Waste Mechanics Research Needs: A Perspective from Brazil

Waste Mechanics is completely different from Soil Mechanics, but perhaps out of convenience it is increasingly addressed based on Soil Mechanics concepts. Ideally Continuum Mechanics should be used, but even in Soil Mechanics past empirical approaches are adopted as numerical tools are less available and knowledge of Continuum Mechanics more limited. In Brazil, solid waste landfills were managed from a sanitary engineering viewpoint, and engineers operating the landfills were generally mechanical or electrical engineers, more concerned with waste collection and transport logistics than in fact with waste disposal and its possible impacts on the environment. It was only after the Bandeirantes landfill accident (see Figure 1) that geotechnical engineers were in fact called to play a more important role in landfill projects and management. It should also be mentioned that in most cases, landfill accidents do not involve people and when they do, they affect lives in areas that do not have the ability to engage the media so that the incident is not news or very quickly forgotten.