The innovative pilot project, developed in Telêmaco Borba, Paraná, will serve as a model for other cities to reduce the amount of solid waste sent to landfills
São Paulo, January 13, 2022 – With the goal of making Telêmaco Borba, a city of 80,000 in the interior of Paraná state,  Brazil’s first 100% circular packaging region, Klabin, Brazil’s largest producer and exporter of paper for packaging and paper packaging, and the HEINEKEN Group, Brazil’s second largest brewery, have joined forces in an innovative partnership for the environment. The initiative aims to ensure that all the city’s recyclable solid waste is properly collected and transformed, reused or recycled to prevent it from ending up in landfills. The goal is to demonstrate that the model can be replicated in any other municipality.


The 100% Circular Packaging Region (TC100), developed in 2020 by Hub Incríveis, a creative innovation network founded to reinvent the use of packaging, gained even greater traction with the entry of the two companies as well as with the support of ViraSer, a reverse logistics program that works to accelerate, train and professionalize municipal recycling programs. The expertise of these companies, which operate in distinct fields, will help to improve waste management, especially in the paper, glass and aluminum chains.


“This project’s goal is to draw on the collective strengths, knowledge, experience and resources of these organizations to take yet another important step towards the changes needed to advance the use of post-consumer packaging in Brazil. We are confident in the potential for collaboration between the public and private spheres to address these issues, given our belief that only by working together will we be able to deliver the positive impacts we envisage from point to point in the packaging chain,” said Ornella Vilardo, Senior Sustainability Manager of the HEINEKEN Group.


The project’s major challenges include increasing the packaging recycling rate as much as possible. To achieve this, in the first phase of the TC100, which was carried out in 2021 and sponsored by Klabin, a detailed diagnosis was conducted of the amount of packaging material recycled and sold by the local co-operative and of the total amount of material sent to the landfill. This survey revealed that only 11.7% of Telêmaco Borba’s packaging is recovered through recycling each year.


The main issues and challenges of waste management were mapped, and measures were identified to increase recyclability potential by joining the forces of local government and co-operatives, residents and companies. The actions included making improvements to cooperative facilities, enhancing public policies, training and developing leaders, supporting environmental education and creating a marketing network for recycled products.


“We are structuring a model that will be implemented by the end of 2022 in Telêmaco Borba, and that can be replicated by other cities that want to become a region that recycles packaging as much as possible, while dumping as little as possible in landfills,” said Julio Nogueira, Sustainability and Environment Manager at Klabin. “It’s one of the many initiatives that Klabin has been developing to support the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).”


Next steps
With the HEINEKEN Group joining the initiative and bringing its expertise in the glass chain, the project is now seeking new partners that feature packaging circularity in their strategy, focusing on plastics and metals producers to ensure the needed know-how in all chains. The second step of the project involves the joint creation of solutions, with a public invitation to startups, NGOs, companies and other interested organizations. These new players will help find solutions to the challenges of waste management identified, support environmental education actions, strengthen recycling and expand the marketing network for recyclable packaging, while proposing improvements to municipal waste management regulations. 
 The two sponsors (Klabin and HEINEKEN Group) will develop as many prototype solutions as possible to expand the study and improve the TC100 methodology so that the initiative can be rolled out to other cities nationwide. Once the co-development step is concluded, the third phase will put into practice in the city all of the solutions developed and monitor the results by identifying improvement gaps, successes and the scaling potential of each initiative.

 
Telêmaco Borba a pioneer
The city underwent a selection process that analyzed more than 20 Brazilian regions and was selected for it being demographically similar to many cities in the country: having a landfill near the end of its useful life, a local government engaged in the circular economy and the fact that it benefits from Klabin’s Solid Waste Program. “The city was chosen by Hub Incríveis’ innovation committee for serving as a compelling case to inspire and enable the construction of circular methods and practices for other regions,” said Marcos Iorio, the technical head of the TC100 Project. This will be Brazil’s first city to have a project of this scale implemented.
Among other achievements, Klabin’s Solid Waste Program already has carried out projects to strengthen the municipality’s cooperatives through actions to develop leaders and improve logistics and production efficiency. Other actions include supporting environmental education and expanding sales of materials. Two of the best indicators of its success were the growth in sales volume and the increase of over 200% in the average income of workers at the partner co-operative.
Improvements also were achieved in worker health, hygiene and safety conditions.
The initiative also draws on the support of ViraSer, a reverse logistics program that accelerates trains and professionalizes municipal recycling programs by improving the work of recycling professionals, mainly through their associations. ViraSer also operates in five other municipalities participating in Klabin’s Solid Waste Program, a partnership between the company and the Caminhos do Tibagi Consortium, which, since 2012, has been contributing through actions to improve environmental indicators in Telêmaco Borba, Ortigueira, Imbaú, Tibagi, Reserva and Rio Branco do Ivaí.

To learn more about and stay up to date on the TC100 project, follow the Hub Incríveis social networks: Instagram - @hubincriveis, Facebook – hubincriveis, LinkedIn - hubincriveis and YouTube – Hub Incríveis.



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