A superação do consumo hedonista e a contribuição da participação popular para o enfrentamento do problema socioambiental do resíduos sólidos urbanos

Abstract

Postmodern society has erected a culture that has as characteristic features of the individual idolatry to the consumption of material goods,the hedonism, the hyper-individualism and the apathy in political participation. The consumption, in the context of the capitalist model of the last century, has become so intense that exceeded the sustentation capacity of natural resources reflecting in a harmful way in the environment. This fact caused to rise in the normative level the ecological rights, from its inclusion in the Federal Constitution of 1988, reshaped the legal structures in force until then establishing a new dimension to the notion of popular participation. Since then the práxis of hedonistic consumption, hyper-individualism and social isolation have come to represent an antinomy face the claimed conduct by the legal sphere, namely: conscious consumption, collective posture and exercise of participatory citizenship. To beyond of the environmental crisis the postmodernity also consolidated a human spirit crisis where the individual, deviated of autonomy, free time, balance, freedom, sensitivity, solidarity, lives the Era of Emptiness. Aiming to overcome this crisis of civilization the ecological rights reflect not only the defense of the environment, but also the rescue of the values of solidarity, cooperation and ethics for the life of all living beings essential to the beginning of the desired paradigmatic overcoming. In this sense, the National Policy on Solid Waste means a major advance in the legislative field and also cultural in the means that exalt the importance of society's participation in the tutelage of the fundamental right to a balanced environment, bringing the spirit of collectivity and solidarity in confronting environmental issues, specifically in respect to the proper management of solid waste. It proposes as the generator tool of these practices the environmental education, reinforcing the importance of this discipline for transposition of current concepts and values that prevent the formation of a new environmental archetype.