home
> News
> Rio's waste pickers: 'People spat at us but now we're at the Olympics'
Rio's waste pickers: 'People spat at us but now we're at the Olympics'
August 6, 2016
Rio's waste pickers: 'People spat at us but now we're at the Olympics'
Sam Cowie
Saturday 6 August 2016 08.00 BST
Claudete Da Costa started working as a waste picker with her mother when she was 11 years old, collecting recyclable goods in Rio de Janeiro to sell to scrap merchants.
“We were ashamed,” she says. “People saw us and spat at us, thought we were thieves.”
Today, 36-year-old Da Costa’s outlook has changed. She is the Rio de Janeiro representative for Brazil’s National Movement of Waste Pickers, whose mission is to improve workers’ rights and increase recognition of the contribution made by one of Brazil’s most marginalised professions.
This month, Da Costa and 240 other pickers from 33 of Rio’s waste collecting co-operatives – autonomous groups that collect the city’s rubbish throughout the year – are formally contracted to handle recyclable waste during the Olympic Games.
The pickers will be spread across three of the four Olympic sites – Maracana, Olympic Park and Deodoro – where they will collect recyclable goods such as plastic bottles and aluminium cans, and take them to a depot to be sorted, stored and sold on by the co-ops to scrap merchants.
The co-operatives will divide the profits from the sale of the recycled materials between workers and investment in new equipment. In addition, each waste picker will be paid a fixed daily salary of R$80 (£19) by the Olympic Committee. In contrast, at the Ecco Ponto co-operative, for example, where Da Costa is president, pickers normally take home around R$30 (£7) a day.
Read more at The Guardian.
category : Topics
