Illegal dumps persist on the eve of COP30 and suffer fires every two days, AI analysis shows

— My children have already had respiratory problems. The smoke invades the house, and dust takes over. Trucks leave trash every ten minutes — says housewife Naiara Souza Cardoso, who lives near the Bota-Fora dump in the Goian municipality of 198,000 residents.

Although the scene appears incidental, it’s a recurring reality across the country. An unprecedented analysis conducted by O GLOBO, utilizing artificial intelligence (AI), satellite images, and data scraping, identified 2,974 fire alerts in 740 landfills across all states over the past decade, equating to a fire outbreak every two days.

The burning waste releases toxic smoke, releasing 6 million tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere annually, according to a study by the union of urban cleaning companies. In practical terms, the environmental impact is similar to twice the annual emissions of a city the size of Campinas (SP), with just over one million inhabitants, or nearly three million gasoline-powered cars.

The story of Valparaíso de Goiás, whose administration declined to comment, is one of hundreds happening daily across Brazil, as the nation prepares to host, in less than 100 days, the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30). The international meeting aims to establish a plan for reducing greenhouse gases, including methane from burning waste.

One of the open-air burning dumps is located near the COP30 venue in the municipality of Curuçá (PA), 95 kilometers from Belém. The grayish aspect shown by satellite images is the visible result of fires in the area, covering about nine hectares, equivalent to 12 soccer fields, in recent years, sharing space with 41,000 residents. The local government did not comment when contacted. The Pará government stated that the responsibility for landfill management lies with the municipalities.

This form of waste deposit is prohibited by law but continues to exist irregularly, without official data on its exact location and impact. Estimates by experts and public bodies vary and are often outdated. A 2023 survey by IBGE, the brazilian government institute for statistics, indicated that over 1,700 municipalities admit to having open-air dumps, while the Ministry of the Environment estimated two years ago the existence of 463 waste areas, either fully operational or in the process of closure. The Brazilian Association of Waste and Environment (Abrema) suggests there could be 3,000 clandestine dumping sites. Another organization, the Brazilian Association of Sanitary and Environmental Engineering (Abes), has an ongoing project to validate all such structures.

To obtain a comprehensive picture of the landfill reality, O GLOBO analyzed a sample of approximately ten thousand satellite images using AI, with human review. From this sample, 740 irregular deposits that experienced fires were identified. The list compiled by O GLOBO represents the largest sample of the exact location of these clandestine structures in Brazil to date. Until now, the coordinates of these waste areas were not systematically recorded and disclosed. Five experts validated the research methodology, which took four months to complete.

— This number is significant and provides previously unexplored information. But perhaps the country’s situation is even worse — says Alesi Teixeira Mendes, a researcher at the Institute of Applied Economic Research (Ipea) with a master’s degree in environmental engineering.

According to Beatriz Barcelos, environmental engineer and professor of Solid Waste Management at the Catholic University of Brasília, the survey highlights errors in the “implementation of sustainable solutions”:

— This identification provides a dimension of improper solid waste disposal in Brazil. Many clandestine dumps remain outside official records.

The complete data on the landfill scenario should be available through the National Information System on Waste Management (SINIR), managed by the Ministry of the Environment. States and municipalities are required to fill out information annually, including geographic coordinates. However, a significant portion of authorities fail to submit data, according to the ministry. It’s as if the landfills scattered across the country burn invisibly to those who should monitor them, yet they are evident in satellite images.

The lack of control results from a problem that shouldn’t even exist. The National Solid Waste Policy, enacted in 2010, mandated the closure of all landfills by 2014. The deadline was repeatedly extended, finally expiring in August 2024, without being met by many municipalities. Many waste deposits burn spontaneously due to the combustion of discarded flammable material, but human actions also contribute, deliberately reducing volume to gain space. Burning waste is an environmental crime, punishable by up to four years in prison.

In Novo Gama (GO), 40 kilometers from Brasília, the city government announced the deactivation of a landfill active for over two decades. However, satellite images reveal the accumulation of waste and burn marks. On the ground, trucks continue to dump materials. Contacted, the city government stated that the landfill is in a “transition process” and that some waste is sent to a landfill in a neighboring municipality.

— The fire caught on the recycling separation conveyors, and we lost two, a loss of R$12,000. The city is trying to change, but it’s still far from being a sanitary landfill — says Vander José, coordinator of the local cooperative.

Environmentalists emphasize that landfill fires have a significant impact as they release gases and fine particles that cause pollution and contribute to global warming. According to the UN Environment Programme, open-air incineration of plastic materials is one of the main sources of air pollution.

— The waste decomposes, and organic matter produces methane. It’s a super greenhouse gas, 30 times more potent at absorbing heat than carbon dioxide. It’s dangerous and generates many pollutants. There should be a total ban on waste burning. It’s not a good image to have so many landfills on the eve of COP30 — points out climate scientist Carlos Nobre, a researcher at the University of São Paulo (USP).

Most fires occur between May and October during the dry season. The seasonality is similar to fires in native vegetation but has an aggravating factor: it includes plastic, debris, electronic, and organic waste, releasing highly harmful substances such as methane, dioxins, furans, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and mercury.

— Landfills have a very relevant local effect due to these particular materials being burned. It’s as if it multiplies the sanitary effect, which is the inadequately deposited waste, but also generating atmospheric pollution — says forest engineer Tasso Azevedo, general coordinator of MapBiomas.

Given the lack of updated and systematic landfill data in the country, O GLOBO’s report sought to identify the location of these irregular deposits through consultations in various public documents, such as state solid waste plans, legal actions, agreements with the Public Prosecutor’s Office, and academic works.

These initial pieces of information, presenting the latitude and longitude of some landfills in different regions of the country, were cross-referenced with an algorithm that identifies heat spots and incident dates. From there, tools like Google Earth Engine, which offer satellite services, were used to collect images captured before and after fire alerts.

With this data, O GLOBO trained an AI model to identify whether there were visual alterations, i.e., whether there were fires in the waste deposits or just nearby. The system functioned like an “environmental expert”: it was fed with a sample of manually cataloged images and thus managed to distinguish changes caused by fires from those caused by rain, drought, or simple land movement, allowing for faster analysis of thousands of photos since 2016.

With this AI model training, it was possible to expand and find new landfills that experienced fires. One of the report’s precautions was distinguishing these deposits from sanitary landfills, which are legally permitted and have a similar appearance, such as geometric-shaped reliefs and the presence of leachate collection ponds. They represent a less aggressive model than landfills, whose end was legally mandated due to broad environmental impacts and health effects on workers and nearby residents.

— When there’s smoke and fire, we work with dizziness and feel more tired. It’s difficult; we return home still feeling unwell — reported João Celino, who has worked for 12 years at the landfill in Alexânia (GO), a municipality of 27,000 inhabitants 120 kilometers from Goiânia, and whose city government was contacted but did not comment.