Recycle your relationship with trash! | Mateus Mendonça | TEDxLaçador

"I love trash, I love you and I love who loves trash."

Where it comes from and where it goes what we consume? Each Brazilian produces on average 1 kg of waste per day. In 2014, it was generated 78.6 million tons of solid waste in Brazil. And there is no throwing away regarding the waste we produce. It has a lot of wealth in the trash, and Mateus came to talk about that.

Mateus Mendonça is a specialist in recycling technology and social business strategies, co-founder of Giral, NewHope Ecotech and Vivei.ro Inovação Social, finalist in the INDEX Design to Improve Life Award, winner of the Stephan Schmidheiny Award in the Production Responsible category and recognized as one of 10 young innovators of 2015 by MIT Technology Review.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

I'm here to say

that I love trash.

I love you, I love trash,
and I love who loves trash.

(Laughter)

And to ask everyone to recycle
their relationship with trash;

because "suns go round,

planets go round,

whirlwinds go round,

cyclones go round,

life, in its multiple
and entangled cycles, goes round:

homeostatic cycles, reproduction cycles,

ecological cycles of night and day [...]

Man believes he invented the wheel,

but actually we were born
from all those wheels."

Edgar Morin, to begin our day

and to bring the so talked nowadays:
circular economy, recycling -

we'll talk about these concepts soon,

but I think that this text was very
meaningful for us to start talking

about this breeding and abundant ground

that is the trash;

of resources, not trash.

Deconstruct what we believe is trash.

I also love to undertake some projects

and I undertake some initiatives.

I found my place

and I undertake some initiatives

to support those who collect
recyclable materials

on this tough process, this hard fight

to find their place under the sun

and their place in entrepreneurship

to take care of the trash.

On these two days here,
we've already generated

more than half a ton of waste.

In Brazil, we generate

around 1 kg of trash per inhabitant.

Organic waste, recyclable trash,

trash we still cannot do anything
with it and we call it rejects.

Around 1 kg.

Americans generate around 2 kg.

Europeans generate around 3 kg.

And if we go on getting examples

and acting like these communities,
we will get there too.

Do we want that?

I don't.

Few people ask where trash
comes from and where it goes.

Everyone loves to go to the supermarket,
to farmers' market, and to make choices,

choose brands, products,

flavors and colors.

But few people see where everything goes

after we consume them.

Away does not exist.

We don't swap things
with the outer space, yet.

The Earth is the only place we found
for us in these galaxies and planets.

So, "away", forget this word.

You don't throw anything away.

We generate around
78.6 million tons of trash,

per year, in Brazil.

Nine percent of this amount
isn't even collected.

I had a video to show you,
but I decided not to,

that shows a little truck
throwing trash into a river.

A city hall which has even a place

for the truck to throw
the trash into the river.

So, nine percent is not even collected,

so, we collect 71.3 million tons.

It is distributed like this,
in Brazilian regions.

Of course, in the Southeast,
which is more populated,

the economy is more active,
we generate more trash.

After it comes the Northeast,
then the South,

then the Central West and the North.

Forty-two percent of the waste
is not well destined.

It goes to dumps and water streams,

contaminating the soil,
it is burned, contaminating the air.

This means that 29.7 million tons
of waste are not well destined.

But there's a lot of wealth in this waste.

I came to talk about this wealth.

There's worm food...

(Laughter)

There's worm food, that later becomes
lettuce, tomato, beet, carrot,

becoming food again.

Once I heard that the soil is like a bank,

and the organic compost is the deposit.

We have to make the compost
to deposit it in the bank,

to earn, so we can have food.

There is also paper,

plastic,

aluminum.

There is even gold in the trash.

A lot, not little.

It's estimated that 30 percent
of gold resources, today, in the world,

come from electronic waste.

Brazil is a leader in recycling waste.

Do you think that's
because we are very conscious?

It's not.

We recycle 98 percent
of the aluminum cans,

70 percent of the cardboard,

54 percent of PET plastic.

But this is the result

of hard and not recognized work
of garbage collectors.

They've been already included,
they included themselves,

men and women who collect
recyclable materials.

Black, mixed, white people; everywhere
in Brazil, we have garbage collector.

They are people who chose, with dignity,

to collect recyclable trash
from our streets;

this material we believe
we were throwing away.

"One man's trash
is another man's treasure."

This is a French proverb I like to use.

However, this job is done by hard working

in dumps, on the streets, pulling carts,

without acknowledgment.

As I said, they included themselves.

But they still work among vultures,
with no PPEs, nothing at all.

The Brazilian law about garbage collection

was discussed for 21 years,

and the garbage collectors

have been feeding recycling companies
in the country for more than 50 years.

In 2010, we created
the National Solid Waste Policy,

law #12,305/2010,
for the lawyers in the audience.

(Laughter)

The law recognizes recyclable material
as an economic good with social value,

that means, not only
an environmental good.

We kill two birds with one stone:

we protect the environment
and include people,

thanks to recyclable material.

According to the law, recyclable materials
create jobs and income, and I believe it.

They promote citizenship.

But it is not easy to fight
against large companies -

I will be very politically correct -

with large companies that manage consortia

and keep "weird"
relationships with city halls,

with political campaigns, and more.

It's not easy, and there are
many definitions: circular economy,

downcycling, upcycling, Cradle to Cradle.

We can use millions of jargons and colors,
the law made trash fashionable.

The trash is fashionable nowadays.

But I want to talk about
the beauty of a new sight,

and my place in this history.

I started to undertake projects
at nine years old.

My dad wanted me to play soccer.

But as we are not
in the minority, I am also gay,

and I started to undertake
projetcts at the age of nine,

selling popsicle and chips.

I didn't want to play soccer, dad.

(Laughter)

I lost my dad I was 15.

I didn't want to play soccer
so my mother made snacks and popsicle

and I sold them at the stadium,

while people were watching soccer matches.

And it wasn't child labor,
it wasn't forced, I asked her to do that.

I loved it.

And, by chance, I went to college
of Pharmaceutical Sciences,

biochemical pharmacy.

At 13, a little before, after selling
popsicles, I went to direct sales,

selling fragrant and colorful
products door to door.

By chance of fate, ten years later,

I ended up working at the lab
of this great company,

making the formulations I used to sell.

I worked at the sustainability area,

I dealt with the Amazonian communities.

My job was to remove oil-based
ingredients from the formulations

and add forest products to them.

Luckily, I met Luciana

who believed in my dreams
and daydreams, and asked me:

"Do you want to work
with the community? Don't quit.

We'll give you a project
in the packaging area."

And for six months, building
a strategy for this company,

I had the fortune of traveling
north to south, east to west,

getting to know dumpsters,
cooperatives, garbage collectors,

and a variety of stories and lives.

And that's where I found my place.

I decided to support

the more than 1,100 garbage collectors'
cooperatives that exist in Brazil.

We started creating solutions,
innovative methods of education,

innovative methods of investments,

a series of processes to support
consolidation of recycling cooperatives,

on this emerging market
from the Waste Law.

But with the resources that are invested

by city halls and citizens
in the waste area,

we can't close the account.

Reverse logistics is a myth
I want to deconstruct,

I will deconstruct it with you today.

The intrinsic value of the material mix
- I'm not talking of each single material;

if we consider only aluminum,
great, it makes the end meets;

everyone wants aluminum - doormen, maids -
to sell it and make some extra money,

because we have a huge
social inequality gap.

But the product mix and all the costs,

when a cooperative needs
to gather these materials,

and to do the waste collection,
does not make ends meet.

It doesn't make ends meet
and we need extra money

to pay for the urban
environmental services

that these collectors
and cooperatives provide for us.

With a lot of pragmatism,
after all the excitement -

I lived that for a long time,
I work with this issue for over ten years;

I lived with NGOs,
I lived with welfare promoters,

I judged, I questioned,

I'm quarrelsome, I'm not a calm person
as I seem here, but I've learned.

I entered my 5th seven-year cycle,

I'm calmer, and, with a lot of pragmatism,

we decided to create
a technological system

that guides the process
of paying for this service.

We track all the data, from end to end.

We created a system that in the future,

through tax invoice,
everyone who takes part,

from the consumer
to the recycling industry,

send data to a central platform

which, through traceability,

creates paths so we generate certificates.

Same as the credit carbon certificates,

we will create
reverse logistics certificates.

Considering the proportion of how much
a cooperative or any other enterprise

supported the return of the material
to the recycling cycle,

85 to 90 percent of the sale value
of this certificate

is redistributed to the recycling chain,

in a transparent, inclusive,
and economical way.

With this we try to implement the payment
for the urban environmental service.

This is our main goal;

we are talking with large clients
and companies to implement this model.

This is not what the law chose.

In Brazil, we have a series of processes

that makes the law
the more lenient possible.

This is the European model, but we are
trying to tropicalize the European model,

acknowledging trash collectors'
cooperatives in Brazil.

We are under construction,
we perform in several areas,

I support cooperatives creating contents,

creating communication
for recycling, and more,

but we believe that, in the future,
we'll be able to change the game rules

and this will be the investment model
in trash collectors' cooperatives.

Therefore, manufacturers will be able
to pay, in a transparent manner,

proportionally to the material they put,
not necessarily the same packaging,

but the mass of the material
the put in our place -

that is the environment,
our home, the Earth -

they can pay proportionally to the amount
of material the recycling chain links

helped to remove, acknowledging this work.

So, we'll be able to leave
the drawing board

and with the logic of circular economy,
minimize landfilling,

minimize "what will be thrown away",

really promote circular economy,

recycling, and seek for technologies;

so we'll live the dynamic
of innovation also in the waste area.

Because packaging will change,

they will be lighter
and more difficult to recycle;

and we'll keep studying
technologies to recycle them

but we'll also need a chain that reinvent
itself with new processes and services,

to promote the reinsertion of these
materials in the productive chain.

This way I believe
that together we can change

the future of recycling in Brazil.

Thank you.

(Applause)