’ manipulation of the

2002 presidential election results in order to secure control of economic policies (Mollo and

Saad-Filho 2006), businesses stood their ground to ensure that the processes resulting from the

PNRS would play out to their benefit.

MNCs, in particular, had financial incentives to push for less stringent material quotas and

taxation structures: “[Businesses] arrived here in Brazil…and they keep playing around with talk

like: ‘I won’t spend all that I spend over in Europe in order to do reverse logistics. I want to

spend less here.’ They never came in with an approach of ‘let’s do the best we can do, I’m

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willing to do it the same way that I do it in Europe’ (Interview 8).” An industry representative

confirmed what wastepickers and allied researchers suggested, with insight into the pecuniary

motivations for the agreement the Business Coalition proposed:

If the government had done it the same way that they do it in Europe here in Brazil, it would have screwed over many businesses. Because to pay those taxes by volume would be very expensive for the businesses. And so, the accounting works out better for the business to invest in a project [with cooperatives] that guarantees that volume [of material] rather than invest in a tax…I am certain that it wasn’t the government that thought about it this way. (Interview 11)

In addition to a strong business lobby compelled to fight for its own interests, the structure and

political circumstances in which the proceedings occurred appeared to give preference to

business interests. While the law is clear regarding the fact that wastepickers, recyclers, haulers,

and public interest groups, among others, may participate in the preparation of the agreement, the

PNRS states that only the federal government or manufacturers, importers, distributors, and other

commercial entities can initiate agreement formation procedures. The PNRS offers less clarity

regarding who may actually submit proposals for consideration. The MMA’s request for

proposals, however, makes a clear delineation, to that effect (Ministério do Meio Ambiente

2012, sec. 3.1). Accordingly, the proposal that the MNRC presented on behalf of wastepickers

was deemed invalid in the selection process:

When the discussion of the sector agreement started, the movement resolved to write a proposal for the sector agreement, which was based in our banner [objective], which was payment for service provision. We presented to the Ministry, we officially registered…they responded saying that we couldn’t present a proposal for the sector agreement because we were neither manufacturers, nor stockpilers, nor packaging traders, and that is the community that submits the agreement. (Interview 12)

Following the initial call, the MMA selected the Coalition proposal from the three viable

proposals submitted, after which point the public review process also gave preference to the

Coalition’s interests. Besen and Jacobi review in detail the 961 public comments submitted

between September 15, 2014 and November 20, 2014 on the Coalition proposal. While a mix of

private and public entities, researchers, and citizens contributed their suggestions, interested

businesses that already were members or that would later participate in the Coalition represented

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60.5% of total suggestions (Besen and Jacobi 2017). In other words, the business leaders that

authored the proposal submitted over half of the total comments…on their own proposal. Besen

and Jacobi conclude that despite wastepicker contributions, the process and ultimate agreement

favored business interests, backed by the federal government.

While wastepickers participated later on in the negotiations, businesses’ initiation of the process

meant that their priorities would appear in the first iterations of the agreement. With their

proposal as the starting point for discussions, businesses could control which sustainability

framework informed the resulting reverse logistics system—one that minimized spending and

maximized marketability, one that supported fair pay and environmental health, or one that

addressed the financial concerns of MSW program managers.

Motivations for Municipal Exclusion

At no point in the agreement process did the federal government officially include municipal

government—deemed responsible in the PNRS for implementing recycling systems in their

cities—in the development of reverse logistics systems (Besen and Jacobi 2017, 83). This is one

of the more contentious aspects of the agreement formation process, and it produces a variety of

reactions in defense of or against municipal government. Consensus exists regarding the fact that

municipalities did not participate in the discussions. Accounts of why this was the case, as well

as whether or not it should have been so, particularly in the context of the federal emphasis on

shared responsibility and urban issues, are much more ambiguous.

One hypothesis blames businesses for trying actively to minimize their responsibility, as well as

the government for standing idly by during the negotiations process: “[the businesses’] job is to

have the maximum profit: ‘the more I reduce my cost, the better.’ That’s their position. I think

that our government could have been stronger” (Interview 8). One account more explicitly

accuses the federal government of being a coconspirator:

Industry and businesses decided together, obviously, with the Ministry of Environment, to leave the cities out of it, to take the cities out of the negotiation of the sector agreement, and they made a direct negotiation, industry and cooperatives and the Ministry of Environment. But they left society out, or rather, what society thinks about this, and they left out the cities. (Interview 1)

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Perhaps, however, the federal government and businesses deserve less blame for the absence of

municipal representatives in the conversation. Another hypothesis implies that municipalities

may have left of their own volition because of the lack of prioritization of their apparently

rightful claim to a portion of the packaging sector’s reverse logistics funds. “There were three

actors in the discussions: wastepickers, CEMPRE, and the association of municipalities…the

association said no, it [the money] is ours, and stayed out of the discussions; when the cities

came and saw that there wasn’t money, they left” (Interview 3). The same interviewee, however,

suggested that “this was a hole in the model,” that the government should have enforced the

presence of the municipalities in pursuit of the initial tenets of the law, specifically that of shared

responsibility. “The current agreement,” the interviewee lamented, “has nothing to do with

what’s in the law” (Interview 3). This is a familiar sentiment that many interviewees closely

aligned with or following the trajectory of the wastepickers’ movement expressed in some form

or another (Interviews 4, 6, 7, 8).

An underlying explanation for businesses’ reluctance to contribute to municipalities is a deep

mistrust in government financial accountability in Brazil. This hypothesis suggests that mistrust

plays a particularly important role for a sector like MSW, in which there exists “an economic

deficit historically…because of the question of garbage, of contracts…these big contracts always

were a target of corruption” (Interview 1). The government-contracted waste haulers had a hand

in this corruption, taking advantage of municipalities’ lack of mechanisms for accountability to

overcharge for waste collection (Interview 8). In this way, the haulers, too, had a stake in the

municipalities’ securing additional funding through the sector agreement. “The public haulers

got together with the city government to say the following: ‘the city is the one that does

recyclables collection, and so the money from reverse logistics has to come to city hall.’ Because

indirectly, this would go to the hands of the public haulers” (Interview 8). In this sense, then, the

absence of municipalities in the discussion might also prevent companies from having to spend

more. If businesses were to contribute money to municipalities, how could they be sure that it

would not disappear into the hands of a corrupt government official or a public hauler?

Certainly, municipalities remained absent from the conversation, either by their own doing, or

because the MMA and/or the Business Coalition acted deliberately to exclude them. Today,

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limited interaction between municipal government and packaging sector businesses is the status

quo; a municipal representative in Belo Horizonte suggested that they “have a lot of difficulty

just knowing who the businesses are” that are involved with cooperatives in the city (Interview

2). An industry representative confirmed that businesses are keeping to themselves: “City hall

does not participate in the Coalition, because it’s a coalition of businesses. It’s a proposal that the

businesses are making for the government.” In the eyes of industry, the city is not part of the

club; nor should it be. This “should” indicates a normative stance toward the role of industry in

waste management that contradicts the very foundations of the PNRS.

Indeed, the municipalities’ lack of participation in the agreement prescribes outcomes that

prioritize the business vision of sustainability. Their absence squanders existing partnerships

between municipalities and wastepickers, strengthened through the Waste and Citizenship

Forums and policies supporting Brazil’s urban poor. Consequently, the wastepickers lose a

potential ally in the decision-making processes regarding how to allocate and remunerate

responsibilities for waste management. In the following section, I problematize this resulting

conceptual and financial separation of reverse logistics from municipal recycling systems that

already support it.

Bounding What Binds

The PNRS makes clear that responsibility for waste management in Brazil must be shared. Few

actors involved in implementation would contest this concept. The discussion around who

participates in the construction and continued negotiation of the packaging sector agreement,

however, suggests that little consensus exists around where exactly responsibility for reverse

logistics begins and ends.

Until what point does the city’s responsibility for recycling go, and until what point is it the responsibility of the [wastepicker] association or private initiative? …The city has to promote recyclables collection and the appropriate destination of this material in a space in which it can be sorted. After sorting, who is it that’s interested in the material? (Interview 7)

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Disparate opinions, to this effect, provide insight into why the lack of clarity around

responsibility has shaped the resulting agreement. This ambiguity leaves room for private actors

to manipulate the negotiations process to their advantage.

Returning to the three principal actors—the municipality, the wastepicker cooperative or

association, and the private manufacturer or corporation—we encounter confusion regarding

who should act in what components of the waste management process. After the sorting phase,

the materials become the primary interest of industry. Until that point, the municipality and the

wastepickers have performed most of the work (see Figure 4.3).

The question becomes whether or not industry has some responsibility to remunerate these actors

for the service of collecting and sorting material, provided they do not perform the service

themselves. Furthermore, what role can the public sector at multiple scales play in incentivizing

industry to assume this responsibility?

Figure 4.3. Typical actors and processes in a Brazilian MSW management system. “WP”:

wastepicker; “Muni”: municipality. Adapted by the author from Final Presentation for MIT D-

Lab Waste, December 2016. Credit: Rebekah Bell.

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On the one hand, business representatives involved in projects with cooperatives argued that the

existing regulatory and operative municipal frameworks have already defined those roles;

reverse logistics is not meant to make any changes: “the municipal government has another type

of mandate...to implement recycling programs, close dumps, and include the wastepicker. It’s a

different mandate” (Interview 11). Municipal recycling is, in this sense, a separate system and

responsibility from reverse logistics.

The agreement itself reflects this separation, as it simultaneously acknowledges the language in

the PNRS that enables producers to compensate municipalities via case-specific agreements

(Congresso Nacional do Brasil 2010, sec. 36) and, in the following paragraph, explicitly

references those situations: “The Reverse Logistics System proposed in this Sector Agreement

will not be responsible for the compensation of costs of activities resulting from public urban

cleaning services and solid waste management, with the exception of activities described in the

first paragraph of this clause” (Ministério do Meio Ambiente 2015, sec. 6.5.2). This

inappropriate distinction between reverse logistics and municipal waste collection was important

to wastepickers and advocates who took issue with the agreement in its current form (Interviews

1, 9, 12), because it highlights corporations’ power to judge what kinds of activities do and do

not count toward reverse logistics (and therefore what they are responsible for funding).

To this point, many municipalities work closely with and invest funds in wastepicker

cooperatives in the form of physical infrastructure, utilities, and material transportation, and

occasionally contract cooperatives to manage collection. Therefore, on the other hand, because

businesses engaging in reverse logistics collect production data directly from materials that

cooperatives sort, bale, store, and sell, arguments for municipal inclusion maintain that

regardless of any anticipated difficulties, businesses owe some form of compensation to

municipalities for the service they are performing in facilitating reverse logistics. “I think the

ideal would be if the businesses would do partnerships and contracting of [wastepicker]

service…together with the municipalities” (Interview 6).

CSR staff evaluating this proposal were tentative, however, suggesting that payment might be

too confusing to divvy up. “The companies could pay a tax to the municipalities…I don’t know

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how we make this calculation. Because, for example, if Danone puts ten metric tons of Danone

yogurt drinks in the packaging market…to what municipality will it make this payment? We

have more than five thousand municipalities in Brazil…” (Interview 14). While private actors

were naturally more skeptical of a solution that established specific metrics for paying

municipalities, how to distribute the financial responsibility for waste management was a

lingering challenge for many advocates, both public and private, of a solution in which all actors

necessarily took on some of the burden (Interviews 3, 6, 14).

Concerns about the feasibility of distributing funds may serve merely to excuse underlying

problems regarding financial disclosure. “No one exactly knows the real costs…and in general,

the citizen isn’t charged the true value of service provision…” (Interview 1). In this sense, lack

of transparency around the true cost of service renders this type of a calculation impossible.

Traces of mistrust in government permeate similar challenges to the various possibilities for

reverse logistics (Interviews 1, 9, 11, 13). Perhaps, however, no one wants to know the true costs

of waste management services, particularly where that information would imply additional

financial responsibility. An industry representative, specifically objecting to the transfer of

money from businesses to municipalities, asserted: “it’s much better for it not to be that way.

Because here in Brazil you know how things function, in terms of corruption: you put money in

the government and it decides what to do, and it goes into some guy’s pocket” (Interview 11).

Under such circumstances, whether this fear expresses a reality or an excuse, many corporations

have opted for CSR programs over other types of schemes to fulfill reverse logistics.

Interrogating the origins of these CSR programs in the context of the packaging agreement

provides additional insight into the motivations of corporate leaders.

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5. PACKAGING SECTOR AGREEMENT ORIGINS AND OUTCOMES

As the previous chapter described, the formation of the packaging sector agreement is rooted in

failed attempts to democratize the mechanisms that establish EPR under the PNRS. In the

following chapter, I discuss some of the consequences of these attempts with regard to the

transformation and impact of CSR programs.

By the terms of the packaging sector agreement, companies may opt to participate jointly with

other members of the Coalition in activities that pool multiple companies’ resources, and/or

manage their own programs for reverse logistics. Some companies do both, at least in part due to

apparent mistrust in the government’s acceptance of the Coalition project in fulfillment of

reverse logistics. A company with an established program has less to lose in the event of an

enforcement action: “this investment that we make via the Coalition, we understand that it is

important that we [also] have our own project, because if tomorrow the public prosecutor comes

to hold us accountable…we have data, to show more concretely what we are doing. It’s more

secure, let’s say” (Interview 11). The lack of information around how the joint funds are

managed renders this concern realistic.

A more credible explanation, however, lies in the ease of maintaining a CSR program that

enforces both the company’s positive image and its control of the components of the process by

which sustainability via reverse logistics occurs. The dubious nature of this transition facilitates

the problematizing of the means of determining program success, namely the businesses’

simultaneous reliance on wastepickers’ data and lack of disclosure of their own.

From Social Responsibility to Reverse Logistics

Indeed, CSR programs under the packaging sector agreement emerged prior to the establishment

of the PNRS. Several of the participating MNCs, including Coca-Cola, Danone, Natura, and

Tetra Pak, already had CSR and environmental sustainability programs that developed

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relationships with cooperatives and nonprofits (Xavier and Correa 2013). And prior to the

establishment of the packaging sector agreement, several of these corporations belonged to

transnational organizations that champion social programs for inclusive recycling practices,

including CEMPRE (founded in 1992) and the Initiative for Inclusive Regional Recycling (IRR,

founded in 2011) (Interview 8). Both of these players now hold significant responsibility in the

context of the agreement.

Mixed opinions emerged regarding whether companies with CSR programs initiated them in

anticipation of the reverse logistics requirements within the PNRS (Interviews 6, 8), or whether

companies would have created such programs anyway, in order to address independent

sustainability goals (Interview 3, 9). Regardless, it is clear that while negotiating the terms of the

packaging sector agreement, actors in both the private and public sectors took advantage of the

apparent connections between existing CSR programs and the goals of the PNRS, adapting them

for the purposes of fulfilling the regulatory requirements of a reverse logistics system. The union

of social and economic functions has consequences (both positive and negative) for the

wastepickers and MNCs.

The final report for Phase I of the agreement provides examples of several individually-operated

programs underway, including those administered by ABIPLAST, Tetra Pak, Danone, and others

(CEMPRE and Lenum Ambiental 2017b, 72–73). These entities submit investments and

cooperative production data to CEMPRE so that it can report these figures on behalf of the entire

Coalition. Between 2012 and 2017 the Coalition claims to have invested nearly 2.8 billion reais

(approximately 800 million US dollars) in three categories of activities:

1) sorting (associations and cooperatives of wastepickers and ANCAT);

2) PEVs, educational campaigns, and investments in new technology; and

3) increasing installed capacity to promote recycling (CEMPRE and Lenum Ambiental

2017b, 81).

This quantity includes jointly-managed (on behalf of the entire Coalition) activities and

individual investments, even those made prior to the signing of the agreement in 2015 (and not

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explicitly in pursuit of product takeback or fulfillment of the law). The report does not provide a

breakdown of this quantity in terms of sources or destinations, nor does it provide information on

how much each of the 3,786 businesses has contributed to which types of activities. There is no

information regarding how much of the 2.8 billion reais comes from shares that companies

contributed to CEMPRE to be invested on behalf of the entire Coalition versus individual

investments. The report somewhat comically and triumphantly displays this investment

information in a single page section toward the end of the body of the report (see Figure 5.1).

Figure 5.1. “Cost of Structuring and Implementation of the Reverse Logistics Systems”

For curious readers, the report does provide over 700 pages of appendices that describe the

nature of the 4,487 capacity building and other material processing and sorting activities

undertaken in cooperatives and associations of wastepickers around Brazil, the names of these

802 cooperatives and associations (355 in the headquarter cities and the remaining 447 in

additional cities), the locations of the 7,825 (362 of which are not active) PEVs installed in 240

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cities, the nature of the 569 actions taken as part of educational campaigns to promote recycling,

and the nature of the 65,303 actions related to purchase of new equipment, protective gear, and

other technology or infrastructure for cooperatives.

The absence of requirements in the sector agreement regarding disclosure of expenditures, as

well as the means by which businesses decide how to invest, presents challenges for the MNCR

as they advocate levels of investment that appropriately remunerate their work. “Today the

businesses invest very little...and we don’t know what the bill should be because they don’t put

out the amount of packaging they produce. We’re still fighting to get these data in order to be

able to demand a real agreement proposal” (Interview 12). Furthermore, the kind of investment

that a private entity might make varies; some companies choose only to purchase equipment for

a cooperative, while others may focus on leadership training, technical skills, or network

building (Interview 4). The size or nature of this investment is therefore “very up in the air.

There isn’t a standardized thing that says this. For example, there are companies that donate

dozens of reais for a base and there are companies that have projects, over in São Paulo, of

thousands of reais.”13

The Coalition also does not yet have a system by which to differentiate among these activities in

terms of their success in promoting takeback of packaging, wastepicker autonomy, or

environmental remediation. Presumably, however, CEMPRE might be able to exhibit a greater

degree of control over the success of projects via jointly managed funds versus individual

investments (or CPR and IPR, respectively, in the language of EPR), particularly those made

through entities with an intimate understanding of wastepicker needs and cooperative operations.

In pursuit of this concept, ANCAT, the legal entity that represents the MNC, and the Coalition

established a partnership in 2015 (ANCAT 2017). ANCAT receives four million reais per year to

administer projects on behalf of the Coalition, which represents approximately 10% of the

funding pool (Interview 13). This is the only major mechanism through which CEMPRE

13 From author’s participation in a meeting at wastepicker cooperative COOPESOL Leste: presentation of Novo Ciclo program for the Metropolitan Region Branch of the Cataunidos Network, June 13, 2017.

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contributes money to cooperatives on behalf of the entire Coalition. ANCAT administers

Reviravolta, a project that the Coalition describes as a pilot project to model a system for data

collection (CEMPRE and Lenum Ambiental 2017b). In 2016, the project served 40 MBOs in 12

Brazilian states. The project staff quantified the economic, social, and environmental benefits

that participating wastepickers generated in 2016, in terms of resources (like water and energy)

and reais saved. Among other costs, ANCAT determined that municipalities owed them 18.9

million reais in transportation fees and over 4.5 million reais in avoided landfill dumping fees.

For purposes of comparison, each cooperative received 40,000 reais to make investments in

cooperative processes and infrastructure, a total of 1.6 million reais.

These numbers, in addition to displaying the importance of wastepicker services, highlight an

important disparity in resources allocated to MBOs. Furthermore, they provide an important

basis from which to discuss who is responsible for what portion of the remaining 2.9 million

reais owed to wastepickers. Finally, the existence of data that measure responsibility suggests

that corporations’ concerns regarding the difficulty of attributing responsibility monetarily are

excuses rather than legitimate complaints.

Sharing, or Shirking, Responsibility?

The transformation of CSR programs for the purpose of reverse logistics may enable

corporations to shirk their responsibilities, or shift them to other entities (Interviews 1, 2, 7):

“...the sense that I have, mainly in relation to reverse logistics, is that today the entrepreneurs,

factories, etc., they want to pass the entire responsibility to the wastepickers and the municipal

government. We’re now having difficulty administering this sort of thing” (Interview 2). Or, to

justify pollution: “They say, ‘ah, this factory releases a damned terrible smell here,’ but its

incentivizing our recycling program. ‘I know that I’m polluting here, but I am compensating over

there…’” (Interview 7). Regardless of whether or not corporations’ efforts at social

responsibility in the context of EPR do generate some good, they do not address the root causes

of the proliferation of packaging waste.

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Furthermore, the CSR programs already in place in fact carried several advantages for those

controlling the agreement formation process. Businesses had made investments already in staff,

place-based relationships, and corporate image: “food companies like Danone, Coca-Cola, and

Pepsico…we already had projects. Are you going to discontinue everything? It doesn’t make

sense, because for me this project is strategic in terms of business” (Interview 11). To propose a

reverse logistics system based on some other form of collaboration with wastepickers would

represent an additional cost to the company. And in the context of a process that delegated

significant power to interested parties, companies could realistically craft an agreement that

would maintain the status quo and fulfill the requisite components of the law, at least

superficially. One government official explained how the dynamics of the process facilitated the

transformation of what had been a program of social responsibility, into a program of regulatory

responsibility:

And so, in this whole conflict, because the cities didn’t have a proposal, because the ministry of environment wasn’t capable of putting forth a proposal, and because the “I put a bit of my resources in some [cooperatives]” solution for businesses is relatively cheap…today [businesses] grab the data of the cooperatives and say “this here is being recycled.” Coca-Cola already was doing this…via the Coca-Cola Institute. That is, via a politics of socio-environmental corporate responsibility, they were already doing this, the [Reference] Center [on Solid Waste] of Minas Gerais worked a long time with resources from Coca-Cola, in order to provide technical assistance to cooperatives. And what did Coca-Cola want in exchange? The data. “You give me the production data…look! I am responsible for the recycling of such-and-such an amount of monthly waste tonnage.” (Interview 8)

This interview paints a passive picture of the federal government and cities, while it

acknowledges the businesses’ stake in the maintenance of CSR programs in fulfillment of

reverse logistics for public image, financial, and regulatory reasons. As discussed, the Coalition

structured the finalized agreement accordingly. The above statement also highlights a crucial

critique of the agreement: the use of wastepickers’ production data to demonstrate compliance.

Data, Data, Data

I wish to stress here the importance of data for the functioning of the PNRS and packaging

agreement as it currently exists. Data serve as a basis for justifying corporate investment

(Interviews 2, 5), compensating wastepickers (Interviews 1, 3, 7), demonstrating compliance

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(Interview 12), and claiming exclusive rights to a cooperative (Interview 11). Nearly every

interviewee mentioned production data, revealing how data could be both used and abused—as a

proxy for responsibility (Interview 8); to distract from a company’s true production quantities

(Interview 12), or as a point of leverage for agreements with cooperatives (Interview 11).

Advocates pushed for wastepicker production data to be valued more highly. “This

information…it’s coming out at a price that in my opinion should be much greater…I don’t

know how much more, but it should be much more… Whether I make a big investment or a

really little investment, the agreement is always ‘give me the data’” (Interview 3).

A major concern, to this effect, is the agreement’s prioritization of large cities, because of the

fact that cities and cooperatives most in need of help are those least served by corporate actors

(Interviews 3, 7, 11). More specifically, the construction of the agreement incentivizes

companies to seek out the most productive cooperatives, which are generally located in the most

developed cities (Interviews 1, 12). An advocate explained: “this trips us up a lot, because since

the form of proof is production data, [the businesses] want to throw money at the cooperatives

that produce a lot.” Because data are the primary means of proving achievement of agreement

goals, the more data signatories collect with minimal effort, the more money they save.

And due to a limited number of large cooperatives and the thousands of corporations in the

agreement, this approach to EPR instigates a fight over cooperatives. “I am very critical because

of this business of exclusivity, if [Danone] can’t meet the demands of the cooperative, but at the

same time wants exclusivity for the data: ‘The data from your cooperative are mine and you

can’t give it to others’” (Interview 12). Indeed, if a company’s investment is insufficient to

support a cooperative’s operations, because the production data have been claimed already, the

cooperative is unable to receive additional support they might need. In other words, no other

companies may claim to have recycled that same material, at the risk of double counting the data,

and therefore should not invest—in theory. “In some groups this could be happening, [the data]

being duplicated” (Interview 7). Embedded within the framework of the PNRS, these perverse

incentives for businesses to invest in the places that are most likely to demonstrate the efficacy of

investments echo criticisms of evidence and performance-based policy as mechanisms for social

reform (Pawson 2006; Propper and Wilson 2003; Solesbury 2001).

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Perhaps the problems lie instead in the quantities of materials that companies are required to

account for, rather than the principle of the data as evidence of success. The goals, in this sense,

reflect merely the status quo. If the goals were higher, corporations would have to invest more.

So, what is the great problem of this agreement? The goals. The Ministry of Environment was not capable of putting ambitious goals. And so…the amount that they put in there, basically today the wastepickers already answer to it, without doing anything. Merely with the data that they collect from the watepickers, they already answer to it. The amount is very low. (Interview 8)

It seems unlikely, however, that with higher production goals, corporations would work to meet

them. Even at the current levels, corporations push back, citing the lack of recyclable material

arriving in the wastepicker cooperatives and associations. In the Phase I report, the Coalition

argues that they were not able to achieve these goals, because the quantity the agreement put

forth no longer works. “It happens that owing to the drop in recyclable material, achieving this

goal has become absolutely inviable and detached from the principal objective” (CEMPRE and

Lenum Ambiental 2017b, 76).

This drop in available recyclable material, due to the political and economic crisis in Brazil

(Interviews 4, 11),14 highlights the necessity of municipal involvement in the packaging sector

negotiations. As public funds disappear, resources for recycling programs become scarce,

suggesting the importance of further financial responsibility on the part of the corporations with

regard to advertising recycling programs and transporting material to wastepicker cooperatives

(responsibilities generally considered to be under the purview of municipal government).

Furthermore, feeling sympathy toward the corporations is difficult when the reported production

values from Phase I explicitly include “actions realized by the participating companies in the

Coalition in the years 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015, even before the signing of the Sector

Agreement…because those companies already had initiated the implementation and the support

of actions with the adequate environmental destination of the [recyclable] portion of municipal

14 From author’s participation in a meeting at wastepicker cooperative COOPESOL Leste: presentation of Novo Ciclo program for the Metropolitan Region Branch of the Cataunidos Network, June 13, 2017.

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solid waste in mind” (CEMPRE and Lenum Ambiental 2017a). Suspiciously, this explanation

diverges from the decidedly social origins of the CSR programs discussed earlier.

The design of the system apparently creates loopholes that enable agreement violations, in

addition to preventing system resilience (or enabling businesses to determine what system

resilience means) in the event of an economic crisis. It seems that many of the actors are making

excuses for the poor performance of the system. “I think that if all of the actors did their job well,

there wouldn’t be a problem. Something in the system doesn’t function, that we know doesn’t

function, and then you have that blame game: I don’t assume my responsibility and I throw it on

another” (Interview 5). What exactly about the system’s reliance on data enables corporations to

shift their responsibility to municipalities and wastepickers?

Value Deprived, Derived, and Contrived

The failure of the system lies in its selection of which data matter, not just the goals of the

agreement to collect data, broadly speaking. Specifically, using production data as the single

metric by which to evaluate program performance means that no additional basis exists for

assigning value to the work that wastepickers are doing. Because of this singular evaluative

framework, the amount the corporations are investing is not commensurate with the benefits that

the relationships with wastepickers through a CSR program generate for businesses.

Corporations, for example, derive additional utility from these programs as they would any CSR

program that generates favor with customers, suppliers, and leaders: “this question of ISO, of a

seal of quality—the companies are able to increase their values and do better business when they

have a seal of quality” (Interview 7). Furthermore, having a wastepicker serve the role of an

informant supports a corporation that requires information in pursuit of a circular economy.

And this—this internal discussion that I’m having with everyone, of how to use recyclable material from a can, in all of the packages of yogurt, how to guarantee that all of my packages are effectively going to recycling and everything—this is a very rich process, and it is a project like this that delivers, because I’m in direct contact with the wastepicker. The wastepicker says to me “look, this isn’t functioning,” and so I have a guide of a person that is in there truly with a hand in the batter. This is a great advantage, I would say, of the project. (Interview 11)

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This “advantage” to business is not incorporated into payment for wastepickers’ services,

however, despite it being the MNCR’s bandeira (primary mission) to ensure fair compensation

to wastepickers for all services they perform (Interview 12). Critics ask what the value of this

information is and hope to determine a more appropriate compensation for wastepickers that

incorporates this value.

A debate continues regarding the way in which compensatory payment for wastepickers should

be organized. “If it’s a thing that’s standardized, to have defined rules, the companies will be

contracting the cooperatives and associations for the provision of service, environmental service”

(Interview 6). Perhaps corporations should invest funds according to the amount that they

produce or to the impact on the environment of product manufacturing, distribution, and disposal

(Interviews 1, 6). As demonstrated above, with production data, it is possible to put

environmental impact into monetary terms. At the very least, perhaps cooperatives should have

more control over how to spend the funds they do receive (Interviews 1, 3, 8, 9): “[the company]

says ‘these 10 thousand reais here are going to be put into equipment and technical support, and

we’re going to decide together what it is that you need and we’re going to…pay it for you’”

(Interview 8). It appears that in this sense, the types of relationships that the packaging

agreement prescribes encourage dependency, rather than cooperatives’ autonomy.

Indeed, leaving the structure of even standardized investment to the discretion of corporations

ensures that they assign value to wastepickers’ work, based on a profit-motivated definition of

success in the context of a sufficiently sustainable program. This becomes more problematic in

the absence of information; little clarity exists regarding the efficacy of investment in

interventions like technology versus training. Even corporate representatives acknowledge that

evaluating success is confusing (Interview 11). This lack of information around impact stems in

part from the lack of transparency around payments made to the wastepickers, as evidenced

above by the Coalition’s rather opaque budgetary documentation. A CSR program staff member

said, “I don’t have an idea of how the companies arrived at the value that they’re making

available today for the wastepickers” (Interview 3). Differentiating impacts of interventions is

another well-documented problem in critical research on performance-based policies (Propper

and Wilson 2003).

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Finally, no guarantees exist that funds will end up in the right hands, even if an appropriate

valuation metric could be determined: “I don’t think anyone puts money into the cooperatives,

no” (Interview 8). Interviewees familiar with the agreement process confirmed that many

corporations are not signatories, or are, but do not comply with the agreement (Interviews 3, 6, 7,

12, 15), which has no functioning mechanisms for enforcement or for penalizing parties in the

case of their failure to adhere (Interviews 5, 9, 10). This surfaces concerns around packaging that

is not recyclable or for which a producer cannot be identified (Interview 4). In the latter case, the

language of EPR identifies “orphan products,” which can be particularly tricky with regard to

questions of responsibility demonstrated via data. This lack of transparency and specificity of the

agreement, to this effect, in fact became the basis for recent federal and state enforcement actions

against the Business Coalition.

In July 2016, the Ministério Público do Estado de São Paulo (Public Prosecutor’s Office of the

State of São Paulo, MPFSP) and the Ministério Público Federal (Federal Public Prosecutor’s

Office, MPF) brought a public civil suit against the agreement signatories and issued a statement

that highlighted the inadequacy of the agreement on several fronts. Signatories were ordered to

find a solution to the following points not sufficiently addressed in the agreement in a period of

no more than 60 days, under penalty of no less than one million reais per month: the destination

of waste materials that wastepicker cooperatives or associations cannot recycle; and the

transportation of the packaging collected at PEVs to wastepicker MBOs (Justiça Federal 2016).

The statement further specifies that in fulfilling these two requirements, signatories must clarify

the roles and responsibilities of the industry players in collecting, transporting, and giving

appropriate destination to waste materials, and present the technical and economic data that

demonstrate their fulfillment of the order. The Federal Judge issuing the order summoned the

parties to a public hearing in September of 2016, including several specific industry signatories,

the MMA, and the Secretariats of Environment of the State and City of São Paulo. Minimal

information exists regarding the outcomes of the hearings that followed the legal action, beyond

the fact that they are to inform future iterations of the agreement. Regardless, it is telling that the

problems identified at the highest levels of the judicial system echo those identified on the

ground.

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These many critiques targeting businesses from above, below, and within generally do not

disregard the positive impacts of CSR programs. In the following section, I discuss Danone’s

Novo Ciclo program and similarly-structured CSR programs, from the perspective of participants

and organizers. Exploring these impacts may not necessarily corroborate or discredit the actors

assigning the blame; rather, my goal is to provide a more nuanced view of the implications of a

reverse logistics system whose foundation is CSR.

In Service of Sustainability? CSR Program Impacts

A range of interactions exists between private actors and wastepickers in the context of the

packaging sector agreement and social programs. Historically speaking, wastepickers have been

extremely reticent to accept help from outsiders (Interview 12). Individuals and private

organizations that make promises may break them, investments come and go, staff leave, or

municipal leaders change over. Companies also may propose efficiency improvements that

ignore the realities of a cooperative’s operations:

Coca-Cola arrived here with a fantastic proposal to equip the [sorting] warehouses with automated sorting belts because of the World Cup, but no one was concerned with whether or not the warehouse was really going to function. They just wanted to put the sorting belt in there. And we said, “wait, stop there, the warehouse already has a logistics…even though it’s a messy logistics, it already functions…” So, we had some difficulties with companies in this sense. Marketing is everything, and in reality, no one wants to know what’s behind it. (Interview 2)

Despite some failed approaches, other groups have earned a rapport with wastepickers after

remaining committed to supporting and empowering them over a period of many years,

particularly nonprofit actors based in larger cities with strong wastepicker presence, like Belo

Horizonte. By delivering measurable impacts, these groups have established relationships that

allow them to work closely with and earn the trust of wastepickers (Interview 13). This, in turn,

enables staff of a CSR project or affiliated group to gain access quickly to leaders of a

wastepicker cooperative or network of cooperatives and present a proposal for the intervention or

investment. Usually, the company will establish an agreement—formal or informal—committing

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the cooperative to recording and submitting their production data to staff of the project

(Interviews 13, 14).

Recognizing these logistical realities, corporations hoping to work with cooperatives often have

success channeling their investments through nonprofits, foundations, or other organizations that

engage in social impact work. This means of intervening, on the one hand, may be more socially

and culturally appropriate (depending on the organization), because it avoids an influx of staff

without knowledge of context and individuals in a place. On the other hand, it may provide an

additional excuse for businesses to maintain unsustainable practices without much recourse.

Nevertheless, companies whose CSR programs wastepickers and nonprofit staff deem “better”

than others support long-term investment in and commitment to a group, rather than a temporary

project or donation of equipment or technology that may or may not be appropriate for an MBO

(Interview 2), as well as staff that can develop relationships with wastepickers that are grounded

in open communication and trust (Interview 4). One program that has met relative success in

these areas is Danone’s Novo Ciclo.

Danone: Novo Ciclo

Novo Ciclo is a project founded in 2012 under the Danone Ecosystem Fund that provides

capacity building and network-strengthening opportunities for wastepicker cooperatives in

southeast Brazil (Danone Ecosystem 2018). Currently in its third phase, Novo Ciclo works to

expand recyclables collection in cities and organize wastepicker cooperatives into networks in

order to help them bypass middlemen and earn competitive prices with industry recyclers

(Interviews 3, 5, 11, 14). Affiliated Novo Ciclo staff members (see Box 5.1 for a complete list of

participating organizations) work directly with wastepickers to facilitate technical training,

leadership and business development, and conflict resolution in cooperatives, and help

wastepickers prepare to negotiate with municipalities and buyers. Today, while Danone

participates in the Coalition’s joint reverse logistics projects, production data from wastepicker

MBOs that are part of Novo Ciclo are also counted toward Danone’s recuperation quotas.

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According to an early staff member, when it was founded, Novo Ciclo “wasn’t even linked to

reverse logistics…it was totally for the purpose of increasing recyclables collection in the

municipalities…and so we helped wastepickers as much as city governments” (Interview 3).

Danone had made initial investments for reasons of social responsibility, in municipalities in the

south of Minas Gerais and in São Paulo where Danone located two factories (Interview 9). In

fact, Novo Ciclo was in many ways a continuation of advances achieved through a project funded

by the Fundação Banco do Brasil (Brazilian Bank Foundation) and supported by SENAES

(since deactivated) to support wastepickers, known as Cataforte I (Interviews 3, 4).

Novo Ciclo’s origins and subsequent transformation caused some confusion, to that effect. A

wastepicker serving the role of a mobilizador, or wastepicker paid to represent the program to the

public, asked: “Is this reverse logistics? How do I explain this to a wastepicker, that reverse

logistics is my work of capacity building, the work of the project staff? Something else is

missing, something more palpable…” (Interview 4).

Box 5.1. Participating Actors, Novo Ciclo Novo Ciclo comprises the following actors:

• Danone: a French multinational food and beverage company that acts in Brazil through its Danone Brazil branch;

• Danone Ecosystem Fund: a 100-million-euro foundation launched in 2009 that supports social impact projects in communities in Danone’s value chain (“History and Mission - Danone Ecosystem Fund” 2018);

• Avina Foundation (Fundación Avina): a foundation that engages in projects in Latin America to promote innovation and collaboration toward the UN Sustainable Development Goals (Avina Foundation 2018);

• Initiative for Inclusive Regional Recycling (IRR): a regional network founded in 2011 to promote socially-mindful recycling practices in Latin America, funded by the Inter-American Development Bank, Coca-Cola Latin America, PepsiCo Latin America, the Latin-American and Caribbean Network of Recyclers, and Avina Foundation (Iniciativa Regional para el Reciclaje Inclusivo 2018); and

• Nenuca Institute for Sustainable Development (INSEA): a nonprofit based in the city of Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, that has worked toward the inclusion of wastepickers and cooperatives in municipal waste management since 2001, using a participatory action research approach to empowerment and technical capacity building (INSEA and Danone 2016).

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The answer to this question—are corporate social responsibility programs reverse logistics?—

brings us to the heart of the packaging agreement critique. “For me, the project of social

inclusion is one thing, and [the project of] reverse logistics is another” (Interview 12). While the

former renders wastepickers a subject of charity, the latter renders them equal players in a

circular economy. Herein lies the assumption of many international development charitable

programs: that the problems in need of fixing are internal to the cooperatives, rather than within

the broader system.

To understand the implications of this assumption, I refer back to Carolini, who is concerned

about the origins of participatory budgeting programs initiated by international organizations and

the expectation that their participatory nature might provoke democracy through fiscal

transparency (Carolini 2017). Similarly, the PNRS seems to expect that by receiving technical

support and exchanging production data with corporations via CSR programs, wastepickers

suddenly become legitimate democratic actors in Brazil. The responsibility—of corporations, of

government, and of society—to design a transparent system that remunerates wastepickers in a

way that facilitates their agency dissolves. Furthermore, the CSR programs in question in Brazil,

though participatory, are not manifestations of processes in which participants exercised equal

say as democratic actors.

Achievements, Aspirations, Allegations

While I question the value of the packaging agreement as a mechanism of democracy, I

acknowledge the positive components of CSR programs like Novo Ciclo. Indeed, given (or

despite) Novo Ciclo’s foundations in CSR and government social assistance, participating

wastepickers and nonprofit staff widely agree that the program has made improvements to

wastepicker livelihoods and cooperative processes. Novo Ciclo’s pioneering contribution is its

efforts to unite cooperatives in the southeast region of Brazil (Interview 5). Specifically, the

network approach is an effective approach to doing business because it allows wastepickers to

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improve inter-cooperative communications (Interview 5), understand material markets and sales

(Interview 4), and gain leadership skills.15

The staff are important resources for the cooperatives in this respect: “the enterprises

[cooperatives] are starting to perceive this—that it is necessary to organize themselves—and they

have come to realize this with the staff of the projects that reverse logistics itself has put in place

(Interview 7).” Novo Ciclo in this sense, however, has also replicated or replaced one aspect of

the Waste and Citizenship Forum. This may not imply that the municipal forum is not an

effective means of improving communication; rather, Danone appears to have rebranded certain

components, capitalizing on the mistrust in publicly-driven initiatives.

Novo Ciclo also positions itself as helping cooperatives move beyond a model of social

assistance toward one in which they are able to negotiate as equals with the major industrial

recyclers, rather than depending on intermediaries. The ability to bypass middlemen is indeed

important for ensuring the autonomy of the cooperative enterprise and improving incomes.

Figure 5.2 illustrates the profit-maximizing activities that many middlemen engage in,

particularly when purchasing materials from independent wastepickers.

On the bottom of the graphic, middlemen take advantage of the independent wastepickers’

vulnerable market positions, purchasing or transporting their recyclables at a lower price than

their true market value. Cooperatives and associations, on the other hand, depicted in the top of

the graphic, provide organized wastepickers with the bargaining power they need to earn fair

compensation for their work collecting and sorting materials.

15 From author’s participation in a meeting at wastepicker cooperative COOPESOL Leste: presentation of Novo Ciclo program for the Metropolitan Region Branch of the Cataunidos Network, June 13, 2017.

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Figure 5.2. Illustrating the role of middlemen in material chains. “WP”: wastepicker; “M”:

middlemen. Adapted by the author from Final Presentation for MIT D-Lab Waste, December

2016. Credit: Rebekah Bell.

Despite the advantages of belonging to a MBO relative to engaging in independent wastepicking

activities, intermediary recyclers can still take advantage of information asymmetries, interfere

with direct industry negotiations (Interview 11), pay wastepickers below-market rates, or back

out on sales of specific materials that may not have multiple buyers, leaving MBOs with unsold

material. These relationships build a reliance that can be difficult to escape from: “it is a

dangerous market, because there are threats… ‘if you don’t sell this, I’ll stop buying that’”

(Interview 14). Ironically, Danone may play the role of simply a more benign intermediary:

“whatever problem [the wastepickers] have—credit report, legal documentation, logistics—

project staff will go and help. [Wastepickers] fear that Danone might leave” (Interview 9).

On a less critical note, this dependence benefits wastepickers in certain respects. Danone’s

internationally recognized name, for example, can lend the networks that are involved in Novo

Ciclo a certain degree of legitimacy and protection. One wastepicker offered perspective: “if

Danone, with the power that it has, faces a business that supplies PET [polyethylene

terephthalate plastic] for [a manufacturer], now [it] will want to buy from wastepickers. It’s

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another thing than us showing up at that business.”16 Moreover, Danone’s name can incentivize

local businesses to recycle. “Some associations of cooperatives in some municipalities achieve

partnerships with local businesses because, like it or not, Danone has a name; it’s a

multinational. ‘Ah, those [wastepickers] have a partnership, which means their work is serious.’

We’re able to open doors in this way” (Interview 6). The program also exposes and enables

public and private grant funding opportunities, and helps cooperatives gain the necessary

licenses to be registered legally as a business and set up bank accounts (Interview 11). These

structural improvements prepare cooperatives to be able to receive payments and negotiations

with both government and industry.

Many alluded to this preparatory nature of Novo Ciclo, acknowledging that while it has achieved

significant advances, MBOs are still very much in the process of developing the necessary

competencies and structures. The president of the south-southeast network of cooperatives in

Minas Gerais, where Novo Ciclo began, commented:

we are understanding much more about markets, we are understanding much more about materials. We are able to negotiate more with industries. We are on another level... For example, on a scale of one to ten, when we began, we were at a two and today we already are at a six. And we need to arrive at seven, eight, nine, until ten. (Interview 4)

Novo Ciclo itself has advanced significantly since being in its first phase. Initially, the priorities

were more foundational: to promote municipal recycling (Interview 9), train wastepickers for

materials collection, establish recycling contracts with cooperatives (Interview 7), and bring

individual wastepickers into the financial and social stability of a cooperative setting (Interview

5). The program is now engaging in discussions of product take-back and closed-loop processes:

“it brought great benefits and advances…better conditions and commercialization of products.

Arriving now in this third phase, to this process of circular economy…this hasn’t been spoken of

before” (Interview 7).

16 From author’s participation in a meeting at wastepicker cooperative COOPESOL Leste: presentation of Novo Ciclo program for the Metropolitan Region Branch of the Cataunidos Network, June 13, 2017.

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It is relatively uncontroversial to state that Danone’s approach of building a recycling structure

from the ground up serves as a model among CSR programs. In addition to MBOs with high

production in World Cup cities, Novo Ciclo fortifies smaller MBOs. As mentioned earlier,

businesses’ failure to do this has been the basis for major critique of the reverse logistics roll out

process across Brazil:

Novo Ciclo has been an example that we bring to places where there isn’t Novo Ciclo, that Danone has invested in this network of wastepickers. Truly, it has had an improvement, because they invested in capacity building, in infrastructure, and in support of city recyclables collection…This is one example, but where are the others? Danone is not the only one that exists in Brazil. (Interview 9)

The wastepickers, government officials, and advocates who had worked on or had heard of

Danone’s Novo Ciclo program echoed the idea that “[Danone] already does what many don’t do”

(Interview 5). The impact of resources for smaller cooperatives is transformative—and the

benefits to Danone’s image equally so.

Indeed, Danone’s approach does not merely benefit wastepickers; as mentioned, CSR can carry

significant benefits for the environment, relationships, incomes, and importantly, the

implementing businesses. The success of the third phase of Novo Ciclo in particular lies in its

focus on circular economy (Interview 3), which not only emphasizes, but also necessitates, a

more reciprocal relationship with wastepickers. The flow of information between wastepickers

actually engaging daily with the materials raises awareness to implications of production that

transcend profit, including environmental and social considerations.17 “This dialogue is also

important because the decisions of the packaging sector businesses are purely economic and

about marketing. How do you put in the head of these people that they have to think about the

material?” (Interview 14).

The call to “think about the material” here refers to the most cited example of product

modification or DfE that I heard of in the context of EPR in Brazil (Interviews 4, 6, 11): “the

17 From author’s participation in a meeting at wastepicker cooperative COOPESOL Leste: presentation of Novo Ciclo program for the Metropolitan Region Branch of the Cataunidos Network, June 13, 2017.

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wastepickers were able, for example, to change the packaging of some products of [Danone’s], it

was PEAD [high density polyethylene, HDPE] packaging, or packaging that had various types of

materials, and so it changed to PET, the label changed…through Novo Ciclo” (Interview 6).

Danone also has been encouraged to refine these plastics further as a result of interactions with

wastepickers: “it was a wastepicker that came and said, ‘look, it’s really cool that you’ve

transformed yogurt bottles into PET, but this white pigmentation doesn’t work, and I’m not able

to sell it.’ And so [Danone] is discussing alternatives for this also...” (Interview 11). Novo Ciclo

becomes a space for experimentation and innovation, in this way, because material that was

previously without a market becomes recyclable.

Although evidence-based policy researchers remind us that it is difficult to attribute these

improvements to a single program (Propper and Wilson 2003), data released jointly by Danone

and nonprofit partners indicate that Novo Ciclo as a whole has increased recyclable material

arriving in wastepicker cooperatives: average monthly incomes for participating cooperative

members have increased from 552 reais in 2012, to 818 reais in 2016 (INSEA and Danone

2016). Several wastepickers and staff participating in the program shared the belief that this was

the case (Interviews 3, 7, 14). When asked if the statistics were an accurate representation of the

effects of the program, a staff member replied: “Yes. You’re able to see it in the numbers”

(Interview 7). This trust in the data pervaded exchanges across public, private, and civil society

actors, and suggests an opportunity for businesses to take advantage of the arrival in Brazil of the

evidence-based policy wave.

Further discussion painted pictures of exchanges with wastepickers that were less favorable to

Danone in the context of these material advances, revealing that Danone only made changes

once high-level officials backed wastepickers’ complaints:

This process of circular economy, Danone was the one who brought it. Danone itself put it in place. Why did it put it in place? Because it saw that there were products that were not recoverable…When the president of Brazil was in the cooperatives and saw that there, people came to him and said “this bottle here, look at the seal, it’s not recycled.” And then [Danone] woke up… (Interview 7)

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Regardless of the means by which Danone “woke up,” it seems reasonable to conclude that Novo

Ciclo has indeed improved recycling rates and incomes, given that Novo Ciclo was primarily

responsible for establishing recycling programs, organizing cooperatives and networks of

wastepickers, and ensuring markets for previously unmarketable packaging. These advances are

positive, if a reverse logistics program is modeled off of the Novo Ciclo approach. When asked if

Novo Ciclo was indeed achieving product takeback as prescribed by the PNRS, an interviewee

said “From the projects that I’ve seen, [Novo Ciclo] comes the closest to what it would

be…closing the loop…with our suppliers” (Interview 3). Others suggested that it was too early

in the policy implementation process to discern reliably (Interview 4) or expressed that Novo

Ciclo and similar initiatives were “important, but experiments, and for this reason, [businesses]

have to think up some real reverse logistics initiatives” (Interview 14).

If Novo Ciclo is representative of an effective reverse logistics program in this context, it is

unwise to trust that all companies would model reverse logistics programs off of the Novo Ciclo

approach, given that most companies do not invest nearly as much as Danone. Coalition

members recognize this as the rationale behind the PSO approach to EPR. Even in a world where

all businesses comply by contributing to a joint fund to manage a Novo Ciclo-like program, to

assume that this model is the correct model off of which to base the entire system of reverse

logistics relies on the achievement of several conditions that still challenge cooperatives, namely

technical knowledge (Interview 2), the formalization of infrastructure and internal processes

(Interviews 5, 7, 13), and the acquisition of licenses (Interview 7), among other concerns like

negotiating capabilities (Interview 11) and access to additional funding sources (Interview 8).

Wastepickers contend that the investment that corporations are making currently is too little for

the value that they are contributing, regardless of the improvements the CSR programs have

brought about. Unfortunately, however, wastepickers had little choice in the matter. “Given the

situation that the cooperatives are in, it’s something that is important, and it’s because of this that

the movement [of wastepickers] says ‘it was this or nothing’” (Interview 8). Program staff push

back, asserting that they are doing the best they can, under the circumstances: “Is it sufficient?

It’s a good initiative…it’s better than nothing” (Interview 5).

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This “better than nothing” approach sidesteps a fundamental concern: that the benefits of CSR

programs in fulfillment of EPR do not offer sufficient compensation for the work the

wastepickers perform. As discussed earlier, this is the basis upon which many critique the fact

that the corporations initiated reverse logistics in the context of social programs. Improved

dialogue between wastepickers and corporate actors through CSR programs like Novo Ciclo

offers at least some benefits to all actors involved, as well as to society and the environment.

Regardless, are these programs the appropriate vehicle for reverse logistics? If not, what

alternative models exist?

Experiments, Innovations, and Ideals

Few initiatives have determined how to remunerate wastepickers completely for their services. A

potential model, developed in partnership with ANCAT, is BVRio’s Portal of Reverse Logistics

Credits (BVRio 2018), a trading platform for MBOs to sell, and corporations to purchase, credits

based on the materials recycled (see Figure 5.3).

MBOs with a Cadastro Nacional da Pessoa Jurídica (National Registry of Legal Entities, CNPJ,

or tax number) may sign up for the portal and submit a material sale receipt, earning one credit

per metric ton sold. Corporations then purchase credits in fulfillment of the PNRS. The prices of

credits vary based on material markets (credits for materials in high demand cost more for

corporations). The platform strives to move beyond payment for the sale of materials, such that

MBOs earn compensation for the service of wastepicking. It also ensures that wastepickers are

not penalized for recycling materials with lower value. A pilot of the program occurred between

April of 2014 and March of 2015 (Costa, Costa, and Freitas 2017).

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Figure 5.3. BVRio online trading platform for exchange of reverse logistics recycling credits.

Fully operational initiatives that offer positive results include CSR programs run by the

Associação Brasileira da Indústria de Higiene Pessoal, Perfumaria e Cosméticos (Brazilian

Association of Industry of Personal Hygiene, Perfumery, and Cosmetics, ABIHPEC), which

compensate MBOs according to material production tonnage (Interviews 8, 12); and the

Reviravolta partnership between ANCAT and the Business Coalition, which specifically targets

smaller, less coveted cooperatives (Interview 3, ANCAT 2017). The latest report from

Reviravolta, in fact, calculates the value that the participating MBOs create in terms of

environmental benefits, like water, energy, oil, and trees saved (see Table 5.4).

Table 5.4. Natural resource savings generated from Reviravolta project.

Water (kiloliters) Energy (kilowatt hours) Petroleum (barrels) Trees (units)

205,965.1 126,371,706.08 94,229.20 339,860

Adapted by the author from (ANCAT 2017). Sources: INSEA, (Zaman and Lehmann 2013).

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It may be that these innovations all bring the reverse logistics system closer to an ideal

arrangement. Exploring Danone’s Novo Ciclo and other similarly celebrated programs leads me

to conclude that a “successful” CSR program under the PNRS might feature the characteristics

described in Box 5.2.

Even these improvements, however, address the system as it exists currently. If, instead, we

interrogate the histories, ideologies, and alliances that inform its development, we are compelled

to question the foundations of the system itself. The MNCR has struggled for a sustainable waste

management that remunerates contributions of wastepickers to the economy, the environment,

and social resilience of urban centers. Even corporate actors and CSR programs with the most

genuine of sustainability goals must please funders and customers to achieve a bottom line.

Moments of triumph have punctuated the challenges. The fact of wastepickers’ incorporation in

the agreement was unfathomable decades ago. Ultimately, the law itself is “still a child”

(Interview 7), and “sometimes you have to push for a law to function” (Interview 6). The trial-

and-error nature of the packaging agreement negotiations process has produced “a laboratory of

confrontation of the different strategies of the sectors involved” (Interview 13).

Box 5.2. Elements of a “Successful” CSR Program under the PNRS

1. investments are proportional to a standardized calculation of the value that the recipients (wastepickers, MBOs, and municipalities) contribute to the waste system, in terms of quantities of materials processed, miles traveled (in the case of material transport), and/or natural resources saved;

2. businesses are held to these specific investment standards and maintain transparency regarding where and how they are investing;

3. MBOs have agency over the distribution of their funds, as well as the ability to develop rotating capital to invest in longer-terms improvements and negotiate payment schedules with industry recyclers;

4. investments support the work of smaller cooperatives rather than simply seeking to maximize data from more productive MBOs; and

5. wastepickers have additional financial incentives to recycle products of lower value, like glass, subsidized by producers as a means of encouraging DfE or material adjustments.

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Nevertheless, many interviewees that expressed these conciliatory remarks were also the harshest

critics. The complexity of the agreement is no excuse for its flaws or its failure to realizes labor’s

vision of sustainability. “It seems to me that the agreement was the agreement that was possible,

but clearly it’s not the best solution, not in the form that it is today” (Interview 8).

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6. “A LABORATORY OF CONFRONTATION”

Imagining a functioning EPR system for Brazil necessitates an understanding of why the

foundations of Brazil’s EPR system are flawed. I unpack a fundamental criticism of EPR under

the PNRS and the packaging sector agreement: the disparity between EPR and CSR. I revisit the

histories from which the PNRS emerged in order to connect these criticisms back to the

analytical framework of sustainability alliances that anchors this inquiry, while introducing a

framework for future inquiry.

EPRs…and Are Nots

A policy informed by the principals of EPR and shared responsibility would compensate

wastepicker MBOs as the market would any legitimate recycling enterprise that creates a product

with value (Interviews 5, 8, 13). In an ideal world, this system would then fully compensate

wastepickers for the additional value that they generate within a municipal economy, including

benefits like job creation and avoided expenses related to environmental harms (Interview 7). It

would also recognize and compensate the social contribution cooperatives make to society,

providing solutions to problems of unemployment and discrimination against marginalized

members of society (Interview 13).

EPR does not, however, exist in an ideal world; it is not set up to compensate these types of

benefits. An EPR policy systematically assigns responsibility for the ostensibly objective costs

associated with the disposal of physical products, while CSR results in arbitrary levels of

investment according to a profit-motivated vision of sustainable development. CSR inherently

does not fulfill the goals of an EPR system. The EPR that the PNRS prescribes, however, hints at

a system that can do it all.

To many, the PNRS is appropriately ambitious. CSR programs are simply one step in a long

process of transition for wastepickers from invisible outcast, to citizen, to economic actor. The

social and technical support that the CSR programs provide is “preparation” (Interview 7).

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Perhaps, then, a fully functioning EPR in the Brazilian context necessitates CSR first. Most

cooperatives lack the basic infrastructure and resources that would be necessary for reverse

logistics (Interviews 5, 7, 13), like CNPJ (tax identification numbers) and negotiating power

(Interview 7), access to funding (Interview 11), administrative and organizational support, access

to credit, and even self-image and self-esteem (Interview 8). These arguments take a view of

wastepickers that at once acknowledges the major strides that the MNCR has made in the past

decades; the lingering difficulties of the wastepicker profession; the positive contributions of the

CSR programs; and the trial-and-error nature of policy implementation.

Putting aside its efforts to reconcile two conflicting policy frameworks in the face of social,

political, and economic challenges, the PNRS is flawed due to the maximally sized—but

minimally structured—space it leaves for corporations with financial motives to determine how

they wish to be governed. Despite federal oversight of the formation of the agreement for the

packaging sector, initial phases of the implementation of the PNRS have satisfied corporate

desires to maximize profits via the Business Coalition’s control, with minimal to no

transparency, of the destination of funds. Wastepickers, with some exception, do not receive

compensation that is proportional to the quantities of material they recycle or for the delivery of

production data. Businesses may claim that they have recycled this material, without

documenting the degree to which they are involved in the various phases of material

transportation, preparation, and sale. Furthermore, wastepicker MBOs do not receive

compensation for additional services they provide as economic engines for municipalities and

regions, spaces of professional, economic, and social development, and providers of

environmental education.

This is not to say that CSR programs do not invest in MBOs. Businesses and municipalities that

work directly with wastepickers provide significant investment in the form of equipment,

protective gear, and technical and social support. Again, however, these programs began and

continue to exist from a place of charity. This fact positions wastepickers as the recipients of

donations, rather than as autonomous market actors deserving of payment for the disposal of a

product, as a true EPR policy would prescribe. And until society values wastepickers as

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economic, social, and environmental actors, these charitable programs, though participatory, are

not addressing the need for democratic processes that include wastepickers.

Does Brazil’s system, with its range of actors of varying degrees of organization, preparation,

and formality, necessitate the current system? I join the growing number of researchers and

advocates arguing that it does not. I concede that many MBOs may not yet be prepared to serve

as market actors. CSR programs like Novo Ciclo, which engage wastepickers as entrepreneurs,

innovators, and educators, are certainly a step toward that goal, but they are just that—a step.

These programs could more overtly acknowledge this fact than they already do in their CSR

literature. Furthermore, because the majority of corporations seems not to have invested in a

fashion similar to the Novo Ciclo program, increasing the number of programs that achieve at

least the five characteristics listed above in Box 5.2 could facilitate more widespread

acknowledgment among businesses of this end goal. Unfortunately, the power dynamics of the

actors on the ground may render these recommendations lofty.

Co-Opted Sustainabilities

The emergence of the PNRS from an administration with conflicting private and popular

influences makes the trajectory of these processes quite logical. The Lula government, whose

first successes stemmed from the simultaneous continuation of neoliberal policies and promise of

social reform (Mollo and Saad-Filho 2006), would go on to endorse a national policy for waste

that prescribed a process in which corporations had a significant influence, despite the stated

inclusion (appropriately so) of all actors, particularly wastepickers.

This policy required 20 years to be signed into law, as a strong lobby of corporate players

ensured its interests would not be compromised. The PNRS implementing decree remains

decidedly vague regarding the specifics of the processes, leaving them instead to the negotiations

among sector representatives. These same players represented the interests of the more moderate,

if not overtly right-leaning, constituents that secured Lula’s election and maintained influence

over his domestic and international economic policies. Under these circumstances, Lula was

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forced to do the dance of a politician answering both to the masses that had lifted him into the

spotlight, and the powerful individuals and groups that allowed him, after two failed attempts at

the presidency, to stick the landing, so to speak.

These actions are the result of the alliances discussed in Chapter Two. Wastepickers are laborers,

environmental stewards, social mobilizers, and socio-environmentally vulnerable individuals.

The embodiment of this multi-dimensional identity has enabled them to attract allies, and to

speak to broader benefits that allowed them to pass the law in the first place. Corporate actors, on

the other hand, adopted environmentally sustainable agendas, including corporate sustainability

and social responsibility programs, in order to respond to outrage regarding the detrimental

behaviors that their value chains encouraged. Now, CSR is practically a requirement for large

businesses; it helps please shareholders and customers and improves investment opportunities.

The mere existence of participatory CSR programs, however, does not yield democracy, nor does

it heal the decades of financial misdealings, lack of transparency, and eroded public trust in

Brazil. Indeed, the structure for developing and investing in these programs has been equally

dubious from the perspective of popular groups; it reproduces many of the same problems. Why?

The hypotheses I presented in Chapter Four to explain the public sector’s absence from the

architecture of EPR in Brazil implicate both business and government. In all versions of the

story, however, the conclusions are the same:

Using a discourse of CSR that emphasizes charitable work, sustainability goals, and capacity

building, corporations have taken advantage of the very environmental identity that wastepickers

had to craft in order to make progress. Thus, beyond the shortcomings of the agreement process

and outcomes, we encounter, somewhat perversely, the co-opting of the wastepickers’ own

sustainability discourse for corporate gain.

This is the “emerging corporate hegemony” that Cole predicts will replace popular attempts to

hold businesses accountable to environmental standards (Cole 2012, 40), the political economy

of environmental governance that Levy and Newell assert structures environmental regimes and

“[ensures] that the bargaining process is not a pluralistic contest among equals” (Levy and

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Newell 2002, 84). Participatory CSR programs in fulfillment of the PNRS are the “light

bandage” that Carolini fears “presents the illusion of democratic reform,” rather than addressing

the underlying problems of institutional control of public sector finance for municipal

infrastructure (Carolini 2017, 131). Corporations have exploited the opportunity that Faber

suggests sustainability creates for labor to stand up to corporate power, particularly in post-

socialist regimes in the global South (Faber 2005). The waste actors that the PNRS holds

responsible fall victim to the blurring of sustainabilities it prescribes.

Final Thoughts, Further Inquiry

The PNRS is a product of the late 20th century trend toward evidence-based policy making. Such

policies attempt to produce objective measures of the success of interventions, responding to

growing mistrust in the public sector and pressures from private funders (Pawson 2006), a

phenomenon to which Solesbury refers as the “utilitarian turn in research” (Solesbury 2001). As

we have seen in Brazil, this thirst for some tangible proof of success renders data a product of

substantial value in the context of policy evaluation.

Accounts of problems resulting from evidence and performance-based policy abound, however,

in the realms of healthcare and education (Propper and Wilson 2003), and increasingly in

environmental policy frameworks, for example climate change adaptation (Tangney and Howes

2015) and green infrastructure (Lennon 2014). One body of critique cautions decision makers to

avoid heavy reliance on a static scaffold for success as defined by actors controlling the policy

making and implementation processes, rather than on an interpretive analysis constructed by the

participants (Pearce, Wesselink, and Colebatch 2014). Regulated entities can become slaves to

data reporting requirements, despite existing in a reality where policy is made by humans with

interests, opinions, and values (Rutter 2012).

When I began this inquiry, I aspired to explore questions with measurable answers. I fixated on

whether or not the CSR programs under the PNRS “worked.” Did they reduce waste, protect the

environment, and improve wastepickers’ incomes and autonomy? The answer to these questions,

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a simple “yes,” becomes irrelevant, however. Ultimately, “what works is not all that matters”

(Solesbury 2001, 8), particularly when a policy identifies “what works” according to the terms of

those with the power to actualize their visions.

These concerns have manifested prominently in the PNRS narrative, which is, among many

stories, one of data—its potential for being masked and manipulated to the detriment of the very

actors that the evidence-based policy is intended to support. This thesis has demonstrated that the

entities defining what counts as evidence toward EPR in Brazil control the distribution of

responsibility and valuation of benefits in the context of waste management. Therefore, I

challenge all responsible waste actors to explore alternative forms of evidence that liberate the

logics of sustainability from the logics of capital.

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Appendix 1: List of Transcribed Interviews (June-July 2017) No. Sector/Affiliation Date Location Description

1 Academia June 5, 2017 Belo Horizonte / São Paulo Phone call

2 Government June 8, 2017 SLU, Belo Horizonte In person

3 Nonprofit / CSR program

June 14, 2017 INSEA, Belo Horizonte In person

4 Wastepicker: leader June 19, 2017 INSEA, Belo Horizonte / Poços de Caldas

Phone call

5 Foundation/CSR program

June 21, 2017 Café in Gutierrez, Belo Horizonte

In person

6 Wastepicker: leader June 27, 2017 INSEA, Belo Horizonte In person

7 Nonprofit / CSR program

June 27, 2017 INSEA Belo Horizonte In person

8 Government June 28, 2017 CMRR, Belo Horizonte In person

9 Nonprofit July 5, 2017 INSEA, Belo Horizonte In person

10 Wastepicker: leader July 6, 2017 INSEA, Belo Horizonte In person

11 Industry July 3, 2017 Belo Horizonte / São Paulo Phone call

12 Wastepicker: leader July 6, 2017 INSEA, Belo Horizonte In person

13 Nonprofit July 6, 2017 INSEA, Belo Horizonte In person

14 Foundation/CSR July 7, 2017 Café in Funcionários, Belo Horizonte

In person

15 Wastepicker: leader June 27, 2017 Belo Horizonte / Porto Alegre Text exchange

16 Academia June 27, 2017 Gutierrez, Belo Horizonte In person

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Appendix 2: List of Meetings/Rallies Attended (June-July 2017) Event Description Date Location

Semana Mineira de Promoção da Reciclagem Inclusiva

Zero Waste Presentation at Minas Gerais Week to Promote Inclusive Recycling

June 5, 2017 Prefeitura (City Hall), Belo Horizonte

Semana Mineira de Promoção da Reciclagem Inclusiva

Wastepicker presentations at Minas Gerais Week to Promote Inclusive Recycling

June 7, 2017 CMRR, Belo Horizonte

Encontro na Núcleo Região Metropolitana da Cataunidos

Presentation of Novo Ciclo program for the Metropolitan Region Branch of the Cataunidos Network

June 13, 2017

COOPESOL Leste, Belo Horizonte

Encontro na Núcleo Região Metropolitana da Cataunidos

Discussion of cooking oil and styrofoam recycling programs

June 13, 2017

COOPESOL Leste, Belo Horizonte

Forum de Lixo e Cidadanîa, Nova União

Waste and Citizenship Forum in Nova União

June 21, 2017

Prefeitura, Nova União

Reunião da ORIS Meeting of the Observatory on Inclusive Recycling

July 10, 2017

Fundacentro, Belo Horizonte

Memorial da Democracia, Segunda Fase

Speech by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Memorial to Democracy, Phase 2

July 10, 2017

Palácio das Artes, Belo Horizonte

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Appendix 3: List of Novo Ciclo Interviews/Meetings (January 2017) No. Affiliation/Location Network Date City 1 Coopersul Sul-Sudeste January 4, 2017 Poços de Caldas 2 Ação Reciclar Sul-Sudeste January 4, 2017 Poços de Caldas 3 Ação Reciclar Sul-Sudeste January 4, 2017 Poços de Caldas 4 Ação Reciclar Sul-Sudeste January 5, 2017 Poços de Caldas 5 Ação Reciclar Sul-Sudeste January 5, 2017 Poços de Caldas 6 Acamar Sul-Sudeste January 6, 2017 Lavras 7 Acamar Sul-Sudeste January 6, 2017 Lavras 8 Acamar Sul-Sudeste January 6, 2017 Lavras 9 Asmare Cataunidos January 9, 2017 Belo Horizonte 10 Asmare Cataunidos January 9, 2017 Belo Horizonte 11 Asmare Cataunidos January 9, 2017 Belo Horizonte 12 Cataunidos/INSEA MNCR January 9, 2017 Belo Horizonte 13 Cataunidos/INSEA Cataunidos January 9, 2017 Belo Horizonte 14 Cataunidos/INSEA Cataunidos January 9, 2017 Belo Horizonte 15 Asmare Cataunidos January 9, 2017 Belo Horizonte 16 Asmare Cataunidos January 9, 2017 Belo Horizonte 17 Asmare Cataunidos January 9, 2017 Belo Horizonte 18 COOMARP Pampulha Rede Sol January 10, 2017 Belo Horizonte 20 COOMARP Pampulha Rede Sol January 10, 2017 Belo Horizonte 23 Cataunidos/INSEA MNCR January 11, 2017 Belo Horizonte 24 Ação Reciclar Sul-Sudeste January 12, 2017 Poços de Caldas 26 Danone/Avina/INSEA Novo Ciclo January 13, 2017 Poços de Caldas 27 Futura Catavale January 16, 2017 São José dos Campos 28 Futura Catavale January 16, 2017 São José dos Campos 29 Futura Catavale January 17, 2017 São José dos Campos 30 Futura Catavale January 17, 2017 São José dos Campos 31 Rodoviária Catavale January 17, 2017 São José dos Campos 32 Jacareí Recicla Catavale January 18, 2017 Jacareí 33 Jacareí Recicla Catavale January 18, 2017 Jacareí 34 Jacareí Recicla Catavale January 18, 2017 Jacareí

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