Analyzing the territorial dimensions of work through a comparative study of waste recovery facilities in France and Brazil

Abstract

BACKGROUND:

Waste production and management from residents and collection for sorting are systems heavily dependent on territorial dimensions. Ergonomic research needs to better integrate such territorial determinants to improve work conditions and design sustainable work systems.

OBJECTIVE:

Through studies in France and Brazil, this paper analyzes the territorial relations that raise work systems’ sustainability challenges for materials recovery facilities (MRFs) and waste management in both countries and examines the links between work activity and territory in MRFs.

METHODS:

Both studies were based on the principles of activity-oriented ergonomics and used analyses of work activity and sociotechnical systems. The French study focused on interventions conducted over a 42-month period in five MRFs. The Brazilian study was based on a 20-month longitudinal qualitative and quantitative study.

RESULTS:

In this paper, we argue that territory is a key determining factor in waste production and work. Notably, the consumption patterns of residents and the economic flows within a geographic space determine the waste composition; and the territorially specified public policies, which define technical and social dimensions of waste collection and sorting. However, the territorial dimensions of waste are poorly considered in facility design. Workers’ health and sorting system performance are thus affected and negatively compromising plant performance.

CONCLUSION:

The territory appears as a blind spot in the design of work systems. One of the challenges is to create interfaces and devices that could help to integrate better human activity and waste territorialized anchorage, in a multilevel organization, from local communities to the global recycling chains.

1 Introduction

Environmental and social concerns related to the challenge of a more sustainable development are increasingly integrated into the projects of socio-productive organizations, supported by several international, national, and territorial policies [1, 2]. The theme of sustainable challenges is increasingly important in ergonomics research [3–5]. Most of these works explore the contributions of ergonomics to transformation projects or the way in which ergonomics deals with these new issues using a comprehensive approach of the work situations and the system and a systemic approach to transform these situations. The question of the level of action to support transformations that simultaneously consider systemic performance issues and worker health and safety is, in any case, central. This article aims to contribute to this theme by exploring the links between territory and activity in concrete work situations, a little explored axis in these different works in ergonomics, in which the territory appears only as a context. In this sense, we resumed the approach of anthropotechnology, commonly developed in parallel with ergonomics, strengthening the relationship between these two traditions.

Driven by ecological issues, new economic sectors have emerged, notably supported by circular economy models. Waste sorting into materials recovery facilities (MRFs) to feed the different recycling production chains is one typical sector. Facing the challenge of reducing the volume of incinerated or buried waste, and thus preserving the quality of soil, water, and air from various forms of pollution, waste recycling has emerged as an interesting solution from an ecological and economic point of view. Recent years have witnessed the transition of waste management towards industrialized models of sorting and recycling, replacing manual or artisanal systems.

MRFs participate in a circular economy based on the principle of circularity of material flows, in which all materials are “consumed” in the processes that fuel the functioning of socio-economic systems and territory [6]. The status of “waste” conferred to an object is then merely transitory. Thus, a collected recyclable packaging arrives at the MRF as waste and leaves it as a valuable product, having acquired a market and industrial value. The waste concerned here is the result of household recyclable collections. Inhabitants in France as in Brazil must separate waste at home according to several channels: glass, household waste, and recyclable packaging waste (plastic, cardboard, etc.) and paper. Green waste from gardening, textiles, electronic equipment, and health care waste are collected separately.

MRFs are at the core of the recycling chain, which starts with the product being put on the market by an industrial company, its consumption by an inhabitant, its collection, its separation by material in MRFs, and, finally, its transformation into a new product.

In this chain of management of recyclable waste, the territorial dimension appears to be a key determining factor of work and production. The territory has been studied as a dimension of sustainable development, since it is based on a global-local dialectic and its concrete implementation takes place at the territorial level [7, 8].

Some territorial issues have been considered in other sectors, notably health care. Authors have emphasized the difficulties posed by a significant geographic distance on actors’ coordination and access to health care [9, 10]. However, it seems clear that this is not a simple element of context. Spatial, local, and geographic dimensions can become resources or constructed objects: the solutions constructed for the transformation of the socio-productive organizations of the waste chain are made possible only in this relationship to the territorial dimension.

The hypothesis developed in this paper is that the territory appears as a forgotten dimension of industrial models of MRFs, producing negative consequences on work, working conditions, and industrial efficiency. The territory thus become a determinant for the design of the recyclable waste management model, in order to reach systemic efficiency with workers’ health and the commitment of inhabitants in the sustainable development. The relationship between territory and work activity is analyzed, particularly, in terms of “territorialized knowledge”, the basis of the relationships developed between collectors and inhabitants.

Through studies led in France and Brazil, this paper seeks to examine the links between work activity and territory in MRFs, as well as to analyze the territorial relations that raise sustainability challenges for work systems within waste sorting facilities in both countries. Indeed, working conditions and occupational risks for workers in waste collection and sorting are considered a serious issue, as indicated by numerous international studies [11–15]. Therefore, the challenge is to find efficient and sustainable solutions to reduce worker exposure to occupational risks in a context of organizational transformations and industrialization of work systems into semi-automated systems. Indeed, a green or greening job does not automatically mean a safe job for the workers, and harsh working conditions could affect a corporate strategy of sustainability [16]. As Akamangwa [17] observed: working for the environment can also mean working againstsafety.

This paper will first describe the context of the research, materials, and method. It will present the territorial organization of waste. Then, the territorial anchorage of waste and work will be examined, describing the territorial dimensions analyzed in each study. These results will lead us to discuss the challenges toward a better integration of human activity and waste territorialized anchorage to transform the territorial relationships and knowledge into resources that serve to improve the efficiency of MRFs and the health of workers.

2 First case study: Research in MRFs in France

2.1 Context, material, and method of the French study

The French study was conducted in the context of a national project to develop the sorting of recyclable plastic waste. It consisted of a 42-month research project, performed in partnership with the French National Institute for Research and Safety (INRS), which had funded the research; the University of Lyon; the national agency for ecological transition (ADEME); and a private eco-organization for recycling of household packaging and papers (CITEO).

Since the early 1990s, the field of domestic waste recycling in France has been structured around an industrial organization model. Waste from selective domestic collection is received there and sorted according to the nature of the materials, then packaged and stored. Finally, it is transferred to recyclers for recycling.

Concerning France, the sector accounts for nearly 113,250 jobs (FTE) in public structures or private companies, for waste collection, sorting, treatment, and recovery tasks according to data from ADEME [18]. In Europe, this sector provides nearly 930,000 jobs. In addition, the sector is expanding, sustained by European and national public policies that promote waste recycling and its industrialization.

The study included five MRFs, all owned by local authorities. These MRFs belong to private companies or public structures (local authorities). They were located in different geographic areas (Table 1).

Table 1

Description of the territorialized MRFs in the French study

MRF	Location	Characteristics of the area
	in France
MRF1	North	Rural areas and plains
MRF2	Southeast	Rural areas, plains, and mountains, with a strong tourist attraction
MRF3	West	Rural areas, plains, and coastal areas with tourist attraction
MRF4	Region of Paris	Very urban area and plains
MRF5	West coast	Urban and peri-urban areas, plains, and coastal areas, with a strong tourist attraction

This study used the activity-oriented framework and participatory ergonomics [19–21]. Our method could be presented regrouping five steps. The first step was an ethnographic analysis conducted in situ and using observations of the work activity of sorters (n=44 days) and semi-structured interviews (n=38) to better understand career trajectory, day-to-day work, difficulties experienced, interactions with others, and perception of health and safety. The second step consisted of describing the technical process of the site and its evolutions, as well as identifying the industrial problems faced through documents collected from each MRF. The third step consisted of better understanding the role played by territorial governance and interactions with the MRFs, through semi-structured interviews (n=4) with heads of local authorities. The fourth and final step consisted of presenting the results during collective meetings with workers and managers, and meetings with managers, executives, and heads of local authorities to support changes in practices.

We analyze the data to answer the research question of understanding which variables in the territory were relevant to the activity and performance of the system and how they influenced the working conditions. The analysis phase consisted of examining the relations between these different elements: the data collected in the ethnographic phase, the data collected concerning the technical system used, and the data collected concerning the organization for waste collection in the territory. The data from the ergonomics analysis were confronted with a literature review about territory and territorial governance in geography, sociology, and economics.

2.2 Territorial organizations of waste in France

Waste management in France is organized on a territorial scale. As examined, local authorities determine the local waste sorting channels and collection equipment, organized the collection rounds, and supervised waste sorting. At the end of the process, local authorities received the financial revenue from the sale of recyclable waste to manufacturers, who will transform this into new products. This territorial organization suggests a fragmented division of labor in waste management, most notably between waste collection and sorting, ruled by local authorities and industrial and transformation processes, ruled by other industrial actors.

The actors of territorial governance must implement national and European policies on waste sorting at the territorial level [22]. They must arbitrate between the directives given by European and national decision-makers and the economic, environmental, and social strategies they adopt in each territory. In this sense, “territorial governance” refers to a specific organization for localized actions involving public institutions, but this cannot be disconnected to a multi-level political strategy, like that supported by the European Union and the French public administration [23]. The territorial scale is essential for the effectiveness of public action and is instrumental in the sustainability and development of territories.

Consequently, waste appears as a territorialized object, responding to locally defined specificities. Concretely, three dimensions characterize the waste and give it its territorial anchorage:

the geographic dimensions of the territorial space;

the technical dimension of the collection and sorting facilities;

the political dimensions visible through the choices made in a given territory related to organization and technical choices for waste management facilities.

Hence, in the following sections, these territorial variables based on the research results are presented and their effects are analyzed.

2.3 Territory as a determinant of waste and work

Waste is a territorialized object: its characteristics fit locally defined dimensions in the waste catchment area that forms the territory of the MRF. Such characteristics concern [24]:

The territorialized sorting channels (e.g., collection of packaging and paper called mix-materials or packaging only);

The collection facilities (e.g., collection at a voluntary delivery point, in bags, or in individual and collective containers);

The modes of transport (direct transport to the MRF after the collection round or weekly transport and intermediate storage in a transfer center for the most geographically distant areas).

Geographic dimensions are therefore determinants that influence the political and technical choices concerning facilities for the collection and sorting of household waste. All these dimensions confer local specificities on the waste received and sorted at the MRF.

According to our observations, there is no uniformity of these dimensions in a given territory. Thus, for every MRF, there are characterized collection fields whose characteristics are significantly different. Consider the example of one of the MRFs examined in this study. This MRF had an automated sorting system for plastic packaging waste and a mechanized sorting system for fibrous waste. It is a recent facility, operational since 2011, which annually treats 32,000 tons of waste. The owner is a local authority, grouping 33 municipalities. The site currently employs 34 waste sorting workers. Based on the various interviews with the workers and managers, together with our observations in situ, four waste collection channels for recyclable waste with distinct characteristics have been listed for this MRF (Table 2).

Table 2

Collection channels of one MRF and their characteristics in the French study

	Location	Method of collection	Mode of transport	Sorting instructions for residents
Channel 1	Urban	Containers	Direct from collection	Mix-materials
Channel 2	Urban (downtown area)	Voluntary drop-off points	Direct from collection	Mix-materials
Channel 3	Rural	Bags	Direct from collection	Mix-materials
Channel 4	Rural	Bags	Direct from collection	Packaging only

All collection channels are transferred to the MRF directly after collection. The territorialized sorting channels are mostly composed of mix-materials, except for one channel, for which only packaging is collected. The collection methods are diverse in this area: two channels are collected in bags, another in individual and collective containers, and a last one via voluntary drop-off points. For the latter, collection was organized using this specific method of collection, given the geographic characteristics of the area. The collection area corresponds to a city district in a metropolitan area of 75,000 residents with a population density of approximately 2,600 people per square kilometer; the local authority chose the voluntary drop-off points to limit road congestion, using individual or collective containers, as well as to facilitate waste collection and management.

The characteristics of these collection channels lead to specific constraints that must be managed in worker activities, both individually and collectively. Below are two verbatim quotes from semi-directive interviews that illustrate this point.

Simon (18 months of service): “It’s easier when it’s collection 1 [channel 1]. For collection 4 [channel 4], there are more plastic bottles.”

The technical process is not adapted to these flow variations. Consequently, the workers are forced to sort a larger number of plastic waste during the sorting of this collection channel. Automated sorting machines have difficulty in managing the large amount of plastic waste and machine errors are increasing. Workers have collectively reported higher levels of back pain when sorting this channel. They requested organizational adaptations with additional staff. However, the configuration of the workspace does not make this extension possible, since only two workstations were planned when the site was designed.

Nathalie (3 years of service): “This one [channel 2], you don’t even have to look at it. You can recognize it by its smell.”

From the perception of the workers, there seems to be more non-recyclable waste to be taken out of the waste flow for collection channel 2. The workers cannot take control of these variations, and the technical equipment does not seem to be designed to absorb these variations. Workers have in fact little room for maneuver to face the amount of waste, they can only work at a higher rhythm. Despite this work activity intensification, that may have health consequences for them, the amount of waste is too important to be sorted resulting in lower quality of the bales.

We discussed these results of the ergonomic work analysis with the management of the MRF and the local authority that owns the site to better understand the difficulties pointed out by the workers. It appears that this channel contains a larger amount of non-recyclable waste than the other collection channels. According to the data provided by the plant management, on average, only 1/3 of the waste from this channel was recyclable waste (compared with an average of 75% recyclable waste for the other channels). This information was sent to the local authority by the MRF management. The local authority had identified difficulties related to the size of the trap openings designed for the voluntary delivery of selective waste, which did not allow for a clear differentiation from the non-recyclable household waste located nearby. The size of this trap door allowed very large unwanted waste to be placed in the MRF. For example, a bicycle or an electric water heater were found after damaging the sorting machines. More regularly, dead animals or food scraps were found on the sorting belts.

These results illustrate that industrial problems and problems related to working conditions and occupational risks are linked to territorial dimensions.

In other words, to act and transform work situations with a view to system efficiency, the transformations cannot be limited to the MRF. They must be embedded in the MRF territory. On the one hand, difficulties emerge when the technical facilities do not seem to be in line with the territorialized waste, and on the other hand, they become persistent when the transformations do not take place in the territory, adapted to the technical limits of the MRF. Consequently, workers need to implement adaptive strategies to preserve the economic variable on which the industrial and market criteria are based. As a result, work intensification and exposure to work fatigue are increased: with a greater number of waste materials to be sorted in « pre-sorting » with dirtier and harder to handle waste; and a high rhythm with important physical constraints; and a greater diversity of waste at the end of the line as a greater responsibility for quantity and quality objectives.

The socio-cultural dimensions are not totally absent of territorial determinants. They appear in the consumption patterns of the inhabitants, who produce significantly different waste depending on whether they are produced in urban, peri-urban, or rural areas. For example, one MRF located near the coast regularly received maritime waste, such as pieces of fishing nets and seafood products. For the most rural and residential area of this MRF territory, many pool covers were regularly collected, affecting, due to their size, the performance and functioning of the machines and the safety of the workers.

Such territorialized socio-cultural dimensions also appear in the choice of the location of the MRFs themselves. MRFs are most often located at a distance from people’s living areas. Like other waste treatment facilities, waste treatment plants provoke reluctance from a part of the local population and even strong opposition and are thus often considered as “undesirable facilities” [25, 26].

Moreover, social dimensions also appeared as territorialized. Waste sorting jobs are often entrusted to people with few or no qualifications and/or who have had fragmented career trajectories involving more or less long periods of non-employment. Waste recycling has a social function at the territorial level since it is a dynamic sector for social insertion and job creation in a context of structural unemployment and deindustrialization of some areas in France. The political, economic, and social stakes are therefore high considering the establishment of an industrial sorting facility to preserve local employment and fight against social exclusion [27].

As observed in the French study, MRFs are confined spaces, in which the territorial dimensions enter and impose themselves. However, the territory is insufficiently considered in the design of sorting systems and in the organization of production. Which relevant dimensions are required to take the territory for waste management into account? The Brazilian case will explore this point in the following sections.

3 Second case study: Research in MRFs in Brazil

3.1 Context, material, and method of the Brazilian study

The study conducted in Brazil was based on a 20-months research, which aimed to explore the implementation of automated MRFs, designed and manufactured by European suppliers, and the emerging redesign process performed by its workers [28]. It was held in two MRFs, both located in the city of São Paulo, and it was made possible by a partnership with: the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), the Municipal Urban Cleaning Authority of São Paulo (AMLURB), and the Waste Pickers’ National Movement (MNCR). Besides the Brazilian plants, an MRF was also studied in San Francisco (USA), a city that has been, for nearly four decades, developing a waste recovery sociotechnical system known worldwide for its impressive recovering capacity.

To study these plants, this work developed a methodological framework based on activity ergonomics and anthropotechnological analysis [29, 30]. The methodological strategies were applied to compare a given technology implemented in different countries intended to highlight the technological adaptation process. Activities situated upstream (selective collection, environmental education, and mobilization activities...) and downstream (sales processes, market prospective, and quality criteria...) were also analyzed. Finally, the work performed in the waste picker sheds of the cooperatives, which became responsible for the sorting operation in the MRF, were investigated. All the field research was conducted using such methods and tools as direct observation, participant observation, semi-directive interviews, document analysis, reflective interviews with video and audio supports, event-oriented interviews, and causal tree analysis. In total, it took 125 hours of field research to carry out this case study.

The data analysis process, anchored in ergonomic work analysis, focused on three dimensions: system efficiency, product quality, and working conditions. For this paper, based on the data collected in the field research, some of the specifically territorial elements were highlighted and focused. Their effects were then described and analyzed, considering the three dimensions mentioned above.

3.2 The industrial model of the recycling chain and the usual working conditions in Brazil

In 2014, the city of São Paulo carried out a participatory process to review its Integrated Solid Waste Management Plan. In this review, guidelines from the National Solid Waste Policy [31] were emphasized, mainly regarding the technological hierarchy in waste management. Priority was given to non-generation, reuse, and recycling strategies. To increase recycling, the main bet was anchored in the implementation of four Materials Recovery Facilities (MRFs), which should be able to respond to a 500% increase in the processing capacity of the municipality’s recovering system [32]. This system was based, up to that date, on the work of waste picker cooperatives included in the municipality’s public policies, all of which were operating sorting sheds, using essentially - if not entirely - manual work. With this, it was expected to go from approximately 200 tons of recyclables processed per day (5% of the recyclable waste generated in the city) to 1,000 tons per day (23% of the recyclable waste generated in the city). They would be the first semi-automated plants for sorting recyclable waste implanted in the city, in the country, and in Latin America. The first two plants were implemented in 2014 and were purchased from two European suppliers. We will focus on one of São Paulo’s plants, which was imported from a French supplier (MRF01).

MRF01 is a clean MRF, with single stream and centralized manual sorting. This means that this plant processes with source separated waste, selectively collected in a single stream (all recyclables mixed) and has one single section where all the manual work is done at the end of the production line, in a place called the manual sorting cabin. Some waste pickers from one of the cooperatives included in the official municipality recovering system work in MRF01. They are responsible for the work in the manual sorting cabin, and for the work in the pre-sorting and feeding process. Other workers from one of the private companies responsible for the municipal scavenger services also work in the plant, mainly in management activities, maintenance processes, and the control room.

Given this multiplicity of stakeholders, MRF01 followed a very particular management and governance model, with three different institutional actors –the municipality, the private company, and the waste picker cooperative –each playing different roles. The municipality determines macro indicators and targets, which must be observed in the operations of the plant. The private company manages the technical system and its maintenance, as well as work on the data production, collection, systematization, and analysis. The waste picker cooperative is responsible for the organization, coordination, and execution of sorting work.

In the manual sorting cabin, the prescribed work, projected by the foreign plant designers, was limited to “quality control”, i.e., the waste pickers must only act in the “machine’s sorting failures”, “cleaning” the flow. The ergonomic work analysis could demonstrate features of the real activity developed by the waste pickers, who regulate their work in the face of situated specific constraints, some of them territorially anchored. The next section will explore three cases that illustrate these findings, highlighting the interrelations between the work process and the territory.

3.3 Results: Waste sorting work activity and territorialized waste

The first case is related to a specific material: glass. It is known that, in France, the country of the company that sold the technical apparatus used in MRF01, collection systems with glass segregation at the source, are very common, with 93% of the population served with this type of collection [33]. However, in São Paulo, as in most Brazilian cities, the collection systems are designed to collect all recyclable materials together, leaving both the first and the finest separation in the hands of the waste pickers. The MRF01 was, however, designed without considering processes for glass recovery; the justification presented by the supplier for such a decision focused on the financial unfeasibility of a possible glass recovery process. On the other hand, from the municipality side, there were no plans, neither in the short nor in the long term, to change the current collection system. These design decisions, disregarding other possible impacts of the operational contradictions between the territorial collection system and the work at the plant, would lead to serious consequences for the sorting work and for the production efficiency and effectiveness [34].

Along the production line, there are mechanical separation equipment and several transitions of the material in unevenness, from belt to belt or from belt to equipment, which leads to the breaking of the glass containers. This broken glass runs along the entire line and is one of the causes of the plant’s major problems, such as work accidents, tears in the conveyor belts (leading to production stoppages), wear of belts and other equipment, and increased refuse rate in the plant –since it was not recovered, glass accounted for 40% of the refuse. It is still a problem for the buyer companies, since broken glass, a prohibitive material in some industrial recycling processes (plastic, for example), sometimes falls into separated material silos, and impacts the quality of the bales of sorted waste. Moreover, in MRF01 there is almost no leeway for the sorting workers to regulate their work to minimize these problems. It is impossible to take the glass containers away in the beginning of the process, and, when this material arrives in the manual sorting cabin, it is already significantly broken, making its manipulation impracticable and unsafe for workers 1 .

The second case relates to the consumption and packaging patterns found in the local market. Two materials are exemplary in this regard. Polypropylene (PP) is an abundant material, representing 10% of the plastics present in Brazilian waste [35]. However, in MRF01 there was not a process to recover this type of material. More importantly, it is identified in one of the optical separators and sent to the conveyor that receives the high-density polyethylene (HDPE), generating additional work for the waste pickers who work there. HDPE is a material with high quality requirements, sending the PP to a conveyor with an already dense flow ends up intensifying the activity even further and adding new physical, cognitive, physiological, and psychological workloads. As there was no silo to enable the temporary storage and subsequent baling of PP in the plant, there was no possibility for the sorters to adapt their work to recover this material. It would be necessary to rearrange the functioning of the technical system, for example, reprogramming the 3D optical sorters and transforming the colored polyethylene terephthalate (or colored PET) silo into PP silo, which was beyond the sorters’ immediate possibilities of regulation.

At the other extreme is exactly the case of colored PET, which is PET packaging in colors other than transparent or green. This type of material is rarely present in Brazilian waste, and it is even difficult to sell, as there is no well-established market in the country to absorb it. However, an entire line was designed at MRF01 to work with this material, with an optical separator and a dedicated conveyor belt in the manual sorting cabin.

This line was underused –its silo took 15 days to fill, that is, less than one ton of material every 15 days in a plant that processes 100 tons daily. It remained so idle that it was redesigned by the waste pickers and other plant workers to work with mixed fiber, an abundant (50% of MRF01 production) and problematic (high contamination levels) material in the production process [28].

They started to use auxiliary barrels to separate mixed fiber in some conveyors, and then to manually drop it in the PET silo, that was converted to temporarily store the mixed fiber. Moreover, in the baling process, the plant operators started to mix the material of silo 01 (negative sorting of mix paper) with the one stored in the new mixed fiber silo (positive sorting). These operational strategies led to an increase on fiber recovering and helped improving this material quality. That is, unlike the previous case (PP), in this case there was room for the sorters, mobilizing their competence and creativity developed in the manual sorting work, to instrument the technical system in order to make it more adherent to the real work.

Finally, it is important to mention materials with serious quality problems, such as the mixed fiber itself, whose commercialization presented serious difficulties. This material is worked in the manual sorting cabin on a belt that receives the product of the negative sorting of all lines of flat materials. Due to the great diversity of materials present in the Brazilian waste, mainly flexible plastics –material that is prohibitive in industrial fiber recycling –this conveyor received a very abundant and assorted flow. The pickers then had to “clean up” the flow, that is, remove everything that was not fiber, which was impossible to do at the cadence the plant operates, even when working at an intensified pace. In addition to the production of the same degraded work conditions and loads seen in the French study –considerable biomechanical loads and repetitive efforts in upper limbs, the demands to maintain awkward postures, fixed / quasi-static standing postures, and continuous cognitive and visual attention –these activity determinants also led to highly contaminated material 2 . It could not be absorbed by the local industrial factory and needed to be sold for a low price –10 times less than those obtained by waste picker cooperatives [28] –to intermediaries who exported the waste to China. With the recent increase in restrictions on waste imports by Asian countries [36, 37] and even the complete ban on these imports by China in January 2021 [38], the situation appears to be worsening, not only for MRF01, but for several MRFs around the world, mainly in central countries 3 , whose recycling depended on these more permissive global markets.

In fact, it appears that a big part of this huge problem, which has local and global consequences, is due to the disregard of territorial features in the design of urban waste recovering sociotechnical systems and its associated work system. Both the French and the Brazilian cases lead us to think that an effective sustainable transformation of work systems must go through a reconsideration of the influence of territorial aspects on the activity.

4 Discussion: Territory as a blind spot for the facilities’ design

The two studies presented focused on examining how the territorialized dimensions of waste sorting work emerge in the analysis of the activity and the interest of considering it from an ergonomic perspective. As we analyzed, a territory is organized by social and political dynamics, that steer the technical choices and the land-use planning, according to geographical characteristics. A territory is not a homogeneous space, and these variables also influence its inner organization.

The French study focused on the geographical, technical, and political diversity between different territories or within the same territory. The Brazilian study explored more specifically the socio-cultural dimensions within a territory in transformation, presented as a milieu, also considering the links between the different stakeholders from the consumer to the waste worker. All these geographical, political, technical, social, and cultural dimensions are to be considered in the study of a territory. But these two studies showed that they are more or less marked depending on the local configurations analyzed.

Beyond these differences, the results of these two studies pointed out the lack of consideration of the territory in the design MRFs, but the territory is not however completely ignored in the design choices. As analyzed in the French study, fixed images of the territory are taken at the design stage of the MRFs, which crystallizes a representation of the territory as a whole entity, masking the specificities of the territorialized collection channels and limiting the possibilities to absorb the evolutions. Currently, the territory of one given MRF evolves progressively according to public political decisions from territorial governance actors, and changes appear in the sorting plant that are visible in the territorialized collection channels. These two poles do not evolve together jointly. That creates a sort of disconnection, as decisions are not taken simultaneously between the MRF and its territory. The MRF attempts to adapt to its territory but within the limits of the possibilities offered by the technical system.

That explains why adaptive strategies mainly rely on workers’ activity, in working conditions where their room for maneuver is limited and may affect their health and safety (such as work-related musculoskeletal disorders, psychosocial disorders, injuries and cuts with dangerous waste, etc.). As a result, such disconnection has consequences for working conditions and work sustainability and may jeopardize the triple-dividend strategy of the MRFs.

The waste sorting activity therefore requires the workers to manage the temporal and material dimensions. The temporal dimensions themselves are related to both the technical systems and the production processes. Machines on which the workers have few possible actions impose rhythms and cadences. Moreover, the execution work they are asked to do does not consider the variety of wastes and the variability and production hazards they must face.

The conditions of the waste, its density and size, for example, cannot be known precisely before the sorting operation. More particularly, these material dimensions appear to be territorialized: economic, social, political, geographic, or meteorological factors affect the incoming waste and thus affect the work of sorting workers. This factor has led us to consider the territory as a simultaneous construction: social (heterogeneous actors interacting in a concomitant or convergent manner), political (marked by an entity exercising administrative power), technical (organized by various facilities and layouts), and geographic (with its own spatial characteristics). From our point of view, these are not partitioned categories. On the contrary, the combination of these analytical categories makes it possible to approach a territory in a global way, considering it as a system. However, in our analyses, this means changing scales and units of analysis to better apprehend human activity in a situation and its relations to the territory. The work activity implicitly involves the mobilization of what we can describe as territorialized knowledge, an “immaterial resource” [42] that has not yet been fully recognized. Such experiential knowledge is necessary to reach production objectives; it is built on the daily experience of the workers and is shared and transmitted collectively. It constitutes operational resources to act and face waste variations that cannot be predictable.

Sorting work involves combining a wide range of knowledge built from operational experience and developing a form of expertise on the territorial anchorage of waste. This body of territorial knowledge, in the sense that it is not based on the scientific knowledge of experts in the field of recycling and materials, is widely shared between workers and seems crucial to the waste sorting activity.

The territorialization of knowledge has been studied in France, notably in the context of the decentralization of public action and in the context of changes in work and socio-productive expectations related to the “greening” of occupations in the context of sustainable development [43, 44]. In a more general view, what is being examined are issues of professionalization in different jobs which meet specific local challenges.

Ideally, a connection should be made between the characteristics of each sector of the territory with those of the MRF. Choices should be made at the territorial level itself to organize collection by taking into account the reality of the MRF, and the technical choices made concerning it (level of automation, type of technical equipment, etc.) as a function of the territory’s characteristics. Working conditions and work activity are dependent on the territorial dimensions. Likewise, technical choices must be taken in the MRF according to the characteristics of the territory.

Nevertheless, territory remains a blind spot for the design of MRFs. In fact, the design is primarily guided through the industrial and commercial criteria, and the technical choices are intended to serve the market rationale. The sorting of waste is structured by the recycling channels. In other words, it is precisely because there are technical recycling processes that the recycling of a given material is organized. Design choices are based on the different recyclable materials that are sorted in the MRFs and on the volumes treated for each material. For example, it becomes economically attractive to install a mechanized “cardboard separator”, which separates large cardboard boxes from other waste in sorting belts, when a certain annual cardboard tonnage is collected in the territory and sorted by the workers in the MRF.

The detailed description of this knowledge is also a resource for studying the dialectical relationships among human activity, socio-productive organizations, and the territory. In this sense, they can provide elements for reflection on sustainable territorial development by considering the channels and flows in a given territory from the point of view of human activity working in socio-productive organizations. These elements can then contribute to debates on the conditions under which a green and circular economy supports the sustainable development of society and territories in a dialectic from global to local, or even research on geographic flows in waste treatment facilities [45]. As far as the scope of our research is concerned, it was not intended to contribute to territorial development.

However, the results of our work analysis could contribute to analyze the coordination processes between the actors of territorial governance and the actors of one MRF for a given territory [46]. For some plants, technical and organizational solutions on the territory and in the MRF were under examination on the territorial authority level at the end of the research project. In this way, to deepen the transformation of territories and MRFs in a joint effort, the functional and cooperative economy [42, 47] can be a resource to consider a coherent economic and territorial development based on a coordination of complex networks of stakeholders, including residents and workers, which our studies have contributed to initiate.

From this perspective, the territory is no longer a simple context or geographic space in which the work activity is carried. It becomes part of the activity itself as a resource. Territorialized spatial relationships are both results and means of work for the sorting workers and other social actors with which they interact. The refuse rate, for example, is not technical data inherent to waste, but the result of more or less close relationships among waste pickers, collection and sorting workers, technicians, residents, and municipal managers, which facilitate or hinder, and sometimes block, the development of cooperation. If this collective production has been hampered by socio-spatial arrangements, this also shows where we must act so that poor performance and health problems are resolved.

Confined in MRFs, collectors and other sorting workers are unable to develop the communicative and educational relationships with residents necessary to improve the quality of household separation. Hence, there is a need to think about the strategy to include waste pickers in spatial terms as well, allowing their presence, together with the residents, to be an opportunity to improve the system as a whole, integrating collection, sorting [48], and the MRF project itself. When analyzing the collection activity in systems in which the waste pickers assume both collection and sorting, which are beginning to be developed in some cities [48], what can be seen is the extension of the space where the collectors’ work is accompanied by an extension of the activity, which further expands its communicative dimensions with the residents. For this communicative activity to be educational and to produce behavioral changes to improve the quality of household separation, the participation of the residents is a necessary condition, as well as the temporality that structures the activity, to allow situations of dialogue and “moments of constructed coexistence” [49].

In this sense, our results call for on the one hand, a better integration of the territorial dimension in the transformative interventions on work, and on the other hand, a better consideration of the imbrication of these different systems: work system and territorial system. This perspective echoes the work of Thatcher, Guibourdenche and Cahour [50] at the interface between systems of systems approaches and activity ergonomics for sustainable development. Such dialogue is a resource to support transformative interventions an anthropocentric, equitable ethical and dynamic design of sustainable development in a complex system with interrelated factors and interrelated actors [51].

5 Conclusion

To conclude, let us come back to two points that we believe are fundamental to open new perspectives on the relationship among human work, territory, and sustainable development. The comparison of the main findings of two studies led in France and in Brazil highlights that the territory is a determinant of work activity and system performance. However, territory appears as a blind spot for the facilities design that create a disconnection between the MRFs and their territory and affect work activity, revealed by the ergonomic work activity analyses.

We argue that territory is composed by key dimensions geographic, technical, political, and social. Moreover, the main findings presented in this paper urge for creating interfaces and devices that integrate better human activity and territorialized waste: on one part, with the creation of direct relationships between residents, MRFs’ workers, collection teams (who may even be from different companies); and on the other part, with the integration of the work activity in the design of technical systems.

In a broader perspective, the challenge of offering a more significant place for work in sustainable development and its territorial deployment remains a key issue for developing sustainable work systems. The decisive place of work in sustainable development has been recognized since the Brundtland report in 1987 [52] as a core need and the 2005 World Summit on Social Development, which addressed the issues of decent work. From this perspective, we can consider that it is through the transformation of work and its territorial anchorage that more sustainable work systems could be achieved.