Brazil's Catadores Built a Movement 1,700 Strong in 2001, and It Is Still Marching

The MNCR is Brazil's national movement of catadores, the people who collect and sort recyclable materials for a living, founded at the first national congress of waste pickers in Brasília in June 2001. It organizes cooperatives and associations, negotiates with federal, state and municipal governments, and sits in the federal inter-ministerial committee for the social inclusion of catadores. Alongside Ancat and Unicatadores, it estimates that around 1 million people in Brazil work in the trade. The movement campaigns against waste incineration and against the 2025 waste-import decree (Decreto 12.438/2025), which it calls legally incoherent, and it runs a national day of struggle for catadores on 7 June.