June 17th - Day Fifteen

Today we visited the Fortaleza landfill where all of the trash and waste from the surrounding area is sent. Our first stop at the landfill was to the recycling center where trash is sorted through to separate out the recyclable materials. The Brazilian government helped the organized trash-sorters purchase the machines, which allow the employees to work twice as more efficiently. This center also provides better working conditions for the employees which are generally pretty awful working in the landfill. The government is supposed to provide subsidies for the people working at the center; however, over the last few years they have been failing to provide them. As a result, many of the workers went back to  the horrible conditions in the landfill. Often the people working the landfill can make more money per kilogram of recyclable waste than they can working at the center, and this drives people to continue working in the landfill.

The people at the center had also, along with the governments help, purchased a machine that shreds up plastic and provides twice the pay. The problem that they are facing is that it has high energy costs and it is not currently feasible to run. They had planned to run it off the methane that is naturally produced by the landfill; however, the infrastructure to harvest the methane has not been introduced to the site and they have not been able to capture the methane. If they could use the methane to run the plastic shredder they could save a lot of money and improve working conditions for many of the people working in the landfill.

After the recycling center we visited the actual landfill, where people where sorting through the trash that was brought up from Fortaleza.