Do lixo à solidariedade : avanços e perspectivas na busca de uma nova realidade

The dissertating study about the solidarity economy has the objective to analyze the four unions responsible for the selective municipal garbage collection in Natal. It aims at verifying the consolidation of these unions as solidarity economic undertakings, revealing which progresses they have made, as well as the social and economic insertion of the garbage collectors and their process of conquering citizenship. The referred four unions had been founded and are constituted, in their majority, by collectors coming from the Cidade Nova lixão (big garbage). As it was closed in August 2004, they decided to make a union in order to collecting garbage. As what concerns the methodic and theoretic proceedings, our research has been developed with a critical perspective and a qualitative approach without discarding and quantitative one. The central analytical categories of this paper are: association, work, social exclusion and citizenship. Our research has had three articulated axis which aim was to apprehend the subject, disclosing it. The exposition of the investigative results is subdivided in four chapters. The first one approaches the main aspects of the crisis of the capital and its reflexes in the world of work. Here we deal with the question the structural unemployment coming as a result of the present economic model, the mains changes verified in the Brazilian work market, as well as levels of unemployment affecting the work market in Natal s metropolitan region. The second chapter treats of the origin, concept and revival in Brazil concerning the tradition of thought and cooperative economic organization, which has recovered the central elements of the associative thought and is nowadays studied in Latin America under the name of solidarity economy. The third chapter deals with embodiment of the collectors unions, its history, appearing and development of each union. The fourth chapter presents the relative dimensions of the analysis categories supported in the reports of institutional actors as well as the perception collectors have about the recyclable stuffs, the way they face the daily life and so on, what brings about the contradictions present in their reality. The final comments sum up the main trends and particularities of the unions researched under the light of the solidarity economy and disclose the real perspectives of social and economic insertion of these collectors and the process they follow to conquest social recognition

Diagnóstico sócio-produtivo-econômico da comunidade de catadores de resíduos sólidos do município de Codó-MA: um estudo de caso

The research was carried out in the urban area in Codó-MA, a small city the east part of Maranhão, which has 4,228.000 km2 (IBGE, 2000) and population of 113,768 hab. (IBGE, 2008). The city is also inside Codó-MA micro-region. The city is located in one of the lacking area in Brazil, where the Human Development Index (IDH) is approximately 0,558. It does not present an adequate model of management when talking about solid residue collecting. All of the solid residue produced and collected in the city is stored in an open area that they call lixão , which is located in a residence area in the suburbs. Because of that, a problem that involves public health and environmental areas, we understand it is necessary to investigate the way the local government treats and manages the solid residue collecting, as well as, the social, economical and productive reality of those who are directly involved in the collecting itself, its productive chain of the material, including the handling, transportation and its final destiny. It means a social, productive, economical diagnosis, that in a such way,the local society and the organs of inspection can act in a better way to control the problems that include solid urban residue and come from a bad administration. That way, this work proposes to carry out a study that has as result a diagnosis with feasible alternatives on management, taking as basis, social and economical aspects that compound this productive chain. This work can bring great contributions to a better local reality through the introduction of an integrated and supported system of management of solid residue that includes a selective collecting and the creation of a sanitary area. Taking that into consideration, we can contribute to minimize the environmental impacts in Codó Novo, caused by the garbage