Avaliação ambiental do sistema de gerenciamento de resíduos sólidos urbanos de São Gabriel - RS.

Abstract

One of the major challenges for public managers involves the proper management of waste produced by municipalities. The responsibility becomes more serious due to the charges imposed by current legislation, especially the Brazilian National Solid Waste Policy (NSWP), and the consequences resulting from improper management, causing impacts on the environment, health and public safety. In order to follow the NSWP, the present study was based on the regional ideas and finding the best alternatives for the Urban Solid Waste management system (USW) in the city of São Gabriel - RS through the application of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tool. The computer program used was Umberto NXT LCA 7.14, with the Ecoinvent 3.1 database and the evaluation of six categories of environmental impact by the method CML 2001. The differential is in the simulation of the construction of a sanitary landfill in the municipal area and the choice of the area for its implementation through Geographic Information Systems (GIS) tools with Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) following the legislation. The results show that, in Scenario 1 (current), the collection process is the most impacting compared to the others with 96,58% of representativeness (6.443,76 EP/year) due to the burning of fossil fuels by vehicles. Even with the simulation of the construction of a local landfill, Scenario 2 maintained the collection as the most impacting process with 63,11%, followed by the construction of the landfill with 34,69% of representability (3.542,32 EP/year). Thus, the LCA data showed that it is not possible to compensate environmental impacts resulting from the construction of a landfill only with the impacts that were reduced in the transportation process.