Solid waste management in municipalities in Mexico: goals and perspectives

Mexico is faced with serious environmental and administrative challenges with respect to solid waste (SW) management. Just as in other developing countries, the public sanitation system lacks because of inadequate planning, as well as unsustainable SW management. The country is experiencing an urbanization process in which approximately 70% of the population are concentrated in its ten largest cities; the rest are spread throughout 200000 towns in Mexico's 2 000 000 km(2). This has caused a change in the population's consumption patterns, which has resulted in a more heterogeneous composition of SW and an increase in its generation rate. The current situation of the SW management systems in Mexico is analyzed, and the environmental, technical, administrative, economic and social goals with which Mexico's public sanitation systems face, are discussed. The principal goal facing these public sanitation systems is the development of adequate disposal of SW, since the municipalities find themselves unable to administer sanitary landfills according to Mexican legislation because they lack financial means and the technical and human infrastructure. SW collection in Mexico depends heavily on personnel with no technical training and the separation of the waste is carried out by an ever-increasing number of scavengers. The importance of including these groups in the decision-making process in order to assure the success of SW management programs is presented, along with the need to create interdisciplinary work groups that could collaborate in driving forward the agenda. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.