Recycling of urban solid waste in Brazil: a systematic review

Abstract

Considering the requirements of the National Solid Waste Policy, an important step in this adaptation is selective collection and recycling. The present work makes a systematic review of the literature on the recycling of urban solid waste, focusing on the analysis of the current scenario, its challenges and future perspectives. Articles and reviews from the last 10 years were used, from the Scielo, Medline (Pubmed), Google Scholar and Virtual Health Library (VHL) databases. To carry out the work, the PRISMA method (Main Items for Reporting Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) was used, as it is a methodology aimed at a critical evaluation of published systematic reviews. The search descriptors with the logical operator “AND” (Boolean operator to expand the results) were the following keywords in Portuguese, Spanish and English: “solid waste”, “national solid waste policy”, “waste cooperatives ”, “selective collection” and “recycling”. The searches were carried out in 2023. The results highlighted the need for greater encouragement of environmental education by public management, greater appreciation of collectors and cooperatives of recyclable materials and, also, for there to be a continuous effort to comply with legislation environmental issues pertinent to solid waste, especially in relation to the national solid waste policy.