Um Estudo da legislação ambiental brasileira sobre resíduos sólidos urbanos

Abstract

Brazilian environmental law, considered advanced and complete, is a fundamental tool for environmental protection. In Brazil, a country with a huge urban concentration where the subject of solid waste is an important challenge, it is evident the necessity of specific public policies. However, the ignorance of part of the society about the content and even the existence of legal documents that contribute to the formulation of public policies and the responsible for its application, partially explain the distance between the law and reality. The central idea of this work is to make therefore a historic summary of Brazilian environmental law. The general objective is to join the Brazilian federal law of municipal solid waste, to discuss its applicability and to contribute for a better understanding of juridical standards. As a didactic objective, an explanation about legislative process and basic ideas of juridical standards hierarchy is done, emphasizing the administrative conflict that occurs in environmental management. This conflict makes it hard to define the entities responsible for development and application of laws. It can be observed that the legislation about municipal solid waste are divided in laws, ordinances and resolutions. They are not consolidated in only one document, consequently, making difficult the normal application of law’s standards. Therefore, it can be concluded that there is still an absence of a federal law in Brazil that deals with the safe environmentally management of municipal solid waste, allowing more legal security in acts of public and private administration.