DAIRY EFFLUENT, LEGAL FRAMEWORK REPRESENTATION OF TECHNICIANS AND MANAGERS

Abstract

From the production growth occur the increase of water consumption in plants installed and a consequent increase in the volume of effluents. The complexity of environmental legislation raises doubts about the treatment and adequacy of ventures, which in large part only have a reaction when they are inspected, seeking at all costs to fulfill the parameters required without foundation to do so. The dairy industry must face this issue not as an obstacle but as an opportunity to improve their practices concerning the competitiveness required for the dairy chain and its sustainability in production. The objective of this study was to raise the "state of the art" of dairy wastewater Northwest of Minas Gerais. It was performed an exploratory research interviewing dairy workers in the northwestern part of Minas Gerais and raised the social representations of the generators of effluent through the methodology of the Collective Subject Discourse (CSD). The generators of effluent do not know the current legislation on emissions, diverting them from treatment stations, because their plants are undersize. The generators require adequate training, scaling stations, and basic infrastructure to alleviate the impacts caused by the release of effluent from dairy out of the standards.