Proposal for an evaluation model for municipal urban solid waste management in Brazil: a study conducted in the city of Curitiba

Abstract Urban solid waste management has become an inflection point for the local development of municipalities. There are several models for the planning, management and technology applied to urban solid waste, but there is no model that proposes to evaluate the development of municipal policies in this field in Brazil. The object of this article was to propose an evaluation model for the actions of the municipal authorities regarding their policies of urban solid waste management in the Brazilian context. The study was conducted in five methodological stages: understanding the variables; a Delphi study to validate the relations among the variables; the structuring of an evaluation model with the relation of the variables and their inter-relationships; definition of the documents and instruments for applying the model; application of the model to the case of Curitiba. The application of the model to the municipal plan of Curitiba emphasized that the city universalizes the service and provides the basic services of collection and final disposal. However, it reclaims and reuses very little of the waste. There is a planning process that is more pragmatic and less strategic, which should prioritize a link with the integrated chain management.