Recycling in Brazil

Brazil's overall recycling rate is 4%, according to Abrelpe (Associação Brasileira de Empresas de Limpeza Pública e Resíduos Especiais) but differs a lot from city to city. Only 60.5% of Brazilian municipalities with waste management services offer recycling collection. More than 70% of Brazilians do not separate their recyclable materials into proper bins. The recovery of recyclable material is largely left to waste pickers, who earn a living by collecting recyclables and selling them to private recycling companies. Recycling has difficulties advancing in Brazil. Only 41.4% of the population has access to selective collection.

Main businesses in Brazil are taking a lead role in organizing recycling collection in the country's major cities. In 1992, private companies from various areas established the Brazilian Business Commitment for Recycling (CEMPRE), a nonprofit organization work for the promotion of recycling within the scope of comprehensive waste management as an initiative to build a better environmental image for their associates. CEMPRE tries to increase the community's awareness of recycling and other solid waste issues through publications, technical research, seminars, and databases.

Brazilian National Policy on Solid Waste was enacted in 2010. This law introduced guidelines for solid waste management and shared responsibility for products over their life cycle.

Decree No. 12.688, signed into law in 2025, mandates recycling for plastic packaging. Specifically regulating articles 32 and 33, it mandates reverse logistics systems and shared responsibility for manufacturers, importers, distributors, and traders to ensure products and packaging return to the business sectors for either safe disposal or recycling/ reuse after consumer use. This mandate sets national targets for the amount of recycled content that must be present in new plastic packaging. For 2026 the target is 32% recovery, and the goal slowly increases until 2040, where the goal is 50%.

Brazil is one of the countries with the lowest recycling rates in the world, behind Yemen and Syria and well below the world average, which is 9%. In Brazil, the main materials for reprocessing are aluminum, steel, glass, paper and plastics. They also recycle batteries, cooking oil, laminated material, refrigerators and so on. The results of plastic recycling are significantly low, but the aluminum recycling rate is one of the highest in the world.

The paper industry in Brazil is responsible for 1% of the GDP. In 2023, Brazil recycled 4.65 million tons, or 58-64%, of the paper materials produced that year. Taking into consideration only the paper used in packaging, the recycling rate is even higher at 70 percent. In Brazil, industries consume 2.8 million tons of recycled paper. The paper recycling amount in Brazil varies greatly from area to area. In the south and southeast area, rates of recycling are high, at 64% and 44% respectively; whereas it is 16% in other areas.

In 2021, the country managed to recycle 98.7% of aluminum cans, which represents approximately 33 billion aluminum cans. Since 1990, this is the highest rate in the history of can recycling, and is also one of the highest in the world.

Aluminum is collected and stored by a chain of about 2,000 scrap collectors. 50% of the collectors are industries, and the others are supermarkets, schools, companies, and charitable entities. Despite the excellent result with aluminum cans, recycling of other products is still widely low.