The current situation of the Metropolitan Region of Curitiba (RMC) in terms of the management of domestic solid waste was the initial motivation for this study. It aims to identify and evaluate alternative technologies for municipal solid waste treatment in order to minimize the quantity of solid waste disposed in landfills. The results resulted from the analysis of the amount of domestic solid waste produced in RMC, and also on a literature review, which was used to identify some technologies used to treat municipal solid waste. The AHP - Analytic Hierarchy Process was used to establish a coherent hierarchical arrangement of the alternative treatments. The application of this method placed recycling at the top of the hierarchy, with a value for the sum of weights of 3,488, whereas the value for incineration was 1,005. Those results show that it is possible to determine, in a decreasing order, the position of each technology to be used for the treatment of municipal solid waste in addition to sanitary landfills. The main result of the study was the production of tool that allowed the simulation of sceneries based on the alteration of the values of the criteria adopted. Each scenario allowed the utilization of the same method applied to RMC to support decision making in other circumstances, which can be specific for each municipality or a consortium of municipalities.
Solid waste; Domestic solid waste treatment; Multicriteria analysis; AHP method
