Household solid waste characterization in Tandil (Argentina): Socioeconomic, institutional, temporal and cultural aspects influencing waste quantity and composition

Abstract Household waste generation and composition information is a fundamental input for waste management policy design. In developing countries (DC), however, budget constraints make some characterization methodologies inadequate. Following a methodology specially designed for DC, we performed the first door-to-door municipal solid waste (MSW) characterization in Tandil, a city of 130,000 inhabitants. We stratified households into three socioeconomic status (High, Medium and Low SES) using Geographical Information Systems and census data and performed three one-week sampling campaigns over a year. Results indicate that the generation rate of waste produced in households is 0,401 kg/person/day, less than 50% of the waste arriving at the local landfill. We analysed the normality of data associated with generation rates per category of waste (in kg/person/year) through Shapiro-Wilks tests and Q-Q plots, finding that most of them were normally distributed. Using these categories, we compared strata using ANOVA and Tukey tests, finding that strata waste compositions were similar. We registered a high mass loss during picking analysis -more than 3% in autumn and more than 5% in late spring-, which may be related to organic matter humidity evaporation. We compared daily average mass losses with daily average working-hour temperatures, finding a coefficient of determination r2 of 0,7. Finally, we analyse the consumption of yerba mate -a typical South American habit- as an important source of organic waste and waste moisture content in Argentina.