Objective
This project, stemming from a case study in the
municipality of Mogi Mirim, Sate of Sao Paulo, aims at the establishment
of a methodological basis to analyse urban solid waste management and to
look for new avenues to implement it by focusing on the concept of
“sustainable development”, to help small and medium-sized
municipalities to look for and find solutions for the final disposal of
urban solid waste, by making an integrated use of new technologies and of
environmental education.
Introduction
Until recently, the Earth was considered as a mother
who is able to provide unlimited things or that loved without demanding
anything back. The vision
today is a different one, we are learning that sources can be depleted and
that, in spite of this, our reaction is still extremely slow.
One of the problems man will have to face more
seriously, sooner or later, is undoubtedly what to do with tons and tons
of “waste” constantly being generated by societies.
Since ancient times, the first waste elimination
processes took the practice of disposing of them in faraway places. Thus the practice of dumping waste in open air spaces and
waterways became a custom. If
we compare such practices with today’s processes we notice that in spite
of the effort of specialists and environmental organizations to warn and
make societies conscious of this, it is true that in practice the habits
of people or the principles behind methods have not changed much in the
sense of what to do with waste.
Urban solid waste (USW) -–the so-called
“garbage”— includes a wide range of waste due to the processes
generated. The different
kinds of waste do have in common the fact of being discharged from
production processes and normally dumped directly into the environment,
generating the so so called open sky “dump sites” that pollute soil,
water and air. This
degradation of the environment, that is more intense in larger urban
areas, also affects small and medium-sized cities, both due to a lack of
resources to provide a sustainable solution to the problem that was
generated as a result of poor disposal of solid waste, and due to the lack
of technical advice or trained staff in the field, that can only be
implemented with the help of more focused research.
The origin of waste is diverse; waste is produced at
all times, as a result of all acts of our everyday life and its final
destination implies a series of possibilities with different impact on the
environment.
In Brazil, a national research on basic sanitation
conducted by IBGE in 1989 and 1990 (published in 1991), in 4.425 cities,
revealed that 23% of solid waste collected undergo some type of treatment
while 77% is dumped in open-sky sites.
Data from 1993 revealed that 110 million Brazilians live in cities
and produce 55.000 tons of solid waste per day.
This means that, approximately, 42.000 tons/day remain in open-sky
sites and are the cause for innumerable cases of water, soil and air
pollution apart from the physical aspect of waste that represents an
eyesore and has an offensive odour which attracts flies, rats,
coakroaches, and other vectors for pathogenic diseases.
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