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The Solid Waste (SW) topic within the local sustainability assessment (LSA) system context remains little explored. This article is a literature review on this topic, with emphasis on the analysis of SW indicators and of systems they concern to. It assessed whether these indicators can represent SW complexity and sustainability aspects. Results in the present review have evidenced that 77.8% of system indicators use at most two SW indicators. Most of these indicators aim at indicating destination stages and the final SW management, environmental sustainability aspects and intermediate magnitude levels in SW management hierarchy. There was evidence of the positive impact of Public participation on the assessed matters. Final considerations present recommendations about SW indicators inclusion in LSA systems.

For indicators to assess a society’s sustainability it is necessary that the understanding of what type of sustainability one wishes to measure is clear. The hypothesis tested in the present study is that solid waste management indicators, used in city sustainability assessments, do not represent the concept of strong sustainability. To test the hypothesis, the article initially identifies the perspectives of solid waste management from the strong sustainability’s point of view, under Ecological Economy perspective. The hypothesis was tested in thirteen sustainability assessment tools, covering approximately 400 cities. Two, out of five perspectives identified, had indicators selected represent them. Only one system presented three perspectives, and eight presented two. To represent the theme’s complexity, all perspectives should be considered, so the hypothesis formulated was accepted.

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