Rio de Janeiro takes on its trash crisis
Rio de Janeiro is known for its beaches, soccer and samba. But this idyllic city in Brazil is actually drowning in garbage. Clear-up and recycling initiatives are helping to tackle the pollution problem.
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00:00 Beach, soccer and samba.
00:04 That's what Rio de Janeiro is known for.
00:07 But the reality doesn't always match the glossy postcard images.
00:13 The Brazilian megacity is drowning in garbage.
00:17 Rio's almost 7 million inhabitants produce 9,000 tonnes of waste every day.
00:23 Too much of it ends up where it doesn't belong.
00:29 Nowhere is this more evident than Guanabara Bay,
00:32 where almost 100 tonnes of waste flow into the water every day.
00:36 Fishers in the region collect garbage three times a week in the hope that the fish will return.
00:42 Sometimes we fish all night and catch nothing.
00:47 Sometimes there's not even enough fish to cook at home, let alone sell.
00:55 A project called Aguas do Guanabara now pays the fishers to clean up trash from the bay.
01:00 And it's actually so easy not to pollute it, says Vanilda.
01:04 People have no awareness.
01:09 It's easy to collect the garbage you've brought here yourself.
01:12 If everyone did that, there wouldn't be this pollution.
01:16 Instead of leaving it here, they could just bag it up and put it in the garbage can, right?
01:24 But they think it's nice to throw it into nature like that.
01:27 They just don't get it.
01:29 People like us who work directly with nature know what a sacrifice it is.
01:35 And what a curse.
01:37 Because it is a curse.
01:39 In two years, they've fished out more than 700 tonnes of garbage from beaches and mangroves in the area.
01:51 They'll certainly never manage to remove it all.
01:54 This barrier has been built to protect the mangroves from the waste,
02:04 so the landscape has a chance to regenerate.
02:07 So much garbage out there.
02:09 Nature gives us everything and we still destroy it.
02:25 But we don't want to destroy it.
02:31 We want to protect it.
02:35 We want to protect it.
02:37 Ten years ago, Moese Machado Cesario lived off other people's garbage.
02:45 He would search for useful items at a large trash dump that used to exist nearby.
02:50 Now he's helping to restore this mangrove area.
02:54 He planted the mangrove trees. He nurtures and cares for them.
02:59 Searching for garbage in the mud is no easy task.
03:04 But it's a matter close to his heart.
03:06 We remove around 300 bags of garbage a week.
03:20 Six tonnes.
03:23 There are more crabs and fish again.
03:27 So that's very good.
03:29 We see the crabs here, the fish.
03:33 It makes me feel good.
03:34 I'm helping nature.
03:36 I'm doing something useful.
03:39 In just nine years, a mangrove forest has regrown here.
03:45 The reforestation project manager,
03:49 who's been fighting against corruption, environmental crime and government inaction for more than 30 years,
03:55 is biologist Mario Moschatelli.
03:57 He's been intimidated and even received death threats for his work.
04:02 Unfortunately, in Rio de Janeiro, in large parts of Brazil,
04:06 we still live like a colony that exploits nature.
04:09 The environment is there to serve us, but that's only half the truth.
04:14 We need to know how to interact with the environment to get what we need without depleting it.
04:19 Unfortunately, the way we deal with the garbage issue in big Brazilian cities is itself still a serious problem.
04:26 Not only for the environment, but also for the environment.
04:30 But also for public health.
04:32 This hill used to be a huge garbage dump, the largest in Latin America.
04:41 Jardim Gramacho was an environmental disaster.
04:44 It was decommissioned 12 years ago and covered with soil,
04:48 but toxic slurry still seeps out of the garbage.
04:51 Rio's waste now ends up in a landfill in Serro Pédica, 100 kilometres from the city.
04:59 It's the most advanced facility of its kind in Latin America and is said to cause hardly any pollution.
05:04 The waste water is purified here.
05:08 And a biogas plant produces electricity from waste through biomethanisation.
05:13 Rio de Janeiro is setting a national example.
05:19 Studies have shown it to be one of Brazil's best cities in terms of waste management.
05:24 And yet not even 10% of potentially recyclable household waste is recycled.
05:29 In Rocinha, a large, poor district of Rio, a cooperative is helping to increase this figure.
05:36 With the support of private initiatives and garbage collectors who live in this district,
05:41 they manage to process 30 tonnes of recyclable material every month.
05:45 One of them is Luiz Fernando de Conceição, known as Nen.
05:50 He's been working for Rocinha Recicla for eight years.
05:53 The material we receive most often is the plastic PET.
05:57 It's the most valuable.
06:00 We get cardboard too, and hard plastic.
06:05 But what's brought in the most is PET.
06:08 It's like gold.
06:10 The 180 garbage collectors who are from Rocinha get paid for what they collect.
06:22 And they're doing something good in the process.
06:25 It's satisfying for us to know that the cooperative can now remove this material and reuse it in industry.
06:36 So here we have a way to not only remove the material from the environment where it will pollute,
06:42 but to reuse it as well.
06:50 It can be transformed into something else.
06:52 It could become a bottle, a bucket or any other object made of plastic.
06:56 And we know that it will be reused and not end up in the environment.
07:00 Projects like Rocinha Recicla show that there are solutions to Rio de Janeiro's waste problem.
07:08 However, it will take more government help and commitment from everyone
07:14 to protect Rio de Janeiro's waters, mangroves and beaches from waste.
07:19 waste.
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