Between the 1st and 8th of February, Maria Elisabeth Grimberg and Gilberto Ohta de Oliveira visited UtilDeco within “SUSY – Sustainable and Solidarity” Project.

The project is co-financed by the European Union and it involves 26 organisations from 23 European countries designed to promote good practice models on social economy and solidarity in Europe and worldwide.

Maria Grimberg presented Coopamare Social enterprise. One solution to successfully handle recyclable waste by organising people who have collected on their own these materials, in an organisation that in time has fought for their rights and obtained the recognition of the profession of recycling collector.

Gilberto Ohta de Oliveira presented the example of Cooperagua, an agricultural cooperative that managed to bring welfare to families in a rural area outside Sao Paolo and that supports agriculture carried out using permaculture techniques in order to preserve the tropical forest habitat, with a strong development in biodiversity.