Solid Waste Management in a Context of Sustainability in the Sahuangal Community, Ecuador

In developing countries, where rural communities face limitations in terms of solid waste management (SWM), they often resort to practices such as prolonged storage and open burning. Proper planning helps reduce environmental, health, and economic impacts and moves towards more sustainable waste management. This study analyses SWM in the rural community of Sahuangal (Ecuador) and proposes a pilot management plan based on community participation. A three-phase methodology was applied: (i) preliminary analysis, surveys, and Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT-TOWS) analysis; (ii) infrastructure design for the pilot plan, integrating the physical characterisation of waste for infrastructure sizing; (iii) economic- and financial evaluation and multicriteria prioritisation using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The survey results indicate that 75.86% of households reported a predominance of organic waste, whereas the pilot-level characterisation conducted in a typical household identified an organic fraction of 69.81%. The SWM pilot plan is cost-effective and, by relying on small-scale infrastructure built with local materials and community labour, incorporates social and environmental sustainability criteria. The combination of SWOT-TOWS analysis with AHP emphasised community participation, the viability of composting, and the recovery of recyclables as the predominant criteria, suggesting that the plan can be adapted to other rural communities with similar conditions.