Demography of urban consumption: a study on the generation of solid waste in the city of Belo Horizonte

Abstract

This study explores the relationships between socioeconomic and demographic factors in the production of household solid waste – household trash – in the city of Belo Horizonte in 2002. We propose to investigate whether socioeconomic differentials (particularly income and schooling) and demographic differentials (specifically age and household structure) are important in defining the volume of waste generated in the city’s subregions. Consumption, in this sense, is seen as the link between the dimensions “population” and “waste generation”. The source of data on solid waste generation is the Superintendence of Urban Cleaning (SLU,in Portuguese), responsible for collecting and systematizing information in a digital cartographic grid. This spatial representation of information was concatenated with the data from the digital grid of Enumaration Areas of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE, in Portuguese) for the 2000 Census. Multivariate statistical methods were employed to investigate the associations between population variables and waste production. The work stands out in the Brazilian population studies scenario by its unprecedented use of information on solid waste production and the interaction of socioeconomic and demographic factors. The results indicate that the concentration of single person households, general population and heads of the family aged 60 and over, and high mean age, an “urban-contemporary demographic profile”, arises recurrently as demographically central in differentiating areas of higher per capita waste generation. These factors are constantly associated with higher income and schooling.