Gerenciamento de resíduos sólidos urbanos no estado de Minas Gerais: uma análise quantitativa de indicadores de sustentabilidade

Abstract

Due to increase in urban solid waste, especially in urban centers, the demand for environmentally correct solutions becomes increasingly necessary. In 2010, with the creation of the National Solid Waste Policy, the management of urban solid waste started to be based on a federal law. Thus, this paper proposes an analysis of waste management in municipalities in the state of Minas Gerais, through sustainability indicators. In a first stage, secondary indicators were selected for the evaluation of Minas Gerais Development Territories through statistical treatments, descriptive analysis, temporal series and panel analysis. In the descriptive analysis, some of the characteristics of the territories present in the literature were confirmed as the socioeconomic indicators, while the indicators of waste management were not directly related with the available data for the Territories. After that, the temporal series of the Development Territories for each indicator were analysed, as well as the panel analysis with models of dependence and independence between the indicators, considering the state of Minas Gerais as a whole. The results obtained through the statistical treatment of the data confirm points reported in the literature and in other regions of the country. Finally, a field research was carried out in the Mata Development Territory to apply the Waste Landfill Quality Indicator (IQR) in landfills in four cities (A, B, C and D), obtaining a final score of 4.3; 9.8; 10.0 and 4.3, respectively. Considering that the landfills of cities A and D are managed by the city hall, without support from the private sector, it is clear that the government still faces difficulties due to the high operating costs of a landfill and the lack of qualified staff to manage the same. It is notorious that problems such as the absence of a trained technical body and difficulties in managing resources in the cities result in low and divergent indicators. Given the population's difficulty in properly separating and packaging their waste, and city halls in collecting, transporting, treating and disposing of these wastes while federal agencies go against the nature of the municipalities responsible for waste management regulations, few advances in this service and the scenario is still worrying.