The Ellen MacArthur Foundation and the City of Recife, supported by Clean Rivers, have announced a pioneering partnership to transform collection and recycling systems across the city — making them more effective for cooperatives and waste pickers, businesses, citizens, and the environment.
The project aims to unlock up to BRL 250 million in multi-year investment, combining corporate collaboration and philanthropic capital, with work set to begin as early as 2027. It is designed to build a financing mechanism that becomes self-sustaining over time — and to set a new standard for collection and recycling systems across Brazil.
Why Recife
Recife is one of Brazil's most densely populated cities, home to 1.5 million people at the mouth of three major rivers — the Capibaribe, Beberibe, and Tejipió — surrounded by mangrove forests that filter water before it reaches the Atlantic. That geography makes the city especially exposed to the consequences of waste leakage, and gives improvements in the system unusually high potential to benefit people, freshwater, and coastal ecosystems alike.
Recife also brings real foundations to build on: a qualified technical team, pioneering experimental initiatives, reference centres, openness to innovation, and a city government with strong political support from its population. Together, these make it an ideal city for an ambitious transformation — and the federal government’s Ministry of the Environment is supporting the project.
What the partnership will do
The partnership will develop a detailed plan for the city, aimed at creating a new financing system covering the full journey of waste — from generation to its return to the productive cycle — with a focus on increasing recycling, promoting professional valorisation, and reducing freshwater pollution. A Transformation Plan for Recife will be developed through a shared vision co-created with local stakeholders, including diagnosis, action planning, and governance of the waste system.
This work puts into practice the vision set out in Closing the Loop, the white paper published by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and Clean Rivers, developed with an advisory group of more than 80 organisations.
Over the next six months, the partners will work with local stakeholders to develop a detailed plan for the city. If successful, the ambition is to unlock up to R$250 million in multi-year investment and begin implementation work in Recife as early as 2027.
That vision centres on:
Beyond Recife
The model being developed here is designed to be more than a single city's success story. It aims to serve as a reference for other cities in Brazil and the Global South facing similar challenges, and to inform national public policy on collection, recycling, and reverse logistics.
