The Emerging Issue of Solid Waste Disposal Sites Emissions in Developing Countries: The Case of Brazil

Abstract

While the main concerns with municipal solid waste in developed countries like the European Union and the United States are to reduce and recycle the energy recover in order to drastically reduce the residues disposal to landfill, for developing countries the targets on waste management are much more basic. This seems to be the case in Brazil that with a new regulation, it still attempts to eradicate the inadequate waste disposal for open dumps. Thus, the aim of this paper is to depict the context, the criteria and discuss the strategies used for: the municipalities achieve the goals and adhere the plan; choice and configuration of disposal sites; and economic instruments adopted and bringing the whole scenario to discussion, including methane emissions inventory thru the case study of the Rio de Janeiro State. The Rio de Janeiro State municipal solid waste management scenario has drastically changed in last five years from 9% of residues sent to adequate destinations, to the perspective of eradication of open dumps before the end of 2014. The results indicate that only adequate disposal of waste is mandatory with the prevalence of the sanitation approach. The evidences also indicate that planning goals to reduce waste are modest and the landfill gas recover is generally accepted as the optimal solution. This paper concludes that, unless the stakeholders add to the plan a more aggressive policy to increment, the competitiveness of other waste technologies that favor the landfilling reduction and energy recover, Rio de Janeiro State will face the increase of landfill numbers and sizes, management cost, environmental and leachate impact, post-closure care expenses, contaminating life-span, and methane emissions.