Report 3 (of 5): Canning it - Uraguay

Introduction

The beaches of Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, are filled with sunbathers drinking soda from aluminium cans. In the past, sunbathers have failed to dispose of their waste properly, turning the beaches into unsightly places, as well as potentially hazardous areas for beach users. Uruguay is not a country recognised for its interest in green initiatives but with the number of aluminium cans being imported increasing, people needed to be encouraged to collect and recycle their used cans.

The aluminium drinks can is one of the few objects which can actually be recycled so successfully that it can produce exactly the same object all over again. Furthermore, since remelting aluminium only requires five per cent of the energy used in the original smelting process, recycling the cans makes a positive contribution to energy conservation and ensures an economic source of metal for the future.

PROLATA

Prolata, a scheme launched just over a year ago, is an education initiative which has been established to collect waste and tidy up the beaches. The campaign has involved the setting up of an efficient collection, cleaning and storage operation which allows the aluminium drinking cans to be recycled. At the same time, Prolata is pioneering a major public educational programme based on the promotion of a new culture in Uruguay - reducing, repairing, reusing, recharging, restoring and recycling.

Alcan Aluminium Limited

The multinational company, Alcan Aluminium Limited is recognised as one of the world’s largest producers of aluminium and a leading manufacturer of aluminium based products. Its network of operations is carried out across six continents. In 1990, Alcan was responsible for recycling 325,000 tonnes of aluminium and its recycling capacity has continued to increase since then. In the United States alone, Alcan annually recycles about 11 billion beverage cans.

Alcan is the main manufacturer supplying aluminium cans for the Uruguayan market even though it does not produce cans in either Uruguay or Argentina. The nearest manufacturing plant to Montevideo is in Sao Paulo, in Brazil. The NGO that runs Prolata negotiated a special deal with Alcan who agreed to take the aluminium cans back to Sao Paulo from Uruguay, and pay for the transport, providing a sufficient amount were collected to make the scheme financially viable.

Prolata have to collect 20 metric tonnes of cleaned cans (equivalent to about 62,000 cans) which are then roughly squashed in a homemade machine prior to being crushed into 7 kilogramme blocks at the Alcan depot in Uruguay and transported back to Brazil. It is not possible to melt the cans in Uruguay because the only plants able to do this are in Brazil but Alcan helps with the collection and compression of the cans before sending them onto the melting plant in Brazil.

Recycling Bins

Prolata’s first task was to set up 200 collection points all over the city of Montevideo. With the help of Montevideo’s Town Hall rubbish collection department, and the schools and community centres, bright blue bins, supplied by Alcan, were put in various places around the city. Collection points included the beaches, service stations, schools and general stores. Prolata then raised funds for a van which would carry out regular pick ups of the large plastic tubs, replacing the full ones with empty ones.

	Crushed aluminium cans

The Tacuri Association

With the logistics in place, Prolata made an alliance with the Tacuri Association which creates employment opportunities for young people from deprived areas. The young recruits are responsible for going out, along the beaches of Montevideo, and encouraging all the beach users to start throwing their empty cans into the plastic disposable tubs available for recycling the aluminium.

Income Generation

Prolata sell the aluminium cans to the Alcan factory and the income generated goes towards helping schools and people in need. Alcan pay between US$500 and US$600 per tonne of aluminium. When the first 20 tonnes of cans have been collected and sent to Sao Paulo, the revenue will be used to fund small neighbourhood schemes in slum areas.

The project combines a way of keeping the streets and beaches cleaner with an educational effort to teach the people of Uruguay about recycling. Running parallel to the actual collection of cans, an educational programme takes the recycling concept into school classrooms and adult workshops.
 

For further information, please contact:
 

Intermediate Technology would like to thank Prolata and Alcan Aluminium Limited for providing the original material and the pictures on the recycling of aluminium cans.

Further reading from ITDG Development Bookshop

Don't Throw It All Away
This new edition of Friends of the Earth's popular recycling guide examines the 'throwaway society' and offers positive solutions to its waste problem. It explains what is thrown away, why so much of it is produced, and the environmental problems this causes. And it offers practical suggestions for how to help the planet by reducing the amount of waste you and your family produce.
£4.99 1998 46pp pb (Friends of the Earth) ISBN 1857502000

Green Home: How to make your world a better place
Karen Christensen
A comprehensive, accessible and lively introduction to all aspects of green home-making.
£9.99 1995 326pp (Piatkus Books) ISBN 0749914602

Plastic Waste: Options for small-scale resource recovery
Inge Lardinois
Plastic Waste documents recycling activities in cities in economically less developed countries. The publication describes how plastic waste is reprocessed in informal small-scale enterprises and turned into end products or semi-manufactured products ready for use by formal industries. Attention is paid to the various technologies used in plastic recycling. Financial aspects, marketability of products, environmental problems occupational health and government policies are also dealt with.
£11.50 1995 112pp (TOOL) ISBN 9070857340

Reuse, Repair, Recycle: A mine of creative ideas for thrifty living
Jan McHarry
An up-to-date source book on how to reduce and recycle, how to create new from old, and how to help fights the Great Waste Problem of the present age.
£7.99 1993 288pp (Gaia Books) ISBN 1856750450
 

TVE/ Practical Action gratefully acknowledge support for the HANDS ON programmes from the UK's Department for International Development (DFID), the European Commission (EC), the UN Foundation and UNDP/The Equator Initiative in collaboration with the Government of Canada, IDRC, IUCN, BrasilConnects and the Nature Conservancy.