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.

Use of construction and demolition solid wastes for basket gabion filling.

Construction and demolition wastes have been studied by technical means aiming at the development of management tools to reduce their environmental impacts. Among these, recycling can be highlighted. This paper aims at the technical assessment of basket gabions filled with construction and demolition solid waste. Gabions are usually used for retaining walls construction, and these are commonly filled with rocks. Retaining walls are essential for earthfill slopes stabilization, and they must have proper characteristics of strength. However, depending on the slope height or the technical responsibility of the retaining wall, alternative materials with proper characteristics could be used to fill the gabions. The use of recycled material for gabion filling could reduce environmental impacts and costs caused by retaining wall construction. So, basket gabion cells were filled with construction solid waste and basaltic rocks, both crushed into coarse granulometry aiming to compare technical characteristics among them. The performed laboratory tests showed that the horizontal and vertical displacements determined for gabion filled with wastes were near to those obtained for gabions filled with basaltic rocks for a retaining wall of 5 m and up. In conclusion, it can be drawn that basket gabions filled with construction and demolition waste may be a technical alternative for civil construction, reducing environmental impacts and raw material consumption for retaining wall execution.