Solid waste recycling brings environmental and social benefits, particularly income to people with low professional skills.
This project will benefit COOPERVIVA, a cooperative located in the city of Rio Claro - Brazil, that collects and sorts recyclable material, such as plastics, glass, paper and metal.
The objective of this project is to add value to the plastic waste designated to the recycling process.
Plastics are separated and sorted according to their type, such as PET - polyethylene terephthalate (plastic bottles), PEAD - high density polyethylene (plastic bags and other packaging), PP -polypropylene (hoses, ropes, cables, textiles), mainly.
Currently the material is sold the same way it is collected, to an intermediary company that will process it through cleaning, grinding and drying, and that will sell it to the industry that will do the recycling.
With the equipment that is the objective of this project the cleaning, grinding and drying process will be made by Coopervida, letting it to sell the material directly to the recycling industries, aggregating value to the material and increasing the income of the workers.
Currently the price of the unprocessed material is around US$ 0,40 / kg and the price for the clean and grinded is around US$ 0,60 /kg, Total amount now collected is 40 tons monthly and 35 families are working for Coopervida.
Only the price increase means 50% income increase.
Furthermore, the equipment will allow an increase of cooperated workers to 55 in 12 months and the proportional increase in the amount of material processed.
Pay back of the investment in the most conservative projection is expected in three years, but it can be reduced to one year with the aggregation of more families and consequently more material to be processed.
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