CONTRIBUTION OF WASTE PICKER ENTERPRISES TO THE MITIGATION OF ENVIRONMENTAL COSTS
environmental footprint; avoided emissions; solidarity economy; hybrid organizations; municipal solid waste.
Urban solid waste (USW) management relies on the work of waste pickers organized into cooperatives; however, the metrics used to assess environmental impacts rarely account for the individuals who actually recover these materials. This thesis analyzes the contribution of waste picker cooperatives to the mitigation of environmental costs, presenting three studies in the form of manuscripts. Manuscript I consists of a bibliometric analysis—combined with a systematic literature review and content analysis—using the Scopus and Web of Science databases to examine the relationship between environmental footprints and USW management. The findings reveal a field centered on the Ecological Footprint, Carbon Footprint, and Life Cycle Assessment—where the term "environmental footprint" refers to distinct methodologies—and highlight a lack of research measuring the socio-environmental contribution of waste pickers. This gap serves as the basis for proposing the concept of the "Socio-environmental Footprint of Recycling." Manuscript II, a case study of the *Cooperativa de Catadores de Materiais Recicláveis de Tangará da Serra/MT* (COOPERTAN), examines its governance as a hybrid organization, which must navigate structural tensions arising from its market position. Through a qualitative, longitudinal case study (2020–2025), it demonstrates that a governance model rooted in self-management, collective decision-making, and institutional engagement does not eliminate these tensions, but rather enables the cooperative to manage them and ensure its continued operation. Manuscript III provides a longitudinal analysis of the materials recovered by the cooperative between 2020 and 2025; it estimates the greenhouse gas emissions avoided—relative to a counterfactual scenario—and assigns an economic reference value to these savings. This analysis distinguishes between the commercial value of the materials, the environmental benefit generated, and the portion of that benefit actually captured by the cooperative (this manuscript is currently under development). This thesis contributes by integrating the socio-organizational dimension of recycling into environmental metrics and by providing a foundation for the economic recognition of the environmental services rendered by waste pickers.