Potencial de contribuição e importância socioambiental dos 'catadores autônomos' de Rio Claro (SP) para o programa de coleta seletiva municipal

The Urban Solid Residues are the rests of human activity, popularly known by trash and considered by population like useless, undesirable and disposable. On the other hand, for the waste pickers, solid residues are the beginning of a cycle: they see in the other's people trash the only income, an economic value. Currently, in brazilian cities, one million collectors act, alone or in cooperatives, socially excluded by the work they do. The National Policy of Solid Residues (PNRS), instituted in 2010, established guidelines to the execution of integrated residues management, with should be practiced by city halls and other governmental institutions. This policy has, besides other things, goals of residues reduction and inclusion of waste pickers in the mechanism of selective collect and recycling. However, this and other public policies created for residue management are benefic only for cooperated waste pickers. That could negatively affect most of this class, since 90% are waste pickers working in a precarious way on the country's streets. This study has for objective show that most of waste pickers that work in a precarious way on the brazilian territory has a huge potential for the solid residues recycling chain and how they should be valued for the environmental services they provide, so they can be included with dignity on the society, ensuring economic and social benefits for this workers. The methodology adopted was based on the amount of residue collected by the 44 cooperated members of the Rio Claro‟s waste pickers cooperative to estimate the potential of collect and recycling did by 210 autonomous waste pickers who are active on city streets. It was observed that the cooperative collects the equivalent of 10.2% of all recyclable residues generated by city population. However, with the potential that these autonomous waste pickers have, which together could contribute 465 tonnes of solid residues per month, or 5,570 tons a year...

Estudo de viabilidade técnica e econômica da utilização de geração diesel no horário de ponta

Given the current energy crisis experienced in our country with the lack of rain in some areas, the energy distributors were forced to resort to thermal power plants to complement their energy production; raising the cost of electricity generation, they have been forced to repass this value to the customers through the Tariff Flags. Concerned about a substantial increase in their electric bill, some consumers were forced to look for alternatives so that their results are not affected. The use of diesel generation at peak hours is a relatively simple and inexpensive alternative that has been widely used for several industrial, commercial and service customers. In this present work, we conducted a feasibility study of the use of diesel generators at peak hours in a medium-sized hospital, calculating the depreciation period for the investment through savings in electricity bills