Measurement of Fruit and Vegetable Losses in Brazil: A Case Study

This research conducted on municipal solid waste management for the first time quantified food spoilage as being 8.8% weight of all officially collected household garbage in the Brazilian city under study. The unexpected size of this waste fraction gave rise to work on the causes of waste and on its distribution over the product life cycle specific to fruit and vegetables. Waste was defined as being the combination of losses and scraps. Administrative shortcomings were identified as basic reasons for waste. At the producer and consumer ends of the cycle, negligence was shown to be the single most important problem. Fruit and vegetables deteriorate during the operations of handling, transport, packaging, storage, selling and consumption. The study detailed the occurrence of waste at all of these stages. In the medium-size Brazilian city, the total waste of fruit and vegetables was shown to amount to 16.6% weight in the marketing stage of the life cycle. At the consumer level, it was measured as 3.4% weight of all household garbage. Specific reasons for this waste were identified at the levels of producer, wholesaler and retailer. Short-term remedies were pointed out that invariably corrected deficient management procedures. It was shown that very simple administrative measures can significantly reduce the spoilage of fruit and vegetables. Long-term strategies involve the creation of sample cases for administration of the fruit and vegetables life cycle at all stages.     

137Cs in marine samples from the Brazilian southeastern coastal region

The present work presents the results of ¹³⁷Cs concentration in seawater, fish and sediments samples collect in 11 sampling points, crossing the Brazilian Southeastern coastal region, from Vitória (ES) to Santos (SP), on a routine basis from 1997 to 2002. This monitoring program was carried out by the Instituto de Radioproteção e Dosimetria (IRD/CNEN/MCT), in cooperation with the Instituto de Estudos do Mar Almirante Paulo Moreira (IEAPM/Brazilian Navy), aiming at determining artificial radionuclides in marine samples. Additionally to the ¹³⁷Cs results, ⁹⁰Sr concentrations in fish samples from 1998 to 2002 are also reported.The ¹³⁷Cs in seawater follows a lognormal distribution, with a geometric mean of 1.8 Bq m^-3 and a geometric standard deviation of 1.4 (n=54), decay corrected to June/2002. For ¹³⁷Cs levels in fish samples a geometric mean of 0.19 Bq kg⁻¹ and a geometric standard deviation of 2.9 (n=39), decay corrected to June/2002, with a range of 0.03 to 1.7 Bq kg⁻¹, were obtained. Based on the ¹³⁷Cs mean concentration in fish as well as in seawater, a transfer factor of 1 × 10² was calculated, which is quite in agreement with the recommended value found in the Safety Report Serie 19.     

Opening Up for Participation in Agro-Biodiversity Conservation: The Expert-Lay Interplay in a Brazilian Social Movement

In science and environmental studies, there is a general concern for the democratization of the expert-lay interplay. However, the democratization of expertise does not necessarily lead to more sustainable decisions. If citizens do not take the sustainable choice, what should experts and decision makers do? Should the expert-lay interplay be dissolved? In thinking about how to shape the expert-lay interplay in a better way in agro-biodiversity conservation, I take the case of the MST (Movimento Sem Terra/Landless People’s Movement), possibly the largest rural movement in Latin America. The MST is in a process of turning towards environmentalism. It has adopted agroecology, a democratically oriented knowledge field. However, not all of the farmers were willing to adopt new environmentalist ideas and practices. Through ethnographic research, I analyze how expertise was recognized and redistributed within the MST, attending particularly to the role of MST coordinators and technicians. I explore how participation was framed and put into action. The adoption of agroecology brought to the MST a new and more inclusive map of expertise, but it also influenced new social distinctions within the communities. In part, farmers’ knowledge was labeled as ignorance. This may close down possibilities for dialogue as well as for sustainability. The paper suggests that experts’ power for discriminating among lay knowledges should come together with a responsibility for opening spaces for dialogue and action. One way of doing so could be by adding “interactional reflexivity” to experts’ expertise.     

A Successful Pilot Project of Decentralized Household Waste Management in Brazil

Summary Present municipal waste management paradigms in Brazil do not allow for flexible approaches to solving an extremely dynamic problem. This paper discusses the basic flaws in present thinking models of residents and municipal administrators. Fundamental arguments presented on municipal solid waste relate to nomenclature, destinations, definitions, logistics, social dynamics, social assistance programs, education and employment philosophies. In each case, the consequences of the stalemate are explained in terms of the unsustainable situation of constantly growing landfills. In sequence, a proactive thinking model is presented and explained that has the potential of drastically reducing landfill size. It is called Municipal Transit Material Processing. The model has been tested successfully in small communities and is now available for scale-up. The landfill diversion achieved stands at 62% of household waste in comparison with 15% theoretically possible in Brazil with selective collection models. Although of necessity the arguments apply directly to Brazil, the basic ideas behind the reasoning may be extrapolated to other Southern countries. The following simple example will illustrate to the reader the type of paradigm inversion the paper proposes to convey. The classical political slogan in Brazil is “get children out of garbage dumps”. The inversion proposed and explained is “do away with garbage dumps”.     

Economic viability study of a separate household waste collection in a developing country

This article reports a study of the economic viability of a separate household waste collection project, and considers its social and environmental benefits. The study was developed from the database obtained through the pilot project on separate collections in João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba, in the northeast region of Brazil. The pilot project had been supported by the local municipal council since September 2000. The methodology applied to this study of economic viability is based on the economic quantification of the benefits and costs involved in the process of a separate collection of household waste. The benefits to the environment, owing to the reduction of the final disposal of household waste, were also evaluated. The results of this research are encouraging for the benefit cost relation (B/C) of both the quantified economic components and the environmental aspects. The values found for the relation B/C ranged from 1.27 to 1.77 depending on the economic quantification of the direct and indirect benefits to the components involved in the project, i.e., the waste collectors, the municipal council, the sellers of recycled material, and the recycling industry.