Stakeholder views of source separation collection programme in East São Paulo, Brazil

The investigation of the views of the stakeholders involved in the municipal solid waste separate collection programme (CP) performed in the East Zone of the city of São Paulo is presented in this paper. Aiming to obtain the necessary information to be analysed, interviews with the manager of the Municipal Urban Cleaning Authority (MUCA) of the city, with leaders of recycling worker cooperatives (WCs), and citizens were performed using semi-structured questionnaires. The analysis was performed using the software “IRAMUTEQ”. The results show that, in the view of the manager of the MUCA of the city and the WCs’ leaders, the low adhesion of the population to the separate CP is the greatest obstacle to a further expansion of the existing programme. At the same time, the citizens have blamed the low diffusion made by the municipality about the separate CP in the East Zone of São Paulo. Thus, it can be concluded that the separate CP available in the East Zone of São Paulo is still flawed; since neither the public power, the WCs, nor the population are satisfied and point out several flaws. This situation highlights the need to establish better venues for discussion between the population, WCs, and the municipality to jointly design a separate collection system with a more participatory approach.