A rela o entre tecnologias sociais e economia solidária: um estudo de caso em uma cooperativa de catadores de resíduos

The cooperatives of recyclable solid waste projects, which are organized and conducted jointly by their workers, in a self-managed and collectively way, are part of what is called in Brazil, Solidarity Economy. This study aims at identifying aspects of the relationship between the existing technologies in these cooperatives and the values of solidarity economy. In order to do so we have studied the current stage of development of a cooperative of waste pickers, located in S o Carlos / SP, considering the following aspects: the process of collecting, sorting out and marketing, the organization of work, technologies used and developed and the existing support programs and partnerships. For the data collection the technique used was observation and interviews. As a result we observed that the cooperative members utilized existing technologies. In regards to the solidarity economy, they have collective ownership of the means of production and manage the cooperative, and there is no technical division of labor: all members are able to learn and perform different activities within the cooperative, and the necessary knowledge for the development of activities which are transmitted among the members.