GEO Brasil - UNEP

Concerning the rubbish, 90 percent of all waste collected is
taken to open dumps, 50 percent of which are located next
to rivers, lagoons, the sea or environmental preservation
areas The situation is even worse in many of these dumps
due to the presence of hospital waste mixed to ordinary
rubbish
According to results obtained from the Ministry of the
Environment’s Coastal Management Programme (Gerco -
Gerenciamento Costeiro/MMA), the Brazilian coast receives
over 3,000 tonnes of liquid pollutants every day Preliminary
results indicate that this waste is mainly formed by industrial
and domestic sewage Among the industrial waste,
approximately 130 tonnes of highly toxic pollutants are
discarded every day Four states receive the greatest volumes
of industrial toxic elements: Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, São Paulo
and Espírito Santo In Rio de Janeiro, 119,600 tonnes of
industrial waste is discarded in the ocean, 64,000 of which
are toxic In Bahia, the numbers are 95,501 and 51,128,
respectively
The sources of pollution discard their waste in estuaries,
coastal lagoons, bays and the ocean The quantity of
industrial waste thrown into estuaries is even higher than
that discarded in the oceans As for the toxic industrial
waste, the bays suffer the most It was also observed that
the most vulnerable coastal ecosystems such as estuaries,
coastal lagoons and bays are the primary destination of
these pollutants
4 Maritime Trade
Port activities have to be included here, for 13 major Brazilian
ports (Belém/PA, Itaqui/MA, Aratu/BA, Vitória-Tubarão/ES,
Rio de Janeiro/RJ, Sepetiba/RJ, Angra dos Reis/RJ, São
Sebastião/SP, Santos/SP, Paranaguá/PR, São Francisco do
the state of environment in Brazil
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