An assessment tool for municipal construction waste management in Brazilian municipalities

Abstract

<jats:p> Construction waste is generated during construction and remodelling undertakings. Construction waste management (CWM) is a challenge in developing countries such as Brazil. Thus, it is necessary to create tools by which CWM may be evaluated. This article presents the elaboration of a tool to assess CWM in Brazilian cities; moreover, this method facilitates such analyses in regions which lack substantial quantitative data. In doing so, the tool, known as the Assessment Index for Construction Waste Management (ICWM), combines quantitative and qualitative information and is composed of 49 indicators and 19 criteria divided into the following groups: operational; environmental; politico-economic, educational; and social. The analytic hierarchy process was used to assign the weights attributed to the groups and criteria to build the index. The indicators were measured according to a standardized rating scale proposed for each one. These elements were aggregated in a mathematical formula that enables the calculation of the ICWM. The aggregation method used was a weighted linear combination, and the index is rated on a 0 to 1 scale. The ICWM was tested in four municipalities. In all cases, the management was considered inefficient. The proposed tool proved to be effective in evaluating the CWM. In cities where the ICWM was tested, it was possible to identify the significant deficiencies of the CWM and recommend improvement actions to develop more efficient and sustainable management. </jats:p>

Healthcare waste management assessment: Challenges for hospitals in COVID-19 pandemic times

“…This tool was essential for the achievement of final results, since it better reflects the complexity of the problems involved in the management of HCW, as stated by Aung et al (2019) who checked the urgent need for better waste management regulation in their country. Additionally, similar to the work of Moraes et al (2020), the weights of the indicators from the impartial assessment of different specialists in waste management could be found due to the AHP.…”

“…Slight variations can even change the HCWM classification of hospitals, as occurred with hospital F, for example in Scenario 2. This is only possible because the weighted linear combination was used as a method for aggregating the weights of the criteria, which allows good indicators to outweigh bad ones as affirmed by Moraes et al (2020) who identified deficiencies in waste management in Brazilian cities.…”

State of the art preliminary literature review: Sustainability and waste reporting capabilities in management systems

“…Based on research findings in other research fields, authors decided to start a systematic literature review [39,40] to work on a preliminary mapping of the current academic literature and views on waste management systems to report quantified waste stream data. For this task, a set of keywords was generated based on previous work results on other academics [41][42][43] and the authors' own experience. The keywords were used to find the academic studies reflecting waste management systems and calculations and/or their reporting capabilities to quantify and show up in numbers the amount of different waste components operations generate, handle and process upon activities the system can see.…”

An assessment tool for healthcare waste management in Brazilian municipalities during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Then, current Brazilian legislation for HCW was studied, such as Conselho Nacional do Meio Ambiente (2005), NSWP (2010) and ANVISA (2018), and the indicators referring to the operational steps and the responsibilities of each stakeholder were proposed. Indicators that evaluate HCWM considering social, environmental, educational and political-economic aspects were based on Polaz and Teixeira (2009), Santiago and Dias (2012) and Moraes et al (2020). The indicator selection criteria followed the criteria adopted by da Silva et al (2019) thus, an indicator selected should present a calculation formula or evaluation method and not be redundant.…”