Solid Waste Characterization for Identifying Recyclable Materials at Peruvian Military Headquarters

In Peru the solid waste management is an important task for the government, which have been increasing over the years; however, some activities of the solid waste management are not performed. Most of the solid waste ends incinerated or in the landfill, in consequence recyclable material are not recuperated and reused. According to the Peruvian Ministry of Environment only 1.9% of the usable materials were recycled, and public institutions are not unrelated to this recycling issue. The Peruvian Military Headquarter is a public institution focused mainly in all the administrative work of the Peruvian army, so most of the solid waste is office material with high potential to be recycled. In this article, a solid waste segregation and characterization process was included in the former solid waste management of the Peruvian Army Headquarters with the purpose of identifying potential recyclable materials. The results of the characterization and segregation process allowed to recognize three classes of recyclable solid waste, in addition, it was estimated that an approximate of 798 kg of usable material is produced per week at the military facilities.