Municipal waste management and institutional environment in Rio Grande do Sul

The National Solid Waste Policy (Politica Nacional de Residuos Solidos, PNRS) assigns Brazilian municipalities the responsibility of providing urban cleaning and waste management services; however, scholars report the difficulty of municipalities in adopting a policy that meets the obligations of the aforementioned law. This article explores the correspondences between the municipal institutional environment itself (the main socioeconomic, political and cultural factors) and municipal waste management (specifically, the presence of an Integrated Solid Waste Management Plan). After a brief introduction to the issue, this paper shows a descriptive analysis of the presence of these plans in the mesoregions of Rio Grande do Sul. The article then presents a multiple correspondence analysis that provides an exploratory overview of municipal waste management in its institutional environment.