Brazil's largest trash dump a symbol of struggles to follow environmental laws.
| Autor | Scruggs, Gregory |
The Brazilian capital has announced the impending closure of the largest open-air trash dump in Latin America, three years after the initial deadline under federal law. The belated move underscores how five years after the country hosted the world's signature environmental summit, Brazil struggles to apply environmental law uniformly throughout its territory. June will mark the fifth anniversary of Rio+20, a UN conference that laid the groundwork for the international body's ambitious 15-year vision known as the Sustainable Development Goals.
But while the largest country in Latin America has leaned on this legacy to promote itself as a global leader in sustainability, the reality remains uneven (NotiSur, April 13, 1995, Aug. 30, 2002, May 30, 2008). In particular, several states are struggling to close open-air landfills, which release large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and pose public health dangers for nearby residents. Such challenges come nearly seven years after Brazil passed a landmark solid waste law whose national deadline for closing the country's trash dumps has been pushed back yet again, from the end of this year to 2018.
Dumping ground
In the northeastern state of Alagoas, 95% of household trash ends up in open-air dumps. It's the worst state in Brazil by that measure and an indication of the stubborn challenge to comply with the country's 2010 Solid Waste Law. Despite the law's ambitions, 1,559 municipalities were still sending their trash to open-air landfills in 2014, the first national deadline. In 2015, the Senate pushed that date back to 2018 for Brazil's largest cities, and as late as 2021 for municipalities of up to 50,000 inhabitants.
"It's been three decades of pushing this back," complained Carlos Silva Filho, president of the Brazilian Association of Trash Companies. "This latest postponement, from the form it has taken, will be very damaging."
Brazil's effort to rein in its trash dumps dates to 1981, when the country's first environmental law was passed. That legislation recognized the way that landfills contribute to pollution. Later laws declared such trash dumps "environmental crimes." But even though the 2010 law was heralded as a major step forward, the problem stubbornly persists. Just 20 km from the Palacio do Planalto in Brasilia, where the president's offices are located, sits the Lixao do Estrutural, at 200 hectares the largest dump in Latin America.
On May 10, Rodrigo Rollemberg, the...
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