Management of the production and final disposal of used rims in Cartagena de Indias:

Gestión de la producción y disposición final de llantas usadas en Cartagena de Indias: an opportunity to mitigate environmental contamination and extreme poverty

The objective of the research was to know the monthly production and final disposal of used tires in commercial establishments in Cartagena, in order to use them as input elements to build environmental public policies that promote their proper management and final disposal and, with it, the mitigation of environmental pollution and extreme poverty at the district level. For this, through a descriptive cross-sectional study, 32 formal companies were surveyed between 2019 and 2020, investigating aspects related to the production, handling, and final disposal of used tires, and obtaining as a main result that the surveyed companies presented an average monthly generation of 13,876 tires. Regarding management and disposal, only 40% of the sample elements had a waste management system, which mostly showed shortcomings in the storage processes, promoting the disposal of tires outdoors (in parks and streets), serving as a reservoir for pests and mosquitoes, or increasing the carbon footprint due to open burning. The analysis of the results and the reflection on the socioeconomic and environmental panorama of Cartagena allowed us to conclude that it is necessary to promote the use of tires under their incorporation into a productive system, which uses recycling as a missionary process, for a balanced solution between the environmental (reduction of satellite dumps) and the control of poverty through formal employment, thus being able to generate social innovation from government management articulating with civil management in Cartagena