Eco-Stories: Felícia Campos and the Sustainable City of Florianópolis

Felícia Campos is a Historian and obtained her Masters in Peace and Conflict Studies under the UNESCO Chair at Innsbruck University, Austria.

She has interdisciplinary interest in reseach concerning peace & conflict studies, Palestinian history, urban narratives, gender dynamics and sustainability.

You can contact her through: Felíciambcampos@gmail.com.

This interview was recorded on September 23, 2020.

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Fiona Martin:
Welcome Felícia, Felícia Campos from Florianópolis. How are you doing?

Felícia Campos:
Hi, thanks for having me, Fiona. I'm doing fine. In a very different year that we're living.

Fiona Martin:
Yes. Right in the middle of coronavirus. Felícia is in Brazil. And so I'm excited to talk to her about sustainability in Brazil. But more directly about Florianópolis, the city down there. So do you mind introducing yourself and your background and then tell us about Florianópolis as a city, where it is in Brazil and its unique features?

Felícia Campos:
I graduated in history here in Brazil and I obtained my master's at the UNESCO Chair for Peace studies at Innsbruck University in Austria. So I am kind of interdisciplinary researcher in that sense. I am not a specialist in sustainability studies, but that is always permeating whatever I do as a researcher as well. And also as a citizen, and broadly speaking, I'm very interested in that. So I was born and raised in Florianópolis. That's the capital of one of the southern states in Brazil, Santa Catarina state. And we have very unique features here because it's the capital, but it's also an island, so it has a very kind of contained space for growth as big cities in Brazil.

And it's considered a very small capital because there's only a limited amount of people that can fit on an island. So we have currently half a million citizens, which for European standards is a very, very big city. But for Brazilian standards is a very tiny one, a tiny capital, right? And when it's summertime here, many people come for the beaches because we have 42 beaches around the island and so our population doubles in summer and we have, we experience lots of problems of infrastructure and also regarding the safety of the water and a lot of problems that comes with when a lot of people are together and there is no proper treatment of everything, of all the waste that we produce, traffic and everything.

So kind of every year we experience heavily the problems of living together in a very concentrated amount of people in one space, right? Also, we have some cultural problems at the time because somehow, also because we are in an island, people have a very strong sense of connection with nature around here. The people that live here that historically have their families here. Especially people that are into, athletes and people that do outdoor activities. So, it's such a precious thing to be able to be close to nature. And I think people get really mad when some tourists come and just throw garbage out at the window.

And yeah, we have a lot of Argentinians coming and there's always a lot of problems regarding that with the locals, because they say they don't respect our ways of doing things, probably it's because they don't know. And so we have historically those conflicts, cultural conflicts, and I try to observe them while I was growing up and trying to understand, "Okay, why do we locals get into fights or discussions with some tourists?" And usually it's because there is something regarding they're throwing garbage out the window, they're leaving garbage at the beach, or just doing things that for people around here is kind of understood that that's unacceptable.

And from that, like when I was young, I was observing that and traveling around the world as I have had the privilege to do, I understood that we do have a culture around here on the island of taking care of that environment. But also, what is environment to those people? It's a very, I think a very strict understanding of environment, pretty much direct nature, right? So kind of natural space. So talking about forest and the river and the waterfalls and the sea and the animals in there. But not everyone is actually understanding the bigger picture, like the systemic thing that whatever we do is also directly interfering in their environment.

So not everyone is understanding our responsibility and accountability for our waste, for where we are building our houses, building more high buildings and you know, those things. So in one hand we have that cultural understanding that everybody kind of knows. And that's where we're all starting from, because we do want green spaces and parks. And we do want clean air and people do value that. And on the other hand people do not understand how we as individuals and as a community are also affecting all of that. It is not only when people come from the outside. Like we are also helping to destroy everything that we care for and not everyone is knowing that.

So at the same time, we have many people caring for that already. And we have many community-based organizations that are working with it, not only with the public sector, but independently as well. And doing education in the schools and in the community and then the elders and creating urban gardens and creating urban agriculture and composting movements, and also the municipalities working with that too now.

And so in the past year especially I guess, in the past decade, but most, I think most strongly I was here. I came back from Germany, I was studying there. I came back in 2015. So I could see this actually growing exponentially, the kind of community movements towards sustainability in a more systemic and like a systemic way of composting. And so, I don't know how to say that in English, but it's part of the municipality power. The people that create the laws that we directly elect here in Brazil, because we have a direct ... We have a representative democracy, but we do elect these kind of representatives of our communities. And they are the ones proposing the laws to the mayor.

And they also can pass all the laws without the mayor liking it too, so it's kind of nice. And so these people are also understanding that the communities are asking for more sustainable projects and some changes really in the structures of our city. So we have now, oh, we can talk about that later, but we have some very interesting initiatives in the city regarding the control of the waste. And we have a program called Zero Waste. They want to achieve zero waste in 2030 or in 30 years, I'm not really sure about that. I have that somewhere-

Fiona Martin:
2030.

Felícia Campos:
2030, yeah. So we have 10 years to do that, exactly. And that has been somehow like a communal effort and so that can happen. And of course, why would a city want that? We have somehow, this is something that will call and draw attention, right? We are, as I said before, we are a very tiny island. Not tiny, but it's a contained space and we don't have other sorts of industry here, like mining industry, or. You don't have plants in the city. So the industry here is pretty much the tourist industry, tourism industry and the technology industry. So they call it the clean industry, but it's not clean when you draw, I don't know, thousands of people to come and work here without actually creating the structure to do so in a sustainable way, or at least trying to reduce the problems of just bringing so much. Like drawing a lot of people to come to the island because of the technology industry. In Brazil we are called, the city is called the Silicon Valley of Brazil already. We have very big tech companies here.

So also these companies they're reaching international markets. They are being invested by very big companies, international companies as well, other big companies from Sao Paulo and other monetary funds. So they do kind of come with this 21st Century thinking of sustainable cities. Our generation wants to not only work but also wants to be healthy, and we need to care for our mental health and for our environment. So also our generation, I guess the people that are coming to work here are usually very young people. They are demanding for those things. We want to live in a city where we can have fun and be in close contact with nature. And we want to go to work by bike and have kind of this whole picture that we want to kind of tick the boxes, like, "Okay, I'm in a nice place. I can go to the beach and it's," we know how, I mean, how fantastic it is to be close to nature.

So somehow Florianópolis is this place where people can do all of that. So you can have a work that pays you well, because the technology field usually brings people who speak two, three languages. People are highly educated, graduated, or undergrads at least. We have two massive universities here as well. So we have a lot of intelligence, like the intelligence business out here, and these people do demand this other part as well. So I think it's kind of a mentality that's helping to ... It's just giving force to this Zero Waste idea. And then really kind of the ... So many sectors are articulating now to make this happen right now here.

And the interests are very different. So we have an interest of the community, the community actually. Yeah, the community centers and people that ... Our neighbors, they're talking to each other and saying, "Okay, we don't want, I don't know, 10 storey building in front of our houses, because we'll lose the sun and we don't want that. But we only have houses here and they want to build that.” So they kind of mobilize for individual agendas let's say, or agendas of a very small group with points that they want to defend or they want to counterpoint.

And also at the same time we have other people say, "No, we want safe routes for cycle ways. And we want our kids to grow with the park and we want to preserve that area that was, already we are replanting things." So many things are happening at the same time. And then you have all this very strong and very influential group of people, which are the entrepreneurs in Brazil. And in the city, which are the guys with the money to do that. And so they are very well articulated with the public sector. Not much with the community sector, usually they are clashing. Because they are the guys who wanted to build the great buildings and creating all the spaces and all the structures.

And people that, they live here for 40 years, have their house at the same place for 30 years. They don't want things to change that much. So we usually have a clash between those sectors, but in a way they are all kind of using this discourse of sustainability. So even these great new buildings they want to build, they have this idea of being sustainable and using well, sunlight and ventilation and collecting water from the rain. So they have this kind of narrative also to it.

And it's very interesting to see how this is well-accepted in the general opinion of the public and the whole city. But how also in praxis, like when, how this actually happening, there are a lot of clashes and the interests are quite different. But so, but we have this quite unique scenario of somehow all this power dynamics and interest dynamics kind of converging towards, we want a sustainable city. We want a green city, we want that to kind of still be our brand or how the world sees us. We want to live that.

Fiona Martin:
Yeah. That's super interesting. Being Florianópolis is an Island. And I see other island communities, like I used to live in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in the Canary islands. And I feel like people who are on a ocean or a water locked land kind of understand limited resources, right? Because they're forced into it. And so those communities tend to be forward thinking when it comes to sustainability, because they have to use what they're given and they don't have a huge land mass that they can go and destroy. But so Florianópolis is seen as like the sustainability city in Brazil and we'll expand it out to the world.

And you've identified three main actors, the public sector, the municipalities, the private sector through entrepreneurs. And then there's this grassroots community upswell. Let's talk about, you mentioned, or if you can give us an example of how, even though everyone's kind of forward-thinking sustainability, you said there's a little bit of rub between the grassroots and then these business people, the entrepreneurs. And I imagine the public sector at some point kind of has to be the regulator on that to approve whatever it is, whether it's development or certain industries coming into your city. Can you talk to us a little bit about that?

Felícia Campos:
Yes, exactly. That's always something. And it's very interesting to observe, because they somehow have to negotiate and talk to one another and be face-to-face and speak. And I mean, my mother is involved in the community sector for a long time and she's ... So I kind of have this inside view on it. And so they have a lot of councils and they speak directly to the municipality and they speak to one another and they have this very imbricated, complex political, articulations amongst the community sectors.

And as I said, there's so many individual or kind of small groups interests that you have to balance also. And then you have this big influential interests from the entrepreneurs that kind of clash with many times for the community. So what happens mostly is that we have environmental laws, right? So you cannot build, I mean, you can only start building 30 meters from every side of the river. And what we have, we see that, many of those laws were not followed throughout history in construction and that is an example that you can see in the city.

So we have many things and usually big businesses or something like that, but also houses built just next to the river. And this comes from of course also a time where such environmental laws didn't even exist. So we have those houses there, and probably they're polluting the river directly. Now, of course, every single house that is built, you need to connect your sewage to the municipality sewage and have underneath infrastructure. But we still have many old buildings here and many old buildings that now house businesses.

So we called the director plan. I don't know how it will be translated. I only know that in Portuguese, “Plano Diretor” of the city, and this is like a main document that says what can be done or cannot be done in every single neighborhood and every single street. Oh, okay. So that two blocks from the main avenue of this neighborhood, you can have businesses and like from three blocks onwards can only have residences. So the director plan is, it's a law, it's a municipal law, everybody has to follow that. And what happens is that many times for some reason that's quite obscure, this is not followed.

And not only the director plan, but environmental laws itself like, "Okay, they're building less than 30 meters from the river a new residential massive complex." And I mean, another thing from Florianópolis, which is kind of adds up to the complexity of that. We have a lot of money per capita here compared to the rest of Brazil. We have a very privileged population here, right? The south of Brazil is, if we gather data about it, it's the part of the country with the greatest amount of money and Brazil is a very unequal country.

So the distribution of capital is also very different. And we are a very tiny state here, Santa Catarina is very small. One of the smallest states and our capital is one of the richest ones. So we have people with a lot of money here. And somehow that seems to intervene with the law. So these people are influential. They have names. They have that kind of as a small city, you know the families, you know the names and those guys have a lot of power. So sometimes that happens, is not all the time. We have also the justice and the public sector interfering with that. But sometimes the community checks out what's going on and they see, okay, that law was simply ignored. And sometimes you even have the okay from a public sector organization that gave the okay to proceed. Proceed with that building, with that construction.

And so the community's doing somehow this also this not, I mean, some organizations of the community they are really looking into what's going on and kind of fiscalizing and checking out if the laws are being followed, sometimes they have to denounce. Is that the word? Denounce, I'm not sure, but they have to go to the justice and say, "Okay, this law was not, I don't know, fully followed. And now they are building, we ask you to see that what's going on." So they kind of start investigations and stuff. And this is mediated, of course it's mediated by them, the public sector in that sense. Then it goes straight to the public ministry to do that.

And of course that creates even more discomfort and even more clashes with the entrepreneurs. So most of the kind of the negotiating efforts of the entrepreneurs, when they want to build in a specific neighborhood is actually to create animosity with the community so the community would not be another force against their effort of building something or creating something in there. So it's very interesting to see also this articulations of the entrepreneurs really understanding and taking the community seriously, because they've been so open and so well articulated, not in every single neighborhood, okay? But many neighborhoods of the city, the community is very well articulated.

And somehow this sector with a lot of influence and money also are recognizing that they need to talk with those guys and they kind of need to make an agreement and say, "Okay, you can build here, but you need to create like ... " There are laws for that, okay? But they're not always followed. So if they want to make a very big, I don't know, a residential and a big towers of buildings, they need to at least, I don't know, a percentage of that whole terrain they're using to build, they need to donate to the community and do something that community can use, like a park, or cycleways, or just a green reserve or something like that. So they are... Now they have to brief, talk face-to-face, and kind of mobilize and negotiate those things. And sometimes they really ask the ones that following the law itself, because the law already exists for that. They ask, "Okay, what do you want us to do? We have to do this for you, what do you want us to do?" And then usually very nice things come from that, like when they do sit together and speak, so they created parks around the rivers that will be preserved, help to preserve the rivers. There is a very famous one now that was so famous that other areas of the city and other cities also copied it, which is kind of a... They call it the linear park, which is a park along the river, and that also enhances the value of their building, because all of a sudden you have amazing parks next, as part of the...almost as a part of the complex, right?

So we have this very beautiful area with animals and yeah, just preserving that space now in a very structured way, right, because you have places, have volleyball courts, and you have a skate park, and you have... And they pay for that because that's the law. But they could have done something else without talking to the community, but they don't, they actually go there and talk, "Okay, what do you want us to do? We pay for the project, we pay for their architect." They do something very nice and the community can of course, also use it. So it's so interesting to see how we're not being able to stop the growth, right, of such buildings, and of such spaces and businesses. But at least some things are being talked through and negotiated and agreed. So it's kind of trying, but I think the community tries to kind of stop and really try and slow down this process, because we know that can only be so much at the island.

And, yeah. But at the same time, it cannot actually stop for real, because things just go on. And the thing is, there's so much money coming into the Island now because of technology. I mean, now there we are in this crisis, actually the technology sector is the one that has not suffered as much, right? So everybody that I know, tht already worked with that, continue working offline. They didn't lose their jobs, some are hiring, so it's been quite interesting for our city because the whole crisis regarding the pandemic did not affect. Of course, I'm generalizing here, right? The situation in Brazil was very bad, very bad economically speaking for the population, it's disastrous actually, for most of our population. I'm talking about the very rich sectors that are already rich, and the technology sector that was already rich, is even richer now I suppose. Everything went online and those guys are in the middle of it. So, yeah. So these particularities are happening in Florianópolis right now.

Fiona Martin:
Yeah. It's interesting. I think you've highlighted a few things. So are you talking about what we would call public zoning, which determines what can be built, where, and, but similar to what you're experiencing in Florianópolis, where maybe these laws are in the books or these zoning ordinances are there, they're not always being followed, unfortunately money talks. And one takeaway I would say is the work of people like your mother and other citizens to hold the businesses accountable and to hold the public sector accountable and say," Hey, we elect you to create laws that benefit us, and then you're not enforcing them," is a little bit a shame that as a community we have to do that, but it's completely necessary. The same thing is happening where I live, where three power plants in our state have lapsed water-pollution permits, that have lapsed for 10 years.

I don't even know how you can have a permit that's out-of-date for 10 years, and it's simply because the people, the community, don't know and are unable to hold these public officials accountable, and it takes attorneys stepping in and suing them and that sort of stuff. So it sounds like a strong community base, and the citizens of Florianópolis, who are very sustainable minded, and have been for a few generations now, need to hold them accountable. Let's talk a little bit about some of the concrete, sustainable initiatives, and I want to start with the cycling infrastructure, transportation, things that you guys are doing to try and improve the traffic and reduce those carbon emissions that all the cars bring into your island.

Felícia Campos:
Yeah, that's a big thing, mobility. But I'd just like to point out that we have a strong community, that's active and talking to one another, it's all voluntary. So first of all, we can only have such, I think in my opinion, right, we can only have this configuration of communal, or community awareness somehow with people that can do that voluntarily, and this comes with people that have money, right? There are people that at least have the basic and a little bit more. There are people that are very, very well scholared, not everybody okay, we have very strong community leaders that are not, they come from the favelas, they are in the community, in the poorest communities, they're doing fantastic work. They're doing great work, really.

So it's not all real, all true for everyone, but I mean, we have this very strong community mentality and articulation, because we are in a very privileged city with a very privileged population. Not everyone, we have favelas, we have a lot of inequality in Florianópolis as well. But comparing to the rest of Brazil, we are very privileged. So I think that also somehow built... It's an important thing in the scenario that we're talking about right now.

Fiona Martin:
Yes, definitely.

Felícia Campos:
And I wanted to point that out.

Fiona Martin:
We find the same parallels in the US, as you have California, which is the fifth largest economy in the entire world. They are sustainably minded because as you mentioned, they have the privilege to just not be focused on survival, right? I think that's a big thing.

Felícia Campos:
Exactly.

Fiona Martin:
If you're focused on, you need a roof over your house, you need to eat today, then you do what you need to do. But it takes a little bit of comfort to maybe look around and see what else is going on. So, I agree with you.

Felícia Campos:
Yeah. To have a choice, right, you need to have options then for that. You do, of course, you need to get off the basics of survival. So, that's something, right, and that's big. Yeah. Well talking about mobility, that's probably the Achilles tendon of Florianópolis, that's one of our greatest challenges. Because in other cities that grew a lot, and other capitals in Brazil, they were... Okay, I'm a historian, so I have to do a little bit of... We have to go a little bit back in time to explain what's going on in Brazil. But I think it's a similar scenario to the US. Because we were culturally colonized by the United States then, it's something that people don't really say much. But from the 50s onwards, I mean, we had a president that needed to leave his mark, and he decided to go with the industry in the US.

And the industries in the US promised to put a lot of money and to bring the car factories to Brazil, that would bring a lot of money to Brazil, kind of. And for that, they agreed that the main transportation in the whole country, which is a massive country, way bigger than the whole European continent, Brazil. They decided that will be all car, car streets for that-

Fiona Martin:
Car centric. Car centric design, yeah.

Felícia Campos:
Exactly. It's a car centric design. So auto mobilism at its finest. And so we had a lot of railways already built from... We were part of the empire of Portugal, so kind of that European ways of transporting things. They started building it here, so we had a lot of railway stations and a lot of mining, all the gold, everything that needed to go to the coast to be transported out of Brazil, of course, it was transported by trains before, which is intelligent, cheaper kind of way to do so. And from the 50s onwards, those railways were either destroyed or made idle. And so they started building auto... car-ways all around.

Fiona Martin:
Highways, right?

Felícia Campos:
Highways.

Fiona Martin:
Autovias, that what a highway is.

Felícia Campos:
Yeah, exactly, carway-

Fiona Martin:
Highway.

Felícia Campos:
Highway, right? Highway. Oh my, God. I was conv... It's just the German, it's autobahn, so yeah. So they're building it throughout the country. And from that moment onwards, we have this car centric design all over the country, even in places where it doesn't make any sense. If you go up north in an Amazonia state, they pretty much have a lot of rivers, so they could do a very efficient river transportation, and you have to go... they built a whole... Seriously, oh my, God, that was crazy. They built a whole way for cars and trucks in the middle of the Amazon. And that is... That cost billions of dollars, that was during the military dictatorship. And you have a very swampy terrain over there, so of course it didn't last, and of course, it requires a lot of money and maintenance to keep that kind of usable, and they just did it because they wanted to leave a mark.

They say, "We opened this thing in the middle of the Amazon, and just crossing from one place to another," instead of using the rivers, which is already there, you can just use that. But anyway, so there's kind of this, we can say that, a colonial imposition of external ideas that worked somewhere else, that were not studied and intelligently made here. So we have pretty much the whole of Brazil, a massive place without any trains, and without any metros and subways also in the city. So in big cities, like Sao Paulo and Rio, they have to change that because it's just so massive, 20 million people living in one city. So they see it as, usually... Nowadays they have trams and they have metros, to certain extents of the cities, not fully covered unfortunately yet. But in Florianópolis, we don't. We are an Island and we have this... So it's a very kind of... Our Island's like this. It's pretty-

Fiona Martin:
Long.

Felícia Campos:
... vertically, yeah, long. And in the middle of it, we have kind of a chain of mountains, which is not very big because we don't have massive mountains in Brazil, but it's, we would say hills, but they're quite big. I don't know their height but they go from north to south, so they divide the Island in the half. And we cannot really transpose that, like crossing from the top because it's very, yeah, it's high. And so every way you go have to go around to get to another point, and that is something really bad for mobility. We have one tunnel that was a very complicated construction and very, yeah questionable, questionable still nowadays, but at least as one way to cross this chain of mountains that crosses, right, from north to south of the Island. So we have these very tricky problems of mobility.

Also you cannot dig and create a subway, a metro, because we are in a very swampy area, most of it. We have a lot of mangroves here and, yeah, you cannot really just dig into wet soil, right? So we have a problem now, and we probably have one of the worst mobility problems in the whole country. And it's funny because we have all this census that say that Florianópolis is one of the best places to live in Brazil, but the time you spend in traffic doesn't really make sense to the size for the city, it's a lot of time. So every time we have the elections and all the propaganda, they usually try and deviate from the mobility problem, because it's big, it's really big. And some people have some ideas, they speak about it, but we do have a problem.

And one way of trying to ameliorate that is cycleways, because we don't have a very big territory. We have even the Ironman here, the Ironman in Brazil is in our city. And so these guys in one day, in 12 hours, they go back and forth on their bicycles, of course talking about Ironman, it's the whole new level of human being. I've been to... I've been of course cheering to a couple.

Fiona Martin:
Yeah.

Felícia Campos:
So a couple of competitions and it's, yeah, it's such a crazy thing. And yeah, it's a real psychological, definitely a psychological event. It's not only a very sturdy human being, a very strong body, it's a very heavy mind. The iron mind is very important for the Ironman.

Fiona Martin:
Yeah, in endurance. As an endurance athlete, I know.

Felícia Campos:
Oh my, God.

Fiona Martin:
How many laps do you have to do around the Island to get 112 miles?

Felícia Campos:
I think they do four.

Fiona Martin:
Oh, wow.

Felícia Campos:
It's not around the Island though, it's not around the Island. They go north and south... Is it four, maybe two. I guess it's four by bike, right, by bike?

Fiona Martin:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Felícia Campos:
So it's more. And to run, I think it's two. So they start from the North of the Island and they go all the way to South. And we have very different terrains here so they also have, or have the beach to do the swimming part, which is very tough how they do it, and they have the heavy current sometimes. Yeah. For me, that's always the most scary part and it's how they start, how they start the Ironman, it's crazy. It's like 7:00 in the morning, everybody in the water and it's super cold, because it's cold here. Also we're in the South of Brazil, it's outside of the tropics.

Fiona Martin:
I wanted to do this. You're trying to talk me out of coming down to Brazil to do this Ironman.

Felícia Campos:
It's beautiful, it's really nice. I wouldn't be the one that... I'm the one cheering, I'm the cheerleader. But it gets us very emotional because before... You start with them. I usually bring the athletes because I have people in my family who are Ironman and Iron-woman, and I'm the support team, right? So I'm the technical team and always helping out and giving them water, food, and it's cheering them up with the family. And so we kind of have to leave all the equipment at 4 something in the morning. So they start the thing at 7:00 and most of the people, the amateurs, right, the ones that are not professionals, they arrive at the finish line at 10:00 at night, it's a whole day. I am exhausted just from cheering. Just from cheering, I'm exhausted, I really want to go home.

And those guys are crazy walking, running all this time and, yeah, it's insane. So also because of the Ironman, people need safer cycleways, right, around the island. Because the people that train for that here, we have so many people that were run over by cars. So many people died already from cycleways I think. Because of course, when the Ironman happens here, we have the change of the... The whole city's changed and the whole traffic's also changed for the race, right? So of course, everyone knows that Ironman's going, it's happening in the city, because everything changes also. So there's a lot of people, right, and a lot of athletes. And there's a whole organization of the space to accommodate the Ironman and the Iron-woman too, because there are many women in the race. But in daily lives, those massive highways are just packed with cars in very high speeds.

So we have this also the largest highway, it's actually a state highway, it's not a municipal highway. So it means it's very broad and the circulation is very high, lots of cars, and it connects the center part of the Island to the Northern part, which is a very big stretch. And that's the best place to train for the races, for triathlon races like that, because they don't have many... It's pretty much plain terrain-

Fiona Martin:
Right.

Felícia Campos:
... and that's hard to find in the Island. So that's the best stretch to try out and just keep fit, and test your timing and stuff like that. But that's super, super dangerous for athletes, and we see those people like, oh, it's next to... it's the cars just... It's crazy. My brother-in-law does that and I mean, you just pray every time they go out to try that out. Yeah. So we don't have proper spaces for training for athletes, or for people that do that just for fun. For professionals, and for amateurs, we don't have that. And there's a big pressure also from that category to create safer places for cycleways, right, in a city and in a country where cars are the priority, not the people walking, not the people on bikes, not anything else. We even have people on horses here still in Brazil, and those guys just walk in the middle of the cars, crazy some people. Some very old, kind of old communities that still use horses to walk around, they walk with cars.

There is no other option, so either you’re in a car or you're not, and good luck for you. So we have this big problem of mobility. They've tried to kind of figure it out, they just... We have a second bridge in the city connecting us to mainland, it looks a lot like the Golden Gate Bridge. It's very old, it was made in the beginning of the 19th century. And it was out of service for many years, and last year they just reopened it, and it was supposed to be just for cycling and for walking arounds, a really one space thinking about those people because there's a very strong pressure in that. We need to find other ways of transporting in this place. But now they open it to cars because the traffic of the other bridge that actually brings people in and out of the city by car, it's so heavy, it's so bad that they opened it. They're making a trial right now, they opened I think, two weeks ago for cars. The people were so enraged, "No, this is the only space."

They were trying to... They were actually marking that, okay, we need spaces just for walking and for cycling, that's safe, but now they opened it to cars, so everybody's kind of pissed about it, with reason, right? So I don't know what's actually going on with the second bridge now, the oldest one that was just reopened, but I hope that the population can actually apply pressure so it's closed off again. At least it's a symbol to show that we need spaces that are safe for people to walk and to cycle of course.

Fiona Martin:
Yeah.

Felícia Campos:
So we have right now, many cycleways popping up in the city, which are actually a result of years and years of community arguing with municipality, and arguing with the local people living there. So in the community, we have a lot of clashes also like, "No, we don't want a cycleway because then us with cars, we will need to drive slower in that place and we don't want that. And we cannot turn every way we want because now we have a cycle in the middle of the highway." And then disputing the projects, "No, we want a cycleway on that other side, we don't want it in the middle." So there are many things going on right now, and years and years of negotiation amongst community and with the municipality, and with the entrepreneurs who are paying for it. It's really big, but now at least one big one is being built in the very heavy trafficked avenue, which is called Madre Benvenuta. It crosses now that it's almost done already. It's in the neighborhood I was born,

And is close to where I live right now, but it's in the middle of one of the urban centers that grew the most in the city in the past years, so ... There are many technological and organic markets and organic food and green thought businesses there. So, it kind of makes sense with the culture of the neighborhood, but there are many old people, also, who live there, and they don't want to change their lives because young people want to cycle and don't want to have cars. So, you do have-

Fiona Martin:
Man, it's the same struggle. Same struggle at least across the New World, the colonized world, for sure. Yeah.

Felícia Campos:
Yeah. So, we have all those different nuances to this problem. And we do need a lot of patience to articulate that. My mom is right in the middle of it, so I hear she's telling us about the meetings and another meeting and another meeting. So, that's probably been ... For that specific cycleway, that should have been built, I think, 10 years ago because they built a massive shopping mall in there, in that neighborhood, and they never gave the return to the community. They are supposed to give by law, right?

And then, the community is trying to push it, and it's not working. But 10 years later, here we are. But then, some people in the community didn't want the cycleway like that, and... But then, the businesses on one side are going to be prejudiced because you cannot park. And then, "Okay. So, we'll put it in the middle." "No, but then I cannot turn everywhere I want. I have to go all the way. One kilometer further to make the U-turn, and then ...". You know.

Fiona Martin:
Must be so exhausting on their foot, on the pedal. Right? You know? That's my thing. As a cyclist, it's ... For me to go, my power is in my legs. Yours is in your foot. You can tap the brake. It's really not that difficult.

Felícia Campos:
It's probably half a minute, one minute more in their daily lives. You know? So, yeah.

Fiona Martin:
Yeah. It's a shame with this car-centric design, and it's interesting you brought up ... I enjoy the history aspect of it. I think we certainly need to understand the origins of things and why communities were built a certain way, and to hear about the U.S.'s bringing the car industry to Brazil ... And I mean, I know a lot of our cars are built in Brazil. We actually know that. And so, in turn, it's a shame that the railroad was basically deconstructed in the process. And honestly, the U.S. had the same issues. Rail used to transport everything. And now, we don't have, really, human rail. We still have a lot of freight rail.

But this car-centric design is not working, right? You mentioned ... It's interesting. What I'm hearing is, with Florianópolis being where the Ironman is. You have these athletes who want to train, and I certainly fall into that category as I try and advocate from a community place to the municipalities. But there's also, in reality, a transportation issue. How does someone who cannot afford a car move themselves? I certainly want to train and stay healthy, and I want everyone to be encouraged to do the same. But at the same time, if you want to pull people out of poverty, they need to be able to transport themselves without being in fear of being hit and killed. And then, I think, sometimes, businesses can be short-sighted. I think there's room for business opportunity when you have people walking and cycling and moving slower by businesses instead of getting in their car, driving to a parking spot, walking into one store, getting back in their car, and going wherever they want.

Fiona Martin:
But you guys are battling it, it sounds like, exactly the same way we are. And I also question. Why wasn't this done 10 years ago? This is not something new. People have been asking for these things for decades and, yet, we're in 2020 and still having to have this fight. So, I will have to keep an eye on Florianópolis when it opens. Please send us some articles so we can see what happens because my hope is ... And I've seen this in other places around the world. That there's a lot of resistance to it. But when it finally does open and they see the benefits ... Less traffic, less air pollution, more people visiting the stores on the cycleway. That those naysayers and those people who don't want anything to change can hopefully see the benefit of it.

Felícia Campos:
Yeah, exactly. And I mean, we have this particularity, also, which is very interesting, that's happening. Because the cycleway. We know, from many people that are studying it around the world, and we see the cases in Europe. It's pretty much the future of mobility, right? So, we are reducing the scale of the urban tissue, right? So, we have tinier systems of economy that are bringing people closer so you don't have to go all the way from your house on the other side of the city or to another city to buy food, to buy everything you need, to have fun, to be in contact with culture and contact with other people.

So, from this massive expansion of the urban grid, we are now the projects towards sustainable cities and smart cities and everything else. They are proposing tinier systems, communal systems, where you can pretty much find everything around pretty much close by to your house. And it can go in a bike distance. From your house, you can go to work. You can have your kids go to school, you can study. So, some people here are really proposing that, especially professors from universities. They are in city council, and they are advocating for it. But it's a cultural thing. You do have to change this mentality, but something very interesting is that the entrepreneurs, the people with power and money here, are buying that and they are really into it.

So, I think, a couple years ago, we had an entrepreneurial mission, they call it. They all went to Denmark to study the cycleways there and how they do that in the city. And those guys are the ones who are now willing to pay. They created the whole project to connect this big stretch from connecting the center to the northern part of the city, as I told you. Yeah. So, they have a project of going all the way, and it's, I don't know, how many kilometers. Pretty big. And they're creating a cycleway there ...

Because, also, they have other technology businesses, and they know that's how the people that will work for them ... That's how they want to live, as well, because they don't want to be stuck in traffic. In a place with five kilometers, three kilometers, they're stuck in traffic every day. You lose a lot of time. That does not add up to the experience of living and retaining those people because they're very competitive markets. Also, for those markets. Also, for those professionals. They can just go to Sao Paulo. Many people from Sao Paulo are coming here because they want to live a healthier life close to nature. So, we do have to give them that, if you're thinking from an entrepreneurial perspective.

So, those guys that, let's say progressive entrepreneurs, are starting out that project ... They are putting themselves out there to say, "Okay. We're building that. We are paying for that cycleway. We have the project." So, they submitted to the municipality organs to see if it's okay, if they need to change something. And then, we also have this very ... It is an interesting thing that they are under this concept of sustainability, they are driving change in the city. It's so interesting because you have all this, as I told you before, all these different actors. We have the public sector. We have the community. And we have entrepreneurs. And the entrepreneurs are doing interesting work regarding that. Of course, they have their interests. They have their, also, economic interest, and they are ... Yeah. They're creating a whole sphere of that.

But it's so nice that they are doing that. They are, indeed, putting money into it. This means ... Because these guys are not silly. This means it's worth it. It's worth it to invest in sustainable mobility, in sustainable housing, in sustainable ways of doing things together. And I think this is a good scenario, when all those three actors are converging towards something. And yeah. That's why, also, I think Floripa ... Floripa is the short name of Florianópolis. It's kind of a nickname.

Fiona Martin:
Okay. Floripa.

Felícia Campos:
Yeah. It's easier to say.

Fiona Martin:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Felícia Campos:
Also, we want to keep ... I bet there's a lot of interest in keeping Ironman here. The Ironman in Brazil. Because it brings international visibility. This is good for a market that wants to emerge as a technology market, as something that can bring people from everywhere in the world to work here because people work in English, anyway. Something like that. So ...

And also, I think, as you said before ... A bicycle is a very democratic way of transportation. So, you do, at least, create an option. We're talking about having an option in a capitalistic, neoliberal economy. An option of mobility that you do not only have one way, which is pretty much using a crowded bus with very poor timing that takes ages and ages and ages. So, yeah. Of course, there's a lot to it. And I mean, for a cycleway to actually work, systemically, you do need that everything ... We do need, not only inside the city. We also need to create a connection with the neighboring cities which are pretty much the greatest workforce of the city, to the rich guys in the city, come from neighboring cities, the satellite cities. So, they will also be needed.

We have this very strong intake and income or the flux of people coming in and out of the island, it's massive because many people are not on the island. They come as service people to the island. So, we have lots of strata to it, but I think it's important to start from somewhere. And I see that the community, the municipalities or the public sector, and the entrepreneurs that have already started. And I think ... I know I'm optimistic. I hope. I hope something really nice is going to happen and can inspire other places, too, to see we don't need to be, all the time, disagreeing. We can do things differently, but at least we're trying to create a nicer place for everyone. You know?

Fiona Martin:
Yeah, definitely. We'll have to keep an eye on it. With all three of the main actors going in the same direction, I would hope that we have positive outcomes. Let's talk about another aspect of Floripa's sustainability drive, and that's their Lixo Zero, which is zero waste initiatives. And it seems like that is focused on ... Well, a big part of it is sorting household trash. And we did an interview a few episodes ago with a commercial composter here about the capabilities of sorting trash so that organic matter is composted instead of going to the landfill and recyclables are happening.

You're aiming for zero waste by 2030. Where is Floripa on that scale, and how are the residents doing with it? Was it widely accepted? Are there some people who are just like, "I don't want to take the time to do this," or how does Floripa stand on those lines with zero waste?

Felícia Campos:
Wow. That's a big question because I don't really know the inside numbers, now. I don't even know if they have the census on that. But that is a law, kind of. I don't think it's a law, a decree, but it's a direction that a municipality has to follow and everybody else. Because this is a ... I think it's a law, probably, that applies to every single establishment. If you have a restaurant, so that restaurant has to follow those laws towards zero waste until, I don't know, 2030. Right? So, it is a change in establishments. The businesses. They have to adapt to it. And also, the people have to adapt to it.

So, the municipality's trying to create and educate the population. The community centers are doing a very heavy job. I think it started with them, actually. And now, the public sector's trying to create the structure for that so that can happen. So, one thing that I know the botanical gardens do now is that they are giving individual compost so you can have at home. They're giving it. So, they give a little ... People have to go there, and they sign up for free. And they have, of course, a limited amount of compost (bin), but ... I don't know if ... You call it compost, right?

Fiona Martin:
Yeah. We just call it compost. Yeah.

Felícia Campos:
Yeah. Here, as well. We say, "composteira."

Fiona Martin:
Oh, okay.

Felícia Campos:
But yeah. So, you can have one of that, but if you have to go to the ... I think it's on Saturdays in the morning. You have to go to the botanical garden, and you receive a training on that and how to use it, why, and everything else. And then, you kind of-

Fiona Martin:
Oh, like a compost bin? So, you're having the-

Felícia Campos:
Exactly.

Fiona Martin:
Okay.

Felícia Campos:
Yeah. The compost bin. Exactly. The thing where you do the composting.

Fiona Martin:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). So, you can do home composting, right?

Felícia Campos:
Exactly.

Fiona Martin:
In a small area. I imagine, if people are living in apartments or something, they can't do yard composting. They have to do a compost bin. Yeah.

Felícia Campos:
Exactly. A bin so you can do it in apartment. Right. So, I mean, the public garden's doing that. The botanical garden's giving that to the population and training them on how to use the composting, and that's been a massive success. Massive waiting lines.

Yeah. And so, many people are doing their own. A lot of people are doing it community organized. They're doing it in the green areas. They do need to ask the municipality to use the area because that's supposed to be a green area preservation, but they have been achieving that. They're using parts of that green area preservation to do a composting program for the whole neighborhood and the people that are participating. They have a lot of, already ... They're growing vegetables. Then, they are growing fruits already. And they give out soil and ... It's just really good here where my parents live. They're doing that already, and it's one of ... I think ... They're not the first ones, but they are in the north of the city, so ...

In the south of the city, they started way earlier. The south of the city's pretty known as an "alternative" part of the city. And they are really mobilized. They really do things together towards treating the waste and being responsible for that. They started the revolution. My mom reminded me of that. They started the revolution of ... How do you say that? Of the bucket? That's literally translated. The revolution of the bucket, which is pretty much the neighbors coming together and separating their good, organic waste, which is pretty much whatever you're not eating from your food. And then, they bring that together. They bring that to a place, a center, and there they start the composting process from a larger amount of organic material. After that, everybody can benefit from whatever people are sowing there.

So, yeah. So, it really started as a community movement of people coming together. I know many friends that went to old people's asylums. That's how you call that?

Fiona Martin:
No.

Felícia Campos:
People ... Places ... Oh, sorry.

Fiona Martin:
It's okay. No, no. I mean, I assume you're talking about older ... What we would call, maybe, care homes.

Felícia Campos:
Care.

Fiona Martin:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Felícia Campos:
Care homes. Exactly. So, they're redoing their gardens over there, and they're planting that for them. So, at least, now, the elderly people have a place so they can take care of nature. That's really good for them, for their health, to be in contact with the earth. So, they organized it. There's a lot of permaculture in it, you know? So, they organized the whole thing. They redo their garden. And of course, they add a compost bin or a compost part to that. And I mean, the administration of the care homes will have to, of course, deal with that. But then, the elderly people. They have a space to be in contact with nature, and then with creating or growing vegetables and growing flowers.

So, a lot of projects like that were done voluntarily by the community in the south, mainly, of the island. And that started, I think, probably, 10 years ago. I remember the first one. People really were just ... You know those ... It was a flash mob thing? Was it flash mob?

Fiona Martin:
Yeah. Flash mob. Yeah.

Felícia Campos:
Remember that kind of fever that happened? They would do flash mobs but with that objective of coming together and redoing, creating a permaculture garden or a composting for a community, a neighborhood. So, they did a lot of that at that time. And now, they're amplifying those projects and really doing it with the municipality.

So, the city counselors ... I think ... Yeah. That's the word I was looking for. City counselors. Some of them are already elected because of their sustainability discourse, and they were already people from the community that were doing those things. So, now, they are amplifying that. And one of those people were ... or many. I only know one city counselor. He was the one pushing the zero waste law forward, and, now, it passed. So, yeah. So, the zero waste law is pretty much a horizon of expectation for the city to fulfill. And, now, in 10 years, but ... I don't know when it passed, but it's been in discussion for a while. So, it's pretty much ... It has to do with the dealing of the waste produced by the whole population of Florianópolis and the businesses. So, it's not only recycling. I don't know how you say that, but it's not only recyclable, but we call the dry waste, which is pretty much things that can be recycled. So, you have paper, plastic, glass. And they're doing it in a very ordinate way, now. Now, they have collect-

Fiona Martin:
Collection points?

Felícia Campos:
Collection points. Yeah. Collection points of glass and glass only around the city because, usually, the recyclable waste would just go ... We don't do it as it is in Germany, for example, where you already separate. You have different bins for plastic and paper and glass. We would just do everything that is recyclable. The municipality will collect in your house or your condominium or condo, whatever you live. And then, you have the organic, which is pretty much the waste. So, it's not only organic good food. It's everything that would not be recycled. So, it's pretty much put together. So, you only have those two categories of waste. And now, this idea of the zero waste. It's actually organizing and separating better, that waste.

There is a federal law for whole Brazil, which is called ... But that's only for solid residuals. Yeah. There is this law that determines that the whole extension of Brazilian territory has to recycle solid residuals, which is ... Florianópolis has been kind of a champion in recycling those residuals for a while, now, already. But now, they want ... In the city, the zero waste campaign and also this horizon of where we want to get in 10 years is that, also, the municipality...

Would, how do you say that, collect in everyone's houses and everyone's business only the good organic waste that can be composted or can go to composting. That is something amazing, if it does happen it will be amazing. Of course, many people don't know that. Many people don't understand. Still, some people don't even recycle the dry waste, as we call it. Everything else that is not organic. Usually people just go like, "Okay, but where do I separate it? It smells bad," or, "No, but I use plastic bags for everything that is not recyclable. Where can I store it?" People that haven't really tried it, they do have to change their habits. I think that's the trickiest part, but so many people are doing that, that I think together we can change everyone's habits. That's always the hardest part.

We don't have yet the law that prohibits plastic bags in this place. I think that prohibits the plastic straws, but not the bags. That's a project I was conducting with a couple of partners that we will try and make a campaign, at least for the supermarkets that have a very elite public. They have elite clients, people with a lot of money that have been to other places, they see how this can be different. We want them to start a campaign that you have to pay for your plastic bag if you want to use one or if they want to change for a compostable different material that is not plastic for the bags, but usually they are very expensive, so you wouldn't just give them away like they give away plastic bags.

Fiona Martin:
Right.

Felícia Campos:
We're trying to articulate that. For me, this is crazy that it's not yet happened, but then you have all the habits. The old habits are sometimes tricky to change. They're not very popular.

Fiona Martin:
We say, "old habits die hard" in English.

Felícia Campos:
Exactly. We're trying to tackle the supermarkets and then they are afraid that their clients are not going to like it. We want to see if we can talk to, I don't know, four or five businesses so even the ones that compete with one another are on the same boat so they're not falling behind the competition. We're still articulating that. If you have any ideas that have worked over there, let us know because we are in the middle of this trying to negotiate that with the-

Fiona Martin:
I would hope some of the issues that we have here is, we have lobbying groups that represent the petroleum industry, like the American Chemistry Council, which sounds like a legitimate, "Oh, it's a council full of chemists," but it's actually completely funded by Exxon and Mobil and all these big oil companies and they're trying to get laws on the books in the States. We have the Federal Government, we have a State Government and then we have the municipalities. The municipalities are the ones that are doing the plastic bag bans. The American Chemistry Council is trying to get in with the State Governments to basically... They position it as freedom of choice. You're taking away a person's freedom to choose a plastic bag if your municipality bans them, so that it would overrule the municipality.

They always wiggle and nothing is perfect, that's for sure. It sounds like in terms of the composting right now in Floripa that the resident has to either compost it themselves or they take it to a garden center, like a botanical gardens and the municipality is trying to come up with a larger, what we call commercial composting, which is something I think would be fantastic where you have your compostable plastic trash bag full of compostable items and someone picks it up and takes it off somewhere. You guys don't have that set up, but you're working towards it. Do I understand that correctly?

Felícia Campos:
Exactly. We do have some private ones that do that. They collect it in your home and you pay them a fee. They do that every month or just do that, like in my mom's neighborhood now they just take it there to the place where the community is doing their own composting, so it's an independent thing as well, but the project that is trying to pass right now is that as we have the collection of waste, that is recyclable waste and just the waste that goes to the dump places, which is horrible. They will have the municipal collection of organic waste. I don't know exactly how it's going to work, but I am not sure if people need to buy this different bags.

I think they just leave it on a containers and then they can just throw it in the larger container in a truck, that the truck is going to pick it up, how they do it right now. The recyclable items, usually they just go in and you don't use a bag to put recyclable things in it necessarily. Sometimes, but most of the times, at least here in our house, we use just cardboard boxes because every time I buy something, especially now there's everything on e-commerce during pandemic, I always ask "please don't put anything in the plastic bags, we don't want it. Just give me whatever cardboard box you have there like paper bags." And usually they abide to it because they have so many from the industry, so many carton boxes.

Fiona Martin:
That's interesting. I don't think we have that option. If you order something from Amazon, it comes however, we have to seek maybe a company that has a sustainable mission that would package differently, but otherwise we're still all single use, crazy plastic and styrofoam. It's just... What do they do with things that aren't recyclable or compostable? At least for us, we still have that third thing that has to go to the landfill. For example, first I've done a whole thing... Interview about plastic recycling and whether it works or not, but our plastic recycling at my house only recycles two types of plastic, number one and number five and so anything outside of that has to go to the landfill. How does Floripa process that? Do you have the same issues or no?

Felícia Campos:
Here it's different. I'm not even versed on types of plastic because we still do other things, but we have people that separate that.

Fiona Martin:
Okay.

Felícia Campos:
We have inequality raging in Brazil. We have people that separate our garbage and those guys are the ones really... They're really important people and these are the ones that are calling for sustainable measures, systemically. They do... especially now with social media, they appear to say, "Look, this is how we separate the recyclable trash." They teach the population, those guys, and we have a municipal organ for that, which is called Comcap its like half municipal, half...

Fiona Martin:
Private?

Felícia Campos:
Yeah, it's a mixture now. It was not always like that but they are doing very nice campaigns of educating people on how to separate the trash and then what can be recyclable, what can not be.

That is why they are separating the collection points of glass because many times the glass would just go in there and that's dangerous. Can hurt the workers there also if it breaks during transportation and glass is really good, it's a very good thing for reusing that, so they're doing it separately now. They're trying to create the processes but it's pretty much human-made still and everything else that doesn't go either to recycling or composting, which right now is still a very individual thing. It goes to... I think it's landfill, that horrible place, piles of... Yeah, the dump. We don't have those in our city. We pay to a neighboring city to receive our garbage and I don't know how many tons per day we produce.

This is also one of the arguments towards this zero waste thing because we're going to save a lot of public money without sending all those tons of garbage... because we pay for tons, we're just sending it to another city to deal with it, which is pretty much just leaving it there. There's no dealing with it. It's really bad for the environment. We all know how toxic that could be to the waters and animals. It shouldn't be like that, it's just horrible. There's so many good things that go in that waste that can actually be recycled or just, I don't know, probably 60% of that at least can be composed.

Fiona Martin:
In the United States 40% of our landfill waste is compostable and it just releases methane, which is 30 times more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2. So for me, I know waste management doesn't sound sexy or exciting, but the gains that can be made from properly organizing that and having alternatives to the landfill or even recycling and getting plastic out of the stream because glass recycling, aluminum recycling, paper recycling that's something that is sustainable long-term but plastic can only be recycled once, maybe twice and that's only if it's handled properly. It's not really the best material we should be using.

Felícia Campos:
Yeah, and it comes from non renewable sources, so it doesn't make any sense. I don't think we have that thing of collecting the bio gas and burning it so it becomes something else other than methane. I don't know.

Fiona Martin:
Methane, yeah. In the collection as well I had someone mention, "There's some landfills where they collect the methane and then they burn it" to heat houses or whatever. At the same time, you're still burning fossil fuels. It doesn't solve the problem, it's either the methane is going into the atmosphere or we capture it and then we burn it. You're not solving the problem, you just redirecting it and also I think composting in reality, the cost of it is so much lower than trying to capture methane off the top of a landfill site. I don't even know how many millions or billions of dollars it takes to create machinery that siphons off methane compared to just separating an apple and putting it in a compost pit.

Felícia Campos:
Exactly and it's such a more complex process as well, the composting it's just so natural because that's what nature does. So recreating a natural process at home and I do think it's minimal impact because you have tiny little fellows working for us in there and helping us out, a gain-gain situation. We're feeding little bugsies and the friends that are essential for our survival in the planet. They are helping us out and we are helping them out. I have friends that do... they have the composting with the worms.

Fiona Martin:
Yeah, worm composting. I do that as well. We do yard composting, a big pile, but I do my own worm composting, which is really fun. I love my worms.

Felícia Campos:
It's a little bit more of a faster process because they eat and they help out and they oxygen soil themselves. I have friends that are doing that in their apartments and they say how they have changed because of it, because they say," Every time I go to the supermarket and I start buying things, I think of what my worms would like to eat." I was like, "What man, I didn't think about that." He's like, "Because if I buy a banana, I know they like the banana, so I'll go for the banana. I'm not going for something that there's more acidic, they wouldn't like that much." That it was so funny for him to catch himself thinking about, "Okay, well would my worms like to eat."

Fiona Martin:
Yeah.

Felícia Campos:
This is beautiful, this is really reconnecting to something that actually always been there, that we part of something bigger that we're not living alone and that our species is not the only one that matters in this life and it was amazing to hear that.

Fiona Martin:
Composting, there must be the church of composting because everyone I know who has started composting has these stories. A lot of our composting is that pile in our backyard because we have a yard and so it starts with once you're used to moving your organic waste into a compost pile, if you're out and about and you have a banana peel, it's like painful to throw it into a trash can, you just want to keep it and move it to your compost. So you start there. I also think about what do the worms want to eat, but we also have chickens and they're part of our composting cycle because they actually jump on the compost pile and dig down it. So my husband's like, "Make sure you buy a cabbage for the chickens." I'm like, "These chickens are spoiled." The chickens give us eggs and they're super fun to watch and you're right, it is really amazing...

It's a shame that people have extruded ourselves from nature. It's been something that's happened over centuries that we've retracted when in reality we are part of nature. We need to re-engage with it and find these cycles and there's just, it's something wholesome. Everyone I know who does that, comes out the other side feeling different and feeling better and being excited about it.

Felícia Campos:
I do think it's a necessary path for us to tread because there is no other way to keep doing what we're doing and dumping everything that we are not using anymore. Even if we're doing it in someone else's city or somewhere else, it's still polluting our waters. It's still polluting the same beach, that current is coming to our beaches anyway, it's all so interconnected and it's so crazy to understand how separated we've been from the cycle of life and I think this is the greatest problem. I think probably the separation, understanding we are not connected to one another into nature and to all the beings that share this life with us on the planet that created this big divide of we use nature for our comfort point, that's it, period.

This is a crazy illusion, as if we can't be here without breathing the oxygen that the forest and the algae and the ocean created, we lost the understanding of life in that sense, the interconnectedness and somehow the tiny little movements, which is not a tiny anymore, of composting and home composting and coming together as a community to create alternatives for managing our waste and being accountable for our waste most of all I think, is starting to create this reconnection. I'm thinking about the worms and the chickens and what they want to eat. It's not only about ourselves anymore.

Fiona Martin:
I think this is a great place to wrap it up. You've introduced us to Florianópolis, Floripa. I really hope I can go there and do an Ironman there. For sure.

Felícia Campos:
I'll be cheering man, definitely.

Fiona Martin:
Yeah. I'll need it, 12 hours later. We'll keep an eye on it. As things develop, please do send us articles or photos and when the cycleway opens, let's celebrate that. And it can be, like you've mentioned what a unique culture the city has and also geographically it's unique and its island status. So it is one to watch and I would love... I'm sure the residents of... What do you call people from Floripa?

Felícia Campos:
Oh, that's a tricky one. We call it “manezinho ilha” and it's ilha is Island and manezinho is a nickname for Portuguese people. The accent of the island is really close to Portuguese from Portugal, many people from Brazil don't even understand it. And that's because the island was colonized by people from the Azores Islands. The Azores was colonized by Portuguese people and these guys came to populate Brazil, which was said to be a demographic hole as we say, as a zero demographic which is bullshit. Sorry, pardon my French. We have a very large indigenous population in Brazil, but they had this colonist like colonizing discourse that there were no one in here they needed. The Crown needed to send people to pretty much to kill the inhabitants here and to maintain the territory, so that's where the name comes from.

Fiona Martin:
We'll keep an eye and like I said, I think the city and the residents would... It sounds like they want to be a beacon as you guys move down this journey, whether you're forced down it or whether it's going willingly with the community and the tech industry, and also your municipalities moving this forward. Hopefully it can be a learning experience that we can pick up similar programs and have it disseminate across the world and just have a better place.

Felícia Campos:
Oh yeah, man, I really hope this actually starts sparking everywhere else and we do it together and inspire simultaneously one another. We're running against the clock here and all this is pretty urgent. I really hope this movement keeps going and getting stronger and the people also get information about it because changing habits with this in mind that we're doing something for everyone and for the future generations as well, it's more than necessary. It's not only a matter of, "Do I want it?" It's something that we need to do and of course the people that have the choice. I think if we have the choice, it's our duty to do so. I hope this actually happens and becomes reality to more and more people. Definitely.

Fiona Martin:
Thank you, muita obrigada, and have a wonderful rest of the day. I appreciate it Felícia, we will keep an eye on Floripa for you.

Felícia Campos:
Definitely thank you so much for the invitation and for the work that you're doing spreading this valuable most necessary information. Thank you, Fiona.

Fiona Martin:
Thank you, tchau.

Felícia Campos:
Bye, tchau.