Projections of urban solid waste management scenarios in a municipality in the Brazilian Northeast semiarid region

Abstract

Solid waste has been considered as one of the biggest environmental problems, because the inefficiency of management of collection systems concerning destination and final disposal in Brazilian municipalities has intensified environmental damage, and therefore became the focus of several guidelines aimed at solving this problem.  This work aims to design potential scenarios aimed at optimizing municipal management of Solid Urban Waste (SUW) in Ereré-CE, in the Brazilian Northeast Semiarid region. For this purpose, the current SUW management system was diagnosed by means of field studies, after which the use of mathematical models for temporal projections was made, in order to identify the prognosis of scenarios aimed at optimizing the management of SUW. As for the proposed SUW management scenarios: the 1st indicates the destination for selective collection and sanitary landfill, the 2nd with composting and sanitary landfill, the 3rd scenario the destination for selective collection, composting and sanitary landfill, and in the 4th, merely the disposal on the landfill. Given the scenarios, it was found that the 3rd was the one that indicated the greatest reduction of SUW in landfills, enhancing the insertion and economic valuation of waste, optimizing the service life of the landfill and favoring the use of part of organic waste for processing and generating by-products.