This article analyzes the practices of a waste recycling cooperative located in Baixada Fluminense, Rio de Janeiro, focusing on the organization and labor relations, the knowledge generated in the work processes, and networks of collective action established with the community. The data was obtained through interviews with the workers and their leaders and with the technicians of the NGO Autre Terre, which supports the project. The results of the qualitative research suggest that this experience of solidary and popular economy has become an alternative for social inclusion, creating employment, income, knowledge, and values, in the perspective of a popular and critical education. In the relations of the cooperative with the community are established networks of collective action, recovering the public space in which the awareness of the diversity of ideas and concepts can make it possible to be a good citizen.
solidary economy; popular education; social movements; cooperativism