Urban Waste and Our Day-to-Day Chaos

There is litter on most streets of the more privileged neighborhoods of the city where there is cleaning services comparable to the first world; in the under privileged neighborhoods, urban sanitation is on par with African or Indian quality levels: this is the reality of Rio de Janeiro and the majority of the 16 Brazilian cities with populations of over one million inhabitants. Rio de Janeiro is a city characterized by enormous inequality in income and in geographic distribution of the population, as well as in public services. Erratic urban expansion has made Rio de Janeiro one of the hallmarks of segregation and social degradation, which makes the populace’s standard of living a challenge to manage. Due to this inefficiency, most the city’s periphery has open sewage that runs in ditches, rivers, the sea and on the streets. The system of rainwater drainage does not undergo periodic maintenance where there is a system at all, causing frequent floods and public damage from heavy summer rains. Litter clogs drainage pipes and exacerbates flooding and the contamination of rivers and the sea. It is still possible to see the accumulation of garbage in outlying areas. In favelas, present throughout the entire city, the habitation conditions and urban infrastructure are precarious, and environmental degradation leaps out of control, thereby contaminating the sea and making it impossible to swim and go to the beach in many important parts of the city. Guanabara Bay has been contaminated since the 1970s. The objective of this article is to present a diagnostic of the impact of urban waste on the city of Rio de Janeiro. The research was conducted using quantitative methods, as well as secondary data from official sources.