Lixo Humano ou Humano Lixo: colapso anunciado de um modo de vida

Abstract

Garbage is a significant expression of the environmental issue. From the nuisance that it naturally represents, discussions on the subject began, whose inclusion was initially made from 1972 onwards in the Stockholm Convention, where its final document would reproduce a consistent logic in separating the human from nature, establishing the from that moment on, a departure from environmental and social aspects. This logic is repeated around human rights, which are established through declaratory acts, with limited effectiveness. A humanitarian approach was preferred throughout this research, to the detriment of the so-called “rights”, allowing a deepening of the human content existing in the garbage. The research in bibliographic and documentary format adopted the exploratory methodology, with the purpose of meeting its main objective, which is to understand how human waste can represent indicative of traits of human behavior that are disconnected with the collective and humanitarian premises, these understood from a lifestyle supported by consumption, consumerism, the fragile equitable distribution of material goods and focused on a merely individualistic perspective. Edgar Morin's Theory of Complexity was used as a founding theoretical basis, with an analysis of humanitarian issues, way of life and social institutions, from the perspective of Herrera Flores, Zygmunt Bauman and Émile Durkein, in addition to considerations related to a possible humanitarian collapse according to Jared Diamond. Global examples and the presentation of a broader view were possible from the vast work on garbage produced by Maurício Waldman. The deepening done in relation to the way of life considered issues related to social cohesion, adopting the growing number of homeless people as one of its main indicators. In addition, consumption measures that could be verified over time were also rescued, in this case water and energy. Also on human behavior, an attempt was made to deepen the terminology adopted in the environmental area, degradation. From the focus contained in the general objective, environmental aspects were observed, especially liabilities and disasters related to water, and social aspects, such as human development indices, income distribution, depression, suicides, intentional homicides and their victims. To demonstrate the correlation between the collected data, statistical regression models were organized, reaching 98% accuracy in explaining the garbage phenomenon and its correlation with human aspects of the present time, such as consumption and the way you organize your life Social. Consumed water was the variable that showed the best correlation with garbage, and can be used as a form of indirect measurement. The purpose of this research was to place garbage at the center of the human and environmental debate and in the construction of State Policies, as it can be considered as a strong indication of failure in human and social processes. As a result of the significant changes provoked by humanity in the last three centuries, and particularly from the 1940s onwards with the advancement of nuclear technology, it was possible to identify the pertinence of reclassifying the current geological moment as the Anthropocene Era.