Improving environmental sustainability in developing and emerging countries by upgrading solid waste management techniques

In developing and emerging countries, solid waste management is one of the major problems because of the increasing number of inhabitants in urban areas that inevitably increases the total amount of solid wastes to be disposed of. Due to inefficient collecting service and inadequate successive solid waste treatment, serious problems can arise: odour nuisance, atmospheric pollution, drainage conduit clogging, hygienic and sanitary issues. As a consequence, poorest people who live in such conditions suffer multiple diseases that can not be neglected. In most developing and emerging countries, small scale urban solid wastes collecting activities are present: along the streets, waste gatherers, called scavengeres or catadores, look for waste materials suitable to be resold as valuable products in order to earn some money to decently survive. Since catadores are unpopular, even among the local inhabitants, because they represent an example of menial work, modern solid waste collecting methods and treatments have been trying to be implemented: compactors, incinerators and complex management data software. Such techniques, even being sophisticated, show a huge environmental impact because they destroy potentially recyclable materials and, consequently, determine a strong money drop for catadores. Such an aspect shows clearly how technologies suitable for developed countries can be detrimental for developing countries. In fact, for developing and emerging countries, best solutions are those ones that involve people already active in the formal and informal waste recycling (e.g. catadores) and take into proper account municipalities financial capacity. Moreover, waste collecting and treatment technologies should be simple (in order to be readily understand by local inhabitants), low-cost, in situ implementable and they should employ renewable energetic sources to reduce environmental impact. Other features to be taken into account are: spatial limitations, particular climatic conditions and local ambient rules (if existing). Among developing and emerging countries, Brazil represents a unique reality because technological and industrial development is in contrast to the diffused poverty. An emblematic case is the Santa Rita Municipality, in the Paraiba State (Jo\ue3o Pessoa), where the illiteracy is over the 29.3% and the poverty is estimated to be over than 65.9% of total population (more than 100,000 people). In this context, it has been carried out the project named \u201cSocial Inclusion and Environmental Sustainability\u201d (SIES), financed by Regione Lombardia and coordinated by Brescia SIPEC foundation. Numerous partners collaborated to this project: Centro Dom Oscar Romero (CEDOR \u2013 local partner), Brescia ONLUS CAUTO social cooperative, CeTAmb (Centro di Documentazione e Ricerca sulle Tecnologie Appropriate per la gestione dell\u2019ambiente nei Paesi in via di sviluppo) of the Brescia University, Universidade Federal da Paraiba, Instituto Arcor, Iveco, Associa\ue7\ue3o Mulher Centro da Vida, Grupo Flor Mulher and Insubria University