A few years ago it was almost impossible for a company in Brazil to worry about the packaging their customers throw in the trash. This scenario began to change with the National Solid Waste Policy that resulted in several other public policies at the state and municipal levels.
The main objective of these initiatives is to solve once and for all the problem of solid waste and underground dumps, even to prevent that predictions such as "having more plastic in the oceans than fish until 2050" don’t come true, due to consumption excess and waste disposed irregularly.
To do this, the entire consumer chain (manufacturers, importers, distributors and traders) must assume the shared responsibility for the product life cycle.
The challenge is not small, since today recycling rates in Brazil are very low, less than 3%, and every 24 hours the country produces almost 240 thousand tons of garbage (Source: Eureciclo).
In this context, the reverse logistics process has become a valuable ally, since it allows the reintroduction of a material in the production cycle without the need for the extraction of new raw material and also reducing the volume of waste disposed in landfills.
Another undoubtedly positive effect of reverse logistics is to value labor and increase the income of waste pickers and cooperatives, since they account for almost 90% of the recycled waste in Brazil. Many companies have well understood their socio-environmental role in this history and have embraced the cause, either with the modification in their product line, facilitating that their consumers return the products that will no longer be used or even through certificates of compensation, where cooperatives are contracted to recycle the volume corresponding to the volume sold regardless of the quantity returned by the customers, a method currently chosen by COPAG.
Source: GMB
