São Paulo: Decentralised composting yards collecting and composting organic waste from street markets and households

São Paulo has 883 street markets which generate 34,000 tonnes of organic waste per year. The municipality generates an additional 39,000 tonnes from tree and plant pruning.

A system of decentralised composting locations allows São Paulo to divert large amounts of organic waste from landfills and produce compost.

The composting facilities or ‘yards’ handle up to 50 tonnes of waste a day and, in 2018, were estimated to avoid about 1,920 tonnes of CO2e emissions annually. [1] As a result, compost from street markets is used in the maintenance of public spaces in the city. However, these maintenance activities were estimated not to be enough at the moment to absorb 100% of the compost production foreseen in the city’s Integrated Solid Waste Management Plan [2], so compost is also sometimes given away for free to visitors. The project also includes an urban garden programmes in which citizens are encouraged to grow their own food. [3]