This workshop is an invitation to see waste systems though different eyes—develop an awareness and understanding of informal infrastructures and all the processes that we have learned to overlook. Join us on the 22nd of April at the Design & The City Conference in Amsterdam to explore these issues together.
Organized by:
Maria Cecilia Loschiavo dos Santos, Professor, University of São Paulo
Anne Scheinberg, Noë Waste Measurement Consultants (NWMC), the Hague
Dietmar Offenhuber, Assistant Professor, Northeastern University, Boston
Full-day workshop, April 22nd from 9am - 3pm
Workshop Theme:
The goal of the workshop is to discuss possible policy, design, technology responses to current challenges faced by waste picker cooperatives, now that the first optimism around inclusive recycling policies and the empowerment of the informal sector has subsided.
During the past decade, the figure of the waste picker has become nothing short of a pop star— emerging from extreme poverty as an empowered micro-entrepreneur, resourceful and well adapted to market-mechanisms, a civic servant, and a steward of a sustainable urban environment. Countries such as Brazil have enacted innovative policies promoting inclusive recycling, recognizing waste picker cooperatives, and integrating them into the formal waste system.
Despite the capable and complex operations and services delivered by recycling cooperatives such as Coopamare in Perdizes, the livelihood of waste pickers has not improved to the extent initially hoped. In times of plummeting spot-market prices for recycled materials and increased competition through the private sector, many recycling cooperatives find themselves again at the crossroads.
Based on international and European case studies, we will discuss what makes solid waste systems friendly or unfriendly to (formal and informal) recycling, and what responses are possible. This has especial relevance in data-driven and participatory infrastructure governance that strives to capture all data for all material flows in the city.
The broad question includes smaller questions of informal sector integration from the perspective of governance (what are workable models for integration?), ethics and equity (are cooperatives receiving a fair price for their services?), and finally role of technology (the valorization of data vs. the valorization of material).
How to participate:
The workshop will be discussion-based and addresses participant from all fields. Interested Participants should send an email to workshop [ at ] improstructure.org with an expression of interest in the workshop.
We are open to applicants from all fields, but expect applicants to prepare the following assignment before attending the course:
- Go out into the street and observe: how long does it take until you see a waste picker / informal recycler?
- Bring a picture about garbage in the city: one photo that stands for what works well in waste management, one photo about what goes badly.
- What have you learned during your professional education about waste management in the city?
- What is your opinion: do planners / designers etc. need activism?
Expected outcomes:
We hope to identify a core group of co-operating activists-researcher-authors to do a white paper on the urban design implications of informal sector integration in “smart” waste management systems. Probably we will compare the situation in Europe vs in Latin America. In Particular, we hope to find some new ideas and inputs to the Novi Sad ISWA Workshop in september.
About the organizers:
Dr. Maria Cecilia Loschiavo dos Santos is a philosopher and full professor of Design at the School of Architecture and Urbanism, University of São Paulo. She got her MA at University of São Paulo, Philosophy, in Aesthetics, 1975 and her Ph.D. at the University of São Paulo, Philosophy, in Aesthetics, 1993. She is the author of several books, among them Design, waste and dignity, and is deeply committed to design and social responsibility issues.
Dr. Anne Scheinberg has been active as an environmental and sustainable waste management specialist for more than 35 years, 15 of those at WASTE, Advisers on urban environment and development, in Gouda, the Netherlands. An international consultant, she facilitates processes and works in methodology development and action research in waste management and recycling and participatory environmental planning, with a focus on sustainability in the “new EU” and countries in the accession process.
Dr. Dietmar Offenhuber is Assistant Professor at Northeastern University in the departments of Art + Design and Public Policy, where he heads the Information Design and Visualization graduate program. He holds a PhD in Urban Planning from MIT. His research field could be described as accountability-oriented design – focusing on the relationship between visual representations and governance. website: http://offenhuber.net
Dr. Aleksandra Mitrovic is a sociologist and holds a Ph.D degree in sociology from the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. She is President of the Society for the Improvement of Local Roma Communities and a High Research Fellow at the Institute of Criminology and Sociology in Belgrade. She has worked on Roma issues since 1982. See her CV here
header image: Facility of the Coopamare recycling cooperative, Perdizes, São Paulo. Photo Dietmar Offenhuber