Improving urban waste management: A comprehensive study on household waste generation and spatial patterns in the Grand Guayaquil Metropolitan Area.

This study tackles the growing global concern about municipal waste management, particularly in cities like the Grand Guayaquil Metropolitan Area (GGA). Through realistic field studies on in situ household waste generation and geographic information system (GIS) tools, this work offers a framework to predict the quantities and types of recyclable household waste for any metropolitan area in Latin America. Over 4 weeks, students collected, sorted and weighed recyclable waste types, including plastic, paper, metal, glass and fabric, from 776 sampled household of the GGA. ArcGIS survey tool identified household locations and allowed to survey different socio-demographic features. With the help of ArcGIS interpolation method, the total household waste generation for GGA was predicted, and the classification of the different types of recyclable waste was also spatially distributed for the study area. The report identified notable trends in plastic waste, specifically polyethylene terephthalate waste's steady prevalence and 42% growth rate, emphasizing the importance of enhanced recycling techniques. Spatial density maps showed a heterogeneous waste distribution across the GGA, emphasizing locations with higher waste output. This study demonstrates that improving recyclable waste collection can be accomplished with a moderately cheap expenditure by collaborating with academia to overcome knowledge gaps. This strategy provides opportunities to mitigate the environmental impacts of poor waste management.

Informal waste pickers in guayaquil: Recycling rates, environmental benefits, main barriers, and troubles.

Systems for managing municipal solid waste are typically ineffective in developing nations because of governments' deficient financial and administrative frameworks, poor rules, and a lack of suitable infrastructure and human resources. The informal sector plays an essential role in these systems by reprocessing waste into secondary raw materials, reducing collection and disposal costs, and, most importantly, benefiting the environment by avoiding incineration and landfilling. However, their actual contributions remain unknown. The present paper aims to understand the role of informal waste pickers (IWPs) in the waste management system of Guayaquil City and their environmental impact through the calculations of the carbon footprint (CF) avoided due to their aid. The survey design gathered information on their personal profiles, types, and rates of collected recyclables, market conditions, their main barriers, and troubles regarding their formalization. The results of the survey demonstrate that waste picking is mostly a male-driven activity, the average daily mass collected per IWP is 13 kg, the most collected recyclable waste is polyethylene terephthalate, their average monthly income is $179, and the total avoided CF of the entire informal waste picking process is almost 14 thousand tons of CO2 eq yearly. Further, IWPs prefer to operate alone, and only 16% of them would join a cooperative, despite their numerous financial, logistical, and personal challenges.