In light of  the impacts of climate change in urban areas, waste pickers, especially female collectors, have not only been suffering from the impacts of extreme weather events, but also leading the fights for climate justice and recognition of their environmental role.
 
CATA is a collaboration between the visual arts, sociology and popular education through the international network WIEGO (Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing),and Sheffield University, and  the visual artist/photographer VERÔNICA ALKMIM FRANÇA, who has been developing visual art with different groups on topics related to environmental sustainability. This collaboration allows for rich exchanges, therefore, bringing complementary languages closer together. On the one hand, WIEGO researches, supports and monitors the daily activity of the waste pickers, who collect and resignify the waste we produce. On the other hand, these complementary languages were sensitively captured by VERÔNICA ALKMIM FRANÇA.

 

 The need for WIEGO research on climate change emerged in discussions with the BONITAS gender group. The research sought to identify how waste pickers experience, face, reinvent and resist the impacts of one of humanity's greatest challenges – climate change.
 

During the CATA project, the waste pickers participated in an image workshop using the

Cyanotype technique in which recyclable waste became raw material for a new experimentation and immersion, whereby the female waste pickers were protagonists in the act of revealing their

own daily lives.
 
CATA is an instance for reflection and awareness about climate change and the role of female waste pickers in environmental preservation.

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Verônica Alkmim França and Sonia Maria Dias