Theme of the DIADESOL 2006:
"Cleaning shared responsibility: homes, companies and authorities working together"

By 2025, the Declaration of the Millennium promotes the improvement of life conditions for 100 million people and, by 2020, the exercise of the human rights to achieve adequate public services with equity, including solid wastes management.

Latin America and the Caribbean is the Region with the more unequal revenues distribution in the world. The disparity is large among the countries and within them. The migration from rural areas to the cities has generated shanty belts with lack of infrastructure for adequate services. The socioeconomic marginality leads groups to subsist from the wastes.

It is estimated3 that, of the population that Latin America and the Caribbean reached in 2001, 78% are urban and produce 369,000 municipal waste tons per day. Approximately, 44% are produced by medium urban and small centers that have greater difficulty on its management. The collecting service in the poorest areas has low priority and, the accessibility is a problem due to poor infrastructure conditions.

Furthermore, most of the countries do not have solid waste integral management policies; human resource is limited; practically no country has a service evaluation system, and poor and deficient information exists in this sector. From 299,000 solid wastes tons per day collected in the Region, 230,000 tons are disposed in the environment or dump areas with precarious control. The rest, not collected, is burned or poured without control in empty plots, streets, roads, and water bodies. The hospital and dangerous solid wastes are disposed together with municipal solid wastes.
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The DIADESOL is the opportunity for the population to participate in solid wastes management and it contributes to have cleaned cities, as essential contribution for the achievement of the Objectives of the Millennium (OM) related to adequate public services of solid wastes management.