Translation: (something like)" "A trash picker does more ... than a Minster of the Environment"
Today, just a short post about one of those true intersections of project management – in this case software development – and sustainability – in this case, recycling via “waste-picking”, and a new “App” that serves the millions (did you know there are millions?) of Catedores – or their equivalent – worldwide.
The app, called Cataki, is featured in a short story under the heading “Rubbish in Brazil”, in the most current version of The Economist.
Paraphrasing from the article:
The developers of Cataki, a smartphone app, hope to change what is seen as an unwanted, but very needed profession in Brazil – and many other countries as well. Since July it has been matching people who have rubbish with catadores operating in their neighbourhoods. Catadores cart off unwanted non-recyclables like sofas and televisions as well. On the Cataki map their carroças show up Uber-style as purple icons. Thiago Mundano, a street artist who is the brain behind Cataki, insists it is more like Tinder (a dating app) - because it takes no cut from the catadores). On future versions, people will post photos of their rubbish, and catadores will accept or reject it by swiping right or left. Photos of catadores will make it still more Tinder-like, Mr Mundano hopes.
There is more to this project than software. It includes events in which graffiti artists (see below) and healthcare professionals and the ‘mechanically inclined’ gather to inspect and paint, and add rear-view mirrors to the carts (carroças), as well as to attend to the needs of the pickers themselves.
It’s new, but it may catch on worldwide. After all, according to a report by the World Bank, 1% of city dwellers in developing countries work as waste-pickers. Mr Cazuza, a veteran, thinks Cataki is useful mainly to “newbies who don’t know where to start”. An electronic calling card may win them more respect.
To learn more about the project and how it was rolled out (very creatively, and I applaud the way they did this handoff from project outcome to steady-state use), watch this video which is narrated in Portuguese but is subtitled in English.
"We cling to our own point of view, as though everything depended on it. Yet our opinions have no permanence; like autumn and winter, they gradually pass away."
