Gravimetric characterization of urban solid waste in the city of Ereré/CE

Abstract

Urban Solid Waste (USW) is one of the major social and environmental problems of the present time, in many cases, due to inadequate or inefficient management in the stages of collection, transport, destination and final disposal, in addition to environmental education. At that, a more detailed analysis about the dynamics of disposing of these residues is required for the adoption of methodologies that aim at improving the quality of service in this area of sanitation. The aim of this research was to perform the gravimetric composition of urban solid waste in the city of Ereré-CE, based on a qualitative and quantitative analysis of these materials, in order to configure the types and quantity of USW. The municipality of Ereré, located in the state of Ceará, has a standard landfill (open-pit dumping ground) as the end-unit for accommodating its USW. For this purpose, it was applied the sampling methodology at the local of final disposal, using the quartering technique to get a specific mass. The collected data were analyzed and processed in a Microsoft Office Excel ® spreadsheet. It was found that the waste disposal is prevalent, amounting 28.23% of the whole sample, followed by organic matter (20.75%) and plastics (19.04%). Moreover, mathematical calculations indicated that the per capita generation is 0.800 kg/hab/day. These values reflect the dynamics of product consumption and discarding of unusable materials present in the municipality. Furthermore, the data obtained were crucially important for establishing optimization methods in waste management and for the promotion of environmental education.