# Solid Waste Management in Peru's Cities: A Clustering Approach for an Andean District
## 4 Discussion  
The problem of solid waste disposal in the Santa Rosa District, Ayacucho, is linked to poor access to public services, which makes the residents dispose of their municipal solid waste in dumps, constituting a serious environmental and sanitary problem. This is the same scenario as another district, Ayacucho (Sacsamarca), that also makes use of dumps with a few years of useful life, whose solution projected by the municipality only focuses on building larger dumps [32] and not on carrying out studies of characterization and recovery of solid waste that are of vital importance within the process of urban planning and territorial ordering [47]. A similar case, in another country, occurs in Keta, Africa, where they lack solid waste management due to having little availability of economic resources [48].  
The GPC of residential solid waste in Santa Rosa (0.77 kg/day) was higher than that found in Dilla Town, Ethiopia (0.47 kg/day) [49] and lower than the GPC of non-residential solid waste of Santa Rosa (4.37 kg/day) for having fewer commercial establishments such as warehouses, restaurants, hotels, bakeries and cafeterias. Likewise, the averages obtained from GPC of household solid waste for the strata of the present study (0.44 stratum A and 1.03 stratum B), are similar to the results of the studies carried out in the city of Laga Dadi, Ethiopia, with an average GPC of 0.45 for household solid waste [50]. On the other hand, the GPC values for non-residential solid waste from hotels and other commercial establishments for Santa Rosa were 4.17 and 6.0, respectively, and for Laga Dadi, 1.81 and 1.57, respectively, [50]. In another investigation, developed in Germany, it was found that hotels generate around 58% of organic solid waste and that a minimum of 36% of recyclable waste could be recovered [51; 52].  
The solid waste generated is predominantly made up of more usable waste (69.87%) than non-usable waste (30.13%) and within the usable waste, a greater amount of organic than inorganic solid waste was obtained, similar to what was found in Dilla Town, Ethiopia and in Costa Rica, whose percentage of organic solid waste was 68.40 and 55.9%, respectively [47; 49]. However, regarding inorganic solid waste, the percentage of paper and plastics was very different; while in the District of Santa Rosa, 14.43% of plastic was generated, in Dilla Town and Costa Rica 1.90 and 10.2% of plastics were generated, respectively [49]. The high percentage of plastics in Santa Rosa corresponds to the increase in urbanization and its consequent increase in inorganic solid waste [53; 54; 55]. When comparing the results obtained for the commercial and household sectors, it is evident that organic matter waste acquires a greater preponderance than materials with recycling potential [47].  
It should be noted that one of the main causes of the generation of waste for Santa Rosa is consumption by the population during festive dates [56]. In this sense, in the month of August, the patron festival alluding to the patron saint [PERSON] [57] is commemorated. Likewise, in the month of November, the main date is the political creation of the District of Santa Rosa [58], as well as the consecration towards the regeneration of life and fertility, a festivity that welcomes the rains of the humid seasons [57]. This set of dates and other possible alternate festivities may be the cause of the increase in solid waste in the months of August and November (see Figure 14) compared to June to July, with much less SW produced. By reducing the amount of organic waste generated, the District of Santa Rosa could obtain economic benefits by reducing the costs of collection, transportation and disposal of waste [59] and through recovery increase the options for solid waste management when the establishment of sanitary landfills is not viable [60].