intelligent territories: architectural

architectural_program

After all the research and the experiences lived in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, the architectural program of the proposal was re-defined in three main branches: education, production, and public spaces. Each of these phases represents communal development, personal growth and connection with the ‘outer world’, respectively. The process reduces to a simple explanation, the people learn, they produce with what they have learned and they make extensive what they have produce to other parts of the city. Thus creating a sustainable system of events to ensure local and global progress.

The creation of this integral system will introduce these new concepts and environments that are vague or nonexistent in the actual situation of these settlements. Each of them will work independently but also, they will interact with each other as their organic development separates or connects as they start to flow and growth through the steep slopes. The idea is to have a direct relation between the form and the function, and the function and the slopes. The system will react to these parameters.

The main component of the program is the production process. Due to government intervention and some social institutions, some production programs have been launched, introduced and developed in different favelas, which have proved to be really successful, but their overall scope has not been as strong as it could be. The main idea of this process is not the economic factor, but the re-insertion of the people into the society, the social factor. Many favelanos have been successfully reinstated due to one issue that they realize; they also have the opportunity to do something with their lives, when they thought everything was lost.

There have been incredible examples; people have changed from being drug addicts, alcoholics, vandals, or robbers, to heads of these organizations and leaders of similar movements which encourages people to follow their example.

selective_collection_reduce_reuse&recycle

“327 municipalities operate programs. About 25 million Brazilians have access to selective collection programs. 43.5% of the programs are directly related to cooperatives of pickers.”

It is a system of collection of recyclable materials: paper, plastic, glass, metals and organic materials, which have been previously separated at different sources that can be reused or recycled. The selective collection works also as a process of environmental education in that community awareness about the problems of wasted resources and pollution caused by waste.

Actually, there are many non-profit associations who have developed this program for different sectors of society, especially for the low-income citizens which are committed to promoting recycling principally of packaging. This system has a strong acceptance and development since the cost of selective garbage is 5 times greater than the cost of conventional collection, which nowadays is paid USD 151 per ton.

Several segments of the community can participate in the program collection. Each part performs a specific role which benefits all from the results. An example of this is the partnership between the production units of garbage and managers of the selective collection (condominiums, schools, businesses, etc.) and the cooperatives or associations which receive the selected materials and often can take charge of the waste removal.

During the research carried out on the municipal programs, it became evident that there is a large amount of informal recycling going on in Brazil via scavengers. Due to this fact, these organizations have worked for more than fifteen years in the creation of a mechanism for increasing the efficiency and income of this underprivileged sector of society. In 1994, the first educational kit for catadores was realized so that they get specialized in the process of selective collection of garbage and to form their own micro-enterprises.

In addition, these kits have been sent to Argentina, Colombia, India, Puerto Rico and Uruguay, for the replication of the same process since it has been really successful in Brazil.

selective_collection

Today, the co-op members are able to earn an average of $500 a month (or more, in many cases) from the recyclables that they collect. This is twice the minimum wage in Brazil, and places them in a privileged position considering that half of the country’s labor force that earns less that $300 a month. They are able to achieve these above-avenge earnings in part because of the wealth of high-grade packaging and newsprint materials found in Brazil’s middle-class waste, and because they are able to sell directly to large scrap brokers.

The main idea of this effective process is to mitigate the main problems of the scavengers: unemployment, low incomes, social development, poor self perception, and dump closings.

Unemployment - scavenging is proliferating in both developing and developed nations as a result of two trends: the using tide of unemployment and the “enrichment” of municipal solid waste (more aluminum, paper, plastic, glass, etc.). Recycling co-ops provide employment opportunities in developing countries and help to provide a greater source of income for the recyclables that scavengers collect.

Low Incomes - recycling co-ops have improved the average incomes of participating scavengers by at least 50%. As usual, the current structure of the traditional scrap industry in developing countries is based in the exploitation of scavengers by a long chain of intermediaries who earn the real profits from the recycling industry. In the case of the selective scavengers, (surprisingly) they are able to earn incomes that are above those of the majority of the population, and they are trying to make all the procedures more efficient so their income will be even higher.

Social development - scavengers make a major step in reintegrating themselves with the rest of society when they become part of the cooperative, seen as the first step towards such integration and eventual political awareness. The cooperatives system try to offer a better way of life for the members and their families, rather than only having a permanent work and source of income. The idea is to make a real change in their lives.

Poor self-perception - scavengers have poor self-perception. They do not realize the great benefit that they are bringing to the environment. Because of their lack of self-esteem, and their negative public image, they have little respect for the rest of society as well. This translates into carelessness in opening trash bags on the curbside, not respecting traffic regulations, among other practices that entail sanitary and safety problems. Lack of self-esteem also hinders their ability to fight for their rights as productive workers, a condition fostered by the small-time scrap dealers who buy from them. The system of the selective collection focuses on the environmental benefits of their work.