Meio Ambiente

After two decades in the Congress, the National Policy on Solid Waste (PNRS) was approved by the Plenary of the Senate last night (July 7). On the same day, in the afternoon, the PNRS was debated and approved at the Senate committees.

The Brazilian minister of the Environment, Izabella Teixeira, celebrated the approval of the law which establishes the policy. "With the approval of the National Policy on Solid Waste, Brazil now has a set of innovative tools for solving the problems of garbage in the country."

The law defines responsibilities and tools for the management of several types of solid waste, among them, electronic materials, for which there is still no federal law defining how the disposal might happen.

The proposal approved by the Senate is the result of a broad consensus involving all the actors who are part of the many different cycles of production of solid waste. It deals with issues that are already part of daily routine of people, involving concepts such as contaminated area, the product life cycle, selective collection, social control, waste management, recycling, shared responsibility and urban cleaning services.

The new policy aims at the protection of public health and environmental quality, as well as at the adoption, development and improvement of clean technologies to minimize environmental impacts, and at the reduction of the volume of hazardous waste, amongst other actions.