A Guidebook for Sustainable Waste Management in Latin America

Economic development and rapid growth of urban population have resulted in the generation of enormous quantities of municipal solid waste (MSW) that cannot, any longer, be disposed of in the makeshift landfills of yesteryear. This has led the E.U., U.S. and other developed nations to adopt the so-called hierarchy of waste management that gives priority to waste reduction, recycling, composting and waste-to-energy (WTE) over landfilling. Sanitary landfills protect surface and groundwater and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to the atmosphere so they are preferable to non-regulated landfills. However, it has been estimated that only twenty percent of the global landfills are sanitary.

by Prof. Dr. Constantinos S. Psomopoulos, Prof. Nickolas J. Themelis

Economic development and growth of urban population in Latin America have resulted in the generation of an increasing amount of municipal solid waste (MSW) that is surpassing the existing capacity of sanitary landfills. This situation has led local and national governments to evaluate alternative options for diverting MSW from landfills. Waste-to-energy (WTE) become the preferred choice for managing post-recycling wastes in many E.U. countries, Japan, several cities in the U.S., and increasingly in China. However, the high investment cost of this technology, and also the need for better information and communication with the population regarding the environmental impacts of WTE, have impeded the development of WTE in Latin America. The objective of the Earth Engineering Center Guidebook, discussed in this paper was to introduce the reader to the current state of knowledge and application of various waste management methods and present three preliminary feasibility studies of advancing waste management in three Latin America cities: Valparaiso (Chile) Toluca (Mexico), and Buenos Aires (Argentina). Only the first two case studies are discussed in this paper. All three cases are described in detail in the EEC Guidebook, which is available to the public on the web. It is hoped that the data and information derived in this study will enable policymakers and MSW managers in Latin America to make better-informed decisions regarding the feasibility of including thermal treatment of MSW in their plans for advancing sustainable waste management.

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published: TK Verlag - Fachverlag für Kreislaufwirtschaft, Waste Management, Volume 4 (November 2014), 11|2014
Keywords: Policy Tax Instruments, Sustainability, Climate, Argentina, Chile, China, Mexico, United States of America