A look of the circular economy to waste reduction programs in León, Guanajuato. Concrete solutions or palliative enviromental?

Abstract

The issue of Urban Solid Waste Management (USWM) in León, Guanajuato, has several pending subjects, essentially defining a strategy aimed to gradually reducing the generation of waste from the municipality for the decade that begins according to physical limits and environmental landfill. The components of communication and environmental education, from public dependence as pillars oriented to promote a lower generation of waste and an adequate separation in origin, present serious problems of articulation and operation to generate synergies with both producers, merchants and consumers. In the institutional, financial, as well as infrastructure, the public company presents points considered as weak to carry out immediate processes of reduction, separation, treatment and use of city waste. Under this context, the present investiga- tion analyzes the various programs directed by the municipal public administration in the area of urban solid waste reduction from the perspective of the circular economy. Within the methodological approach, semi-structured interviews were conducted with the actors responsible for the various municipal reduction programs, as well as the review of various statistical indicators on waste. Within the approach considered for the analysis, the circular economy was selected, especially because of the broad link between the scope of generation and final disposal of waste. The results found in the investigation indicate that the public company responsible for waste management in Leon is beginning a process of collection and separation of waste that is paying to re- duce the income to the landfill. However, the above is not associated with generating new practices for both: producers, traders and society in general, focused on elimina- ting the generation of waste of origin. The reduction programs therefore represent a mere environmental palliative that pays limitedly to the 2030 sustainable development agenda