Caracterização do trabalho dos catadores de resíduos sólidos em área de lixão e os impactos sociais e econômicos da categoria no município de Monteiro, Cariri Paraibano.

Abstract

Open-air dumps cause major environmental impacts. However, it is in these environments that a class of workers emerges who, through so much pollution, but with a lot of creativity, are able to see in their garbage their livelihoods, becoming, in the end, true ecological agents. Thus, the objective of this study was to analyze the activity of municipal waste pickers and the impact factors in the social and economic scales in the municipality of Monteiro-PB. The work was done with garbage pickers in the municipal wastebasket of Monteiro-PB. Data collection took place through visits to the landfill and planning and urban planning offices, and social assistance to collect data on the history and characteristics of the dump, and through the application of semi-structured questionnaires and interviews with garbage collectors. In the analysis of the collected data, the quantitative methodology was chosen in conjunction with the qualitative one, through the generation of charts and tables in the software Excel 2010® and the descriptive analysis of the key actors' speeches. The social actors of the research are predominantly female, accounting for 82.35% of the total universe. The ages of the informants ranged from 19 to 60 years. 64.71% are from Monteiro and 35.29% from surrounding municipalities. 47.06% of the scavengers did not complete basic education I, 23.54% declared themselves illiterate and no taster concluded high school. The data indicate that the time that the majority of the interviewed perform the role of taster varies between 6 and 10 years. Almost all the scavengers claim that the income earned from work is insufficient to support the family. Collectors do not use personal protective equipment (PPE) in their work, with minor cuts (8 citations), cuts with higher severity (7 citations) and cuts from nails and old iron (4 citations) being the most frequent accidents. The most cited rich were the acquisition of any type of disease (10) and respiratory problems (6). 5.88% of scavengers claim to have contact with hospital waste. The recyclables highlighted by the collectors as the best sellers are: pet, cardboard, aluminum and hard plastic. Therefore, actions such as those projected in the "Recycling Lives" project, which aims to improve the waste recycling activity in the municipality and promote better working conditions for the collectors together with the construction of the landfill contribute to a progress in the social, economic and environmental factors that will lead to an evolution in sustainability indicators in the Municipality and region.