– The number of Brazilian communities with systems of selective garbage collection has increased 38 percent, according to a new study by CEMPRE, a business organization that promotes recycling. The southeastern cities of Porto Alegre, Curitiba and Santos are some of the 327 that already have this recycling service in place, and which reaches 25 million Brazilians.

“There is greater perception that the local governments invest more in this service, to the extent that gradually the population is more interested in it,” CEMPRE director André Vlhena explained to Tierramérica.

In Vilhena's opinion, the social commitment in Brazil is greater than in developed countries, so its model for selective collection of waste materials is being exported to other developing countries.

CEMPRE has been studying collection of recyclable urban waste since 1994, when just one percent of all waste in Brazil was being recycled.