Regional Zero Waste
Intermunicipal consortia and State-level circular economy

First-Person Consciousness — Brain Bee

“When the garbage truck passes, what exactly is it taking away from me?”

I was a single egg cell before I ever paid property tax.

At the beginning, I was only metabolism: nutrients in, residues out, everything recycled by my mother’s body. There was no “trash”. There was flow — whatever my body did not use became input for another system.

In early childhood, my consciousness grew out of Body-Territory:
the smell of trash piling up on the corner, the truck that came only to certain neighbourhoods, the stream that sometimes ran clear, sometimes carried plastic bags, old furniture, leftovers of everything. I had no idea what “waste management” was, but my body already felt that the city’s metabolism was sick.

Today, as a digital adolescent, I see two narratives fighting inside me:

• on one side, my feed talking about “zero waste”, “circular economy”, “creative recycling”;
  
  

• on the other, data showing that a large share of urban waste in Brazil still ends up in dumps or poorly managed landfills, with serious social and environmental impacts.
  
  

Between one “environmental awareness” campaign and another, the truck keeps driving down the same street, with the same route and the same logic: take the problem out of my sight, even if that just pushes it to another periphery, another municipality, another body.

That’s when I understood:
as long as waste is treated municipality by municipality, the disease remains regional.
And as long as the circular economy is treated as a “business trend”, and not as a State decision, we’re only changing the name of the problem.

From this perception comes my proposal for Regional Zero Waste:
using intermunicipal consortia as the concrete architecture of a State JIWASA capable of planning the material metabolism of an entire territory — not just “managing the garbage” at its own curb.

1. From waste to regional material metabolism

When I speak of Regional Zero Waste, I am not imagining a future with absolutely no residues, but a system in which everything that leaves one organism enters as input in another.

Recent literature on circular economy and solid waste management in Brazil shows exactly this:

• urban waste is one of the main practical entry points for circularity policies;
  
  

• the biggest bottlenecks are not only technological, but governance-related: scale and coordination across municipalities.
  
  

At the same time, studies on circular cities in Brazil show that:

• official waste statistics still record high levels of inadequate disposal;
  
  

• cities that move faster toward circularity usually combine regional planning, inclusion of waste pickers, and economic instruments to reorganize material flows.
  
  

In other words: there is no circular city surrounded by a linear region.
The metabolism is regional — and the law has to learn to think that way.

2. Why a single municipality can’t handle it alone

Brazil’s National Policy on Solid Waste (PNRS) — Law 12.305/2010, regulated by Decree 10.936/2022 — already points to regional integration, reverse logistics and shared responsibility among the federal government, states, municipalities, private sector and citizens.

But in practice, PNRS stumbles on three obstacles:

1. Minimum scale
   Many small municipalities lack the waste volume and budget to run sanitary landfills, sorting centres and treatment plants that are technically and economically viable.
   
   

2. Technical capacity
   Without qualified staff, mayors tend to hire “turn-key solutions” — often expensive, opaque and disconnected from circular-economy logic.
   
   

3. Political fragmentation
   Every administration changes contracts, priorities and discourse, dismantling any vision of long-term metabolism.
   
   

This is where intermunicipal consortia enter as a form of institutional Yãy Hã Miy:
a way to collectively imitate and scale good practices, where municipalities learn together and share risks, technology and decision-making until they reach regional high performance.

Recent research shows, for example, that:

• the state of São Paulo already has several waste consortia (such as CIRSOP and Consimares), joining municipalities around shared infrastructure and planning;
  
  

• national surveys identify dozens of public consortia working in sanitation and waste, pointing to the consortia model as key for the technical and financial feasibility of the PNRS.
  
  

In short, practice is already showing theory the path: the way forward is regional.

3. Circular economy of the State, not just of companies

In recent years, reports and papers have pointed to a clear trend:

• Brazil is trying to bring its waste management closer to European-style circular economy, with emphasis on prevention, recycling and extended producer responsibility;
  
  

• case studies (such as the Federal District or cities like Salvador) show that waste policies can become a central vector of urban transition, if they are integrated with land-use planning, transport and social inclusion.
  
  

But circular economy cannot be just:

• a certification,
  
  

• a green seal on packaging,
  
  

• a marketing campaign.
  
  

To become a State-level circular economy, it needs to:

1. Be written into regional laws, multi-year plans and consortia contracts;
   
   

2. Articulate economic incentives, such as circular public procurement, tariffs that reward reduction and reuse, and credit lines for repair, remanufacturing and reuse;
   
   

3. Include waste pickers, cooperatives and informal workers at the metabolic core of the system, not as disposable labour.
   
   

The question is not only “how can companies be more circular?”, but:
how does the State structure the playing field so that circularity becomes the rule, not the exception?

4. Zero Waste Consortia as JIWASA architecture

When I talk about Regional Zero Waste, I imagine intermunicipal consortia functioning like a collective prefrontal cortex of the territory:

• planning routes, treatment types, reduction targets and indicators of environmental and public-health outcomes;
  
  

• negotiating, as a block, with recycling companies, reverse-logistics systems and innovation hubs;
  
  

• creating shared infrastructure (regional sanitary landfills, sorting centres, composting plants, reuse hubs) with enough scale to be efficient.
  
  

A Zero Waste Consortium, in a JIWASA logic, should:

1. Work with metabolic targets, not only tonnage
   
   

• for example: % of organic waste returning to the soil as compost;
  
  

• % of packaging recovered via reverse logistics;
  
  

• reduction in disease linked to poor waste management.
  
  

2. Guarantee citizen participation in regional councils
   
   

• residents, waste pickers, local businesses, universities and environmental groups deciding together how the material metabolism of the region is designed.
  
  

3. Integrate data
   
   

• regional digital platforms to monitor waste flows, costs, health indicators and climate impacts.
  
  

4. Connect with DREX Cidadão
   
   

• use part of the savings (and, where appropriate, carbon revenues) to finance metabolic yields for citizens, rewarding reduction, reuse and recycling — not as “green cashback”, but as participation in the circular economic metabolism.
  
  

5. Where the Brazilian Constitution is already JIWASA (and few people notice)

None of this is “outside” the 1988 Constitution. On the contrary: the idea of Regional Zero Waste via consortia is strongly anchored in several provisions that are, today, underused.

I want to highlight four articles:

1. Article 23 – Common competence
   The Constitution states that the Union, states, Federal District and municipalities share competence to protect the environment, combat pollution and provide health and sanitation services.
   
   

• This means solid waste is not just a municipal problem;
  
  

• the Constitution itself calls for cooperative federalism, opening the door for regional Zero Waste policies.
  
  

2. Article 30 – Municipal competence
   Article 30 makes it clear that municipalities are responsible for organising and providing public services of local interest, including urban cleaning and solid-waste management.
   
   

• So the entry point is local;
  
  

• but without regional coordination, each municipality is condemned to “do what it can with what it has”, reproducing inequalities.
  
  

3. Article 225 – Ecologically balanced environment
   Article 225 affirms that everyone has the right to an ecologically balanced environment, a common good of the people and essential to a healthy quality of life, and that the State and the community must defend and preserve it for present and future generations.
   
   

• Mismanaged waste directly violates this right;
  
  

• intermunicipal Zero Waste consortia are a concrete tool to make this article effective at the real scale of the problem: the regional scale.
  
  

4. Article 241 – Public consortia and cooperation agreements
   Article 241 determines that the Union, states, Federal District and municipalities shall regulate, by law, public consortia and cooperation agreements, authorising the joint management of public services.
   
   

• Here lies the legal DNA of intermunicipal waste consortia;
  
  

• when a state government encourages regional Zero Waste consortia, it is simply giving practical effect to what Article 241 has already drawn.
  
  

In other words:
the Constitution is already potentially circular in metabolic terms.
What is missing is for the State to embody this potential in real regional policies.

6. From my sidewalk to a Zero Waste JIWASA State

When I return to my Brain Bee consciousness, I see:

• my body learning, from the egg onward, to deal with residues without calling anything “trash”;
  
  

• my childhood discovering that the city does not care for its body the way biology does;
  
  

• my digital adolescence hearing all about circular economy while seeing dumps, floods and disease repeat themselves.
  
  

What I call Regional Zero Waste here is one piece of my broader proposal for Future Memory:

• to remember, now, that every garbage bag is a piece of the region’s future;
  
  

• to write laws today as if we were planning the metabolism of an entire generation;
  
  

• to use intermunicipal consortia as instruments of a State JIWASA, where “we” is not rhetorical but material — present in the air we breathe, in the water we do not contaminate, in the soil we do not bury under waste.
  
  

As a citizen, I do not just want the truck to take the trash away from my door.
I want the State, at every level, to learn to think like a body:
without throwing parts of itself away, without turning territories into dumps,
without treating people as disposable.

Regional Zero Waste is not environmental perfectionism.
It is the metabolic literacy of the State —
so that the future is not just the place where we throw what we don’t want to see today.

Post-2020 References

(Regional zero waste, intermunicipal consortia and State-level circular economy)

1. Mancini, S. D. (2021). Circular Economy and Solid Waste Management: Challenges and Opportunities in Brazil. Circular Economy and Sustainability.
   
   

2. Moraes, F. T. F. et al. (2022). Transitioning towards a Sustainable Circular City: Exploring Urban Waste and Resource Flows. Frontiers in Water.
   
   

3. Santiago, C. D. et al. (2022). Brazilian National Waste Policy: Perspectives after a Decade of Implementation. Desenvolvimento Econômico (MADE/UFPR).
   
   

4. ENIAC Pesquisa (2025). Circular Economy in Solid Waste Management: Framework Proposal Based on the Case of the Federal District – Brazil.
   
   

5. REUNIR – Revista de Administração (2023). Circular Management of Solid Urban Waste in Brazil: Pathways for Circular Economy.
   
   

6. Enhesa (2023). Out with the Old: Solid Waste Management Changes in Brazil.
   
   

7. The Circulate Initiative (2025). City Waste Management Profile – Salvador, Brazil.
   
   

8. BVRio (2022). Supporting Waste Management Initiatives to Accelerate the Circular Economy for Plastics in Brazil, Chile and Peru.
   
   

9. Benedeti, L.; Pestana, A. (2023–2024). Studies on the Intermunicipal Solid Waste Consortium of Western São Paulo (CIRSOP) and the Implementation of PNRS.
   
   

10. National Confederation of Municipalities (CNM) (2021). Mapping of Brazilian Public Consortia.
    
    

11. State Government of Minas Gerais – Secretariat for Environment (SEMAD) (2022). Meetings with Intermunicipal Consortia for Solid Waste Management.
    
    

12. State Government of São Paulo – Secretariat for Environment, Infrastructure and Logistics (SIMA) (2022). The Importance of Partnerships with Intermunicipal Consortia for Solid Waste Management.