Recycling and thermal treatment of MSW in a developing country

With the increase of the world population, urbanization and industrialization, the volume of generated municipal solid waste (MSW) has increased in an alarming rate and turned to be a challenge for public authorities. In recent years the world experienced the reflexes of the old bad practice of dumping MSW without any treatment and its negative impacts on the ecosystem. This led to continuous intensive and extensive efforts to provide feasible solutions before degrading completely our Planet. One route is to divert MSW from landfills by recycling and incineration. Recycling economizes natural resources, water and energy and reduces emissions while incineration nearly eliminates the need for landfills, produces electricity, hot water, and minimizes emissions. While many developed countries are adopting these technologies for treating MSW, most developing countries are still many years behind, disposing MSW in landfills and/or open sky sites. This is mainly due to lack of political will, financial resources and preconscious attitude against incineration technology. In Brazil, for example, about of 95% of MSW is disposed in sanitary landfills and dumps impacting severely both public health and the ecosystem. This paper highlights the importance of incineration and recycling activities in providing financial, energy, and ambient gains in Brazil. The investigated scenario is based on recycling 10% of the recyclables and incineration of the rest of MSW. The results show that the financial gain from commercializing only 10% of the potentially available recyclables amounts to about U$32,432,432 monthly or 122,729 minimum national salaries, while the electric energy generated from incineration is sufficient for supplying 16.5 million residences or nearly 25% of the Brazilian homes.