Análise do ciclo de vida do programa de coleta seletiva do Plástico no município de João Pessoa/PB – Brasil

Abstract

Nowadays with the unstoppable production of solid residues, the selective waste collection appears as a possible destination for this sum produced. The plastic is a recyclable material and used in many different ways, therefore, its reintroduction in the productive process reveals its importance in the economic and environmental fields. The general goal of this present study is to evaluate the environmental impact of the life cycle of the selective collection system of plastic in the screening centers of the city of João Pessoa, Paraíba - Brazil. If was considered date collected from the Special Municipal Urban Cleaning Autarchy (EMLUR) and also with the associations of recyclable material collectors as regards to the total of residues collected in the city of João Pessoa, in the period between 2005 to 2015. It was verified that although the quantitative is oscillating, the most screening centers in the Paraíba state capital obtained significant progress in the considered period for research. The environmental analisys of the selective waste collection made use of the tool Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) which processed input data regarding the quantitative aspect of plastic collected, water consumption, energy and diesel with the aid of SimaPro 8.01 software. The categories of environmental impact considered were the eutrophication, acidification, reduction of the ozone layer, global warming and photochemical oxidation in the various stages of the selective waste collection system in the capital of Paraíba. The results obtained reveal that the eutrophication and the reduction of the ozone layer are not compensated by the net benefits from the selective waste collection, even if not significant, being the regular selective waste collection the main impacting stage identified. The acidification, the global warming and the photochemical oxidation resulted in categories that compensate for the net benefits of selective waste collection, where recycling is the main compensatory step. It was identified that the plastic waste collected in the city is sold by the middlemen of this material and later resold to the recycling company Petromix, located in the capital of Paraíba. Thus, the recycling should be made with a larger amount of plastic, in order to allocate properly the waste of this type and reduce the environmental impacts from the selective waste collection system as a whole.