Educação ambiental sobre resíduos sólidos urbanos em comunidades de baixa renda: um estudo de caso

Abstract

In the management of Urban Solid Waste (MSW), recycling appears as one of the means to reduce waste. Much is applied in the implementation of the concepts of "Rs", however, which has been reported are reports of problems in the operationalisation of the concepts. One of the difficulties concern the recycling process, that infrequent happens moreover, when it’s done, it is usually ineffective. In this work, there is applied the concept of the reuse of recyclable materials in a community that lives in precarious conditions, through the initial realization of a work of awareness with adults and children of the community. Quantitative and qualitative analyzes were also used to measure the produced residues and to analyze the rates of separation before and after the actions of environmental education in the community. With this it was observed some alteration of the residues after environmental education, being relevant the organic material part considered. After the actions was observed a decrease in the rates of organic material found among the recycled material, this material it passed of 29% in the first sampling for 20% in the last sampling.The research also highlighted the need for work on solid waste in low-income areas to improve recycling rates in the area.