Bloomberg Businessweek - USA (2019-09-30)

◼ TECHNOLOGY Bloomberg Businessweek September 30, 2019

● The company is tailoring its service for one São Paulo 19

neighborhood with help from local residents

PHOTOGRAPHS

BY

ANDREW

SPEAR

FOR

BLOOMBERG

BUSINESSWEEK.

DATA:

ENVIRONMENTAL

PROTECTION

AGENCY

Uber Returns to

Brazil’s Favelas

Ona hotafternooninearlySeptember,fruitseller

CosmodosSantosAraujositsinhisusualspotin

frontofthepublichospitalinVilaHeliópolis,the

largestofSãoPaulo’sfavelas. He’sfeelinggoodabout

thepastfivemonths,whenbusinesswasbetterthan

ever.Salesstartedtorisealmostimmediatelyafter

UberinMarchinstalleda newpickuppointnextto

hisfruitstand.“I’vebeenhereforfiveyears,and

salesdefinitivelyhaveimproved,”hesays,holding

hisyoungdaughterashereachesovertoanUber

drivertohandhima sliceofwatermelon.

EwelyneLuisSantosMaciel,a cleaningwoman,

is waitingfora ridehometoVilaMoraesfourkilo-

meters(2.5miles) away. Before the pickup location

was established, she says, visiting relatives in the

neighborhood was much harder.

Uber is making another attempt to set up shop

in Brazil’s poorest neighborhoods. Getting people

like Araujo and Maciel on its side is a crucial part

of the effort. In number of rides, São Paulo is Uber

Technologies Inc.’s biggest market worldwide,

according to the company. Poor neighborhoods

and suburbs, including favelas—where transporta-

tion options are limited and overcrowded and car

ownership rates are low—represent a big oppor-

tunity. “Favelas are a giant market, and in Brazil

alone$20billion in revenue circles inside these

communities every year,” says Pedro Sampaio,

Uber’s social impact manager in Brazil and head

of the Heliópolis project.

But these neighborhoods also present chal-

lenges for a company that from its earliest days has

grappled with driver and passenger safety prob-

lems. Uber first entered Brazil in 2014. Two years

later, a wave of attacks against drivers resulted in

at least 16 deaths, according to Mike Isaac, author

of Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber. Uber started

blocking favelas as a pickup/dropoff option on its

app. That created the perception that it was dis-

criminating against those living and working in the

favelas. As great as the opportunity in the fave-

las is, the company says it had to figure out a bet-

ter way. Uber declines to comment on the figures

reported by Isaac in his book; it acknowledges that

neighborhoods with a high percentage of unfin-

ishedridesremainblocked,includingmostof

Brazil’sslums.

Morethan 10 million Brazilians live in favelas,

where gangs backed by organized crime control

large swaths of territory. Armed drug dealers thrive

on the favelas’ curved streets and in badly lighted

alleys. Most of those living in the neighborhoods

THE BOTTOM LINE Consumer giants have struggled to use

ugly, smelly recycled polypropylene. Technology developed by

Procter & Gamble promises to fix the problem.

one-seventh of the energy used to make virgin

polypropylene.

Procter & Gamble, wanting to get the prod-

uct to market quickly, licensed Layman’s tech-

nology to a startup backed by Gregory Wasson,

former chief executive officer of Walgreens Boots

Alliance Inc. The company, now called PureCycle

Technologies, deployed the process at a commer-

cial scale for the first time in July at its $300 mil-

lion plant in Hanging Rock, Ohio, where it expects

to be able to process 119 million pounds of plas-

tic waste a year.

PureCycle has signed contracts with P&G,

Milliken, Nestlé, and L’Oreal to produce the plas-

tic and has presold more than 20 years of out-

put from its first plant. PureCycle says it hopes to

expand to other cities in the U.S. and Europe in

the next few years.

The company has found a way to run almost

any product made with polypropylene through the

process, so it can use materials most traditional

waste haulers won’t attempt to recycle. It’s run

broken hangers, old carpets, and even a dispos-

able diaper through the cleaning process in trials

to test how it works with hard-to-recycle products,

and found it still produces pristine, clear plastic.

The company is focusing on recycling carpets for

now. “Part of the reason this waste hasn’t been

collected before is because there weren’t consis-

tent acquirers of that waste stream,” says CEO Mike

Otworth. “We hope to change that—as long as it’s

got a high percentage of polypropylene, we’ll be

able to clean it up.” �Emily Chasan