More Glass Packaging Recovery, Less Piracy?

TemasEtUnam

When discussing recovery/recycling among packaging materials in Brazil, glass sometimes suffers by comparison. Brazil is a world leader in recycling PET and aluminum cans, and high among recyclers of corrugated cardboard (77%).

Brazil's 45% annual recycling rate for glass packaging is better than the glass packaging rate for the US (but then again, the US recycles ten times the volume), but is nowhere near that of Italy (61%), Norway (76%), Belgium (90%), Germany (91%) or Switzerland (96%).

But as a state that has adopted "zero waste" as its official goal and targeted packaging waste for special action, Paraná (PR) wants to do far better than 45% for glass. Thus it's not really a surprise that the Zero Waste Program of PR's Secretariat of the Environment and Water Resources (SEMA) has teamed up with the Brazilian Association of the Automated Glass Industry (Associação Brasileira das Indústrias Automáticas de Vidro - Abividro) to launch a campaign to significantly increase the glass packaging recovery and recycling rates in that state.

This effort was kicked off recently in Foz do Iguaçu (pop. officially 311,000, double that if you include surroundings), the PR city adjacent to the world-famous Iguazu Falls.

Why Foz? Well, there's the fact that it has grown to become PR's third most populous city, so any recycling campaign to raise the state's stats needs to include it. There's also the fact that it's probably the state's biggest tourism focal point, with significant turnover of bottled beverages (the largest segment of glass packaging) (it's estimated that Foz produces about 150 metric tons of glass waste every month) and a fairly well-organized hospitality sector (bars, restaurants, hotels).

But there's another reason, one you might not consider unless you're from the border zones in the Southern Cone: combating piracy (counterfeiting). (more…)

---

Copyright © 2007 The Temas Blog. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact legal@temasactuales.com so we can take legal action immediately.
Plugin by Taragana