Per capita municipal solid waste generation and its relationship with socioeconomic and demographic factors in a developing country

In Brazil, per capita municipal solid waste (MSW) generation has increased in recent years. This situation, combined with inadequate management of MSW, provides a disturbing scenario in the Brazilian States. For example, in the State of Goias, just 16 of 246 municipalities send their MSW to licensed landfills. To change this, one of the measures that Goias should adopt is the prevention of waste generation, as the waste hierarchy advocates. To do this, it is necessary to identify elements that may be associated with increased production of MSW. Thus, the objective of this study is to perform a statistical analysis to identify socioeconomic and demographic factors that may be associated with per capita MSW generation in the municipalities of Goias State. For such analysis, statistical techniques were used as descriptive analysis and linear regression. Results showed that daily per capita MSW generation in Goias can be better justified by socioeconomic and demographic variables than just by socioeconomic variables. The Municipal Human Development Index for Education has been shown to be a statistically significant variable to exert influence on the production of waste, in order to contribute to the 39% growth of daily per capita generation of MSW, in the State.