Recyclable material collectors’ entity in the municipality of Joinville-SC: a case study on waste management and dignity promotion

Abstract

The study seeks to analyze the protagonism of the collectors of recyclable materials within the recycling chain, with special emphasis on the processes of selective collection and reverse logistics. It focuses on the Joinville waste pickers association, and explores the reality of the entity and its workers as the result of a study conducted over three and a half years. In the first part of the paper, it examines the PNRS and other legal devices. Next, it addresses ESG governance, and the relationship between the business sector and the entities. Finally, it brings the field study with the collectors' association in Joinville, its partnership with the Ecogesto Program, and all the advances observed since 2017 until the end of 2022. At the end, it concludes on the protagonism of the collectors and the need to value their labor, for the structuring of collectives and promotion of the dignity of workers. Therefore, in relation to the methodological aspects, the research, qualitative as to the analysis of the entity and quantitative in relation to the data obtained, is anchored mainly in the case study of the entity in Joinville, as a research technique, and is based on exploratory and descriptive procedures, undertaking an inductive approach in relation to the investigation of the entity and the legislation, and deductive as to the reading of reality.