- 'Difficult day': Oct 7 commemorations begin with festival memorial
- Commemorations begin for anniversary of attack on Israel
- 'Nothing gets in way of team,' says Celtics' MVP hopeful Tatum
- 'We will win!': Mozambique's ruling party confident at final vote rally
- Tunisia voting ends as Saied eyes re-election with critics behind bars
- Florida braces for Milton, FEMA head slams 'dangerous' Helene misinformation
- Postecoglou slams 'unacceptable' Spurs after 'terrible' loss at Brighton
- Marmoush double denies Bayern outright Bundesliga top spot
- Rallies worldwide call for Gaza, Lebanon ceasefire
- New 'Joker' film, a dark musical, tops N.America box office
- Man Utd stalemate keeps Ten Hag in danger, Spurs rocked by Brighton
- Drowned by hurricane, remote N.Carolina towns now struggle for water
- Vikings hold off Jets in London to stay unbeaten
- Ahead of attack anniversary, Netanyahu says: 'We will win'
- West Indies cruise to T20 World Cup win over Scotland
- Man Utd fire another blank in Aston Villa stalemate
- Lewandowski treble powers Liga leaders Barca to Alaves victory
- Russian activist killed on front line in Ukraine
- Openda strike briefly sends Leipzig top of Bundesliga
- Goal-shy Man Utd have to 'step up', says Ten Hag
- India bowl out Bangladesh for 127 in T20 opener
- Madueke rescues Chelsea in draw with 10-man Forest
- Beckett's belief rewarded as Bluestocking storms to Arc glory
- Trump on the stump, Harris hits airwaves in razor-edge US election
- Flash flooding kills three in northern Thailand
- Kaur leads India to victory over Pakistan in Women's T20 World Cup
- Juventus held by Cagliari after late penalty drama
- In France's Marseille, teen 'stabbed 50 times' then burned alive
- Ruthless Gauff beats Muchova in straight sets to win China Open
- India restrict Pakistan to 105-8 in Women's T20 World Cup
- England target repeat of Pakistan Test whitewash
- Penrith Panthers win fourth straight NRL title after downing Storm
- Weary Sinner happy for day off after battling into Shanghai last 16
- Pakistan's Masood warns England still a force without Stokes
- Madrid's Carvajal to miss several months after serious knee injury
- Two elephants die in flash flooding in northern Thailand
- Sabalenka targets world number one and Wuhan hat-trick
- Tunisia votes with Saied set for re-election
- Bagnaia sets 'example' with Japan MotoGP win to cut gap on Martin
- Intense Israeli bombing rocks Beirut ahead of war anniversary
- Mozambique vote: no suspense but some disillusion
- Austrian rapper channels anti-racist rage in Romani hip-hop songs
- Ohtani magic powers Dodgers over Padres in MLB playoff thriller
- Five of the best: Pakistan-England Test thrillers
- Man sets arm on fire as marches across US mark Gaza war anniversary
- Vietnam's young coffee entrepreneurs brew up a revolution
- Trump rallies at site of failed assassination: 'Never quit'
- Too hot by day, Dubai's floodlit beaches are packed at night
- Is music finally reckoning with #MeToo?
- Fans hail Trump's 'guts' as he returns to site of rally shooting
Aluminum recycling in Brazil: Scraping by in a billion-dollar industry
Shirlei Aparecida de Souza uses her foot to crush the empty cold drink cans she collects in the alleys of a poor Sao Paulo neighborhood: a precarious livelihood critical to Brazil's environmental protection goals.
It is thanks to about a million collectors like her that the country recycled as many aluminum cans as it produced for the first time in 2022, according to data from Recicla Latas, a recycling industry body.
Brazil is a world leader in recycling drinks cans: its new record beats out the European Union, which recycles 73 percent, and the United States with 60 percent, according to their own databases.
Recicla Latas says the country's recycling efforts have prevented about 16.5 million tons of planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions in the last 10 years.
But for Aparecida de Souza, collecting cans is a matter of survival.
She gathers them off the street, from garbage cans or landfills, and sells them to collection centers that send the cans to recycling plants.
She earns about 20 real, or just over $4, a day: "Just enough to buy the necessities, a packet of rice, black beans and sometimes meat," the 38-year-old told AFP.
With this, she supports five daughters in a working-class district of the largest metropolis in Latin America.
- 'Family tradition' -
Dressed in flip-flops, a T-shirt and shorts, Aparecida de Souza leaves the house every day at dawn to collect as many cans as she can. It takes almost 70 black rubbish bags to make a kilogram of aluminum, which sells for just over $1.
The work is a "family tradition," into which she was initiated by her mother from the age of 15, she told AFP.
"Aluminum sells for a higher price than other materials such as cardboard, and it is lighter to carry."
Aline Sousa da Silva, an activist with the Ancat association representing collectors of recyclable materials, said there is "a lot of competition" in gathering cans, which can be reused indefinitely.
The recycling rate of other materials in Brazil is much lower than that for cans: about four percent on average.
In 2022, nearly 430,000 tons of cans were recycled, according to Renato Paquet, a director at Recicla Latas, whose data is used as a reference by the Brazilian government.
That is the equivalent of about 31.8 billion cans.
- 156 cans per person -
Since 2010, when drinks manufacturers signed an agreement with Brazilian authorities, aluminum recycling numbers have skyrocketed in a country where each of its 200-odd million inhabitants consumes about 156 cans every year.
It takes "an average of 60 days" for a can bought in a supermarket to reappear on the shelves after recycling, according to Danilo Machado, logistics supervisor at the Latasa-Garimpeiro Urbano recycling company.
The industry adds some $1.25 billion to the Brazilian economy every year. But those who form its backbone live mostly precarious lives with few social protections.
On January 1, they received a special honor at the inauguration of leftist leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, with Sousa da Silva among a group of activists chosen to present him with the presidential sash.
M.Gameiro--PC