Environmental sustainability and reverse logistics: An analysis of the recycling networks of cooking oil waste in Sao Paulo, Brazil

The recycling of used cooking oil is gaining increasing attention as society begins to realize the environmental, economic and social benefits of this activity. The reuse of cooking oil has not only prevented its inappropriate disposal but has also yielded economic and social benefits via the valuation of cooking oil waste as a raw material and the possibility of generating employment and income. This study aims to analyze how cooking oil recycling networks are formed to identify ongoing initiatives of collection and reuse, as well as to understand the processes of both formation and expansion of these networks. At present, a number of Civil Society Organizations of Public Interest (CSOPIs) and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are spreading this idea and forming networks among suppliers of used oil (final consumers), collection points, processors (companies that collect, filter and sell the product) and companies that use the recycled oil as a raw material. This study examined two of these organizations (Ecóleo, an NGO, and Triangle Institute, TI, a CSOPI) to obtain a preliminary overview of a number of existing initiatives for the collection and recycling of cooking oil in Brazil and the networks that are being formed around these initiatives, including their dynamics and expansion perspectives.