Jornal de Efeitos e Controle da Poluição
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A Successful Case in Waste Management in Developing Countries

Lorena De Medina-Salas, Eduardo Castillo-Gonz�?¡lez, Mario Rafael Giraldi-D�?­az, V�?­ctor Fern�?¡ndez-Rosales, Carlos Manuel Welsh Rodr�?­guez

Although most of the developing countries have serious problems with the issue of waste management, there have been some success stories including the development of environmental public policies, which had led to better life quality. In most developing countries, waste management considers only two stages: collection and final disposal. The collection system does not include a differentiated collection of the municipal solid waste (MSW), this implies that the valorization of the different waste fractions becomes more difficult to separate and most of them are dumped on uncontrolled sites. Meanwhile, the landfilled sites are limited and usually are about to exceed their capacity. In certain rural and semi-urban localities is common the practice of burning their waste, polluting the air, soil and even water. Local authorities are making some efforts to prevent this type of pollution, but it does not always work properly. However, there are certain successful cases like Teocelo, Veracruz in Mexico. This is a semi-urban locality where the inhabitants have been contributing to waste management in different ways since the year 2000. All the people separate their waste in organic and inorganic. Only the inorganic fraction is managed to the collection system, while a part of the organic fraction is usually composted in homes and the rest is treated in a composting plant. Until now, people of the locality keep this way of living and consider that the care of the environment is important for this generation as well as the new ones.