Claudia Pires (ELP 2021) | CEO & Founder, so+ma negócios inclusivo, Brazil
I had never realized this until I visited a garbage dump years ago, which led me to make this and several other reflections about our linear way of buying, consuming, and disposing of materials.
Brazil today recycles only 3% of its waste, loses more than R$8 billion by not recycling, spends some billions more on landfills, and, what is worse, costs R$1.5 billion per year in the public health system with diseases directly caused by garbage.
But it is not necessary to visit a garbage dump to know that we need to change some habits. The pandemic imposed a 'new order' on the world and Brazil when we, Brazilians, were already far behind in socio-environmental issues.
Social isolation led people to consume more at home, and order more deliveries, increasing the volume of discarded packaging.
The reclusion forced us to look definitively at the waste we produce. The quarantine, we know, brought us several reflections, an impulse to the need to recycle, to exercise, to cook, and to acquire new behaviors. But now it is necessary to transform these behaviors into a habit.
There is still a long way to go for environmental practice, but the awakening of this urgency and greater responsibility for what we produce and consume is already an important step. Information is a fundamental tool for this change.
This purpose made me abandon old paths to create a startup focused on socio-environmental issues. So+ma (www.somavantagens.com.br) was founded to address the need to motivate people to create new habits and to transform these positive attitudes into opportunities.
The program rewards the behavior of those who take their recyclables to certain places and, from this, their positive behavior turns into self-benefits, job generation, income, and opportunities for many people and the collective with a positive impact on the environment and health.
It is really in our hands.
