Tag: waste

rubbish!

I just took out the rubbish from my house for the first time!! Don’t give me that look though- I’m a one person household so I don’t usually have that much waste to take care of. The last time we did a major cleaning we took out the accumulated bags of waste outside and my host said, so you wait until you hear them come round and then you take…

what is old is made anew

Banco do Brasil’s messengers carry their missives in these yellow cotton bags marked with the bank’s black logo. When they get old and/or sufficiently dirty, the bank donates them to the women’s group O Grupo Brasilianas that uses recycled material to make bags. These yellow oddly sized bags provide the material for some of the chicest bags these women make. The bags are received every month and are first dismantled…

on billboards: são paulo, rio de janeiro, salvador de bahia

As the bus drove into Rio, it hit me- full on in my face in several metres of printed plastic mounted on metal stilts- that I was no longer in São Paulo. There were billboards all over. And then I was glad for Cidade Limpa, the law that made it illegal to mount billboards or other outdoor signs above certain size specifications. Not only does it allow you to admire…

on the way to the rio airport

In the past 6 hours, I have travelled from Rio de Janeiro to Salvador da Bahia, from one former capital of Brazil to another. The ride from my hostel to the airport served as a reminder of the other faces of Rio de Janeiro, faces that are not the postcard image for most people for what Brazil is – beaches, beautiful men and women (a friend once summarised it as…