The caotic situation of public cleansing services has shown the decision making processes that has occurred in the majority of Santa Catarina State's municipalities. Decisions have been taking on an emergence way, with no basis on real parameters, and with a few actors participation. The results has been installed and abandonned equipments, high costs services and unqualified labour.

Conventional existing technologies that have supported decisions on solid wastes, have shown to be limited because they do not tolerate the whole spectrum of criteria and actors that influence those decisions. Multicriterial methods, specifically the Analitic Hierarchy Process, do allow to work this diversity, making the decision process participative and clear, with more efficient results in terms of environment and public health.

This thesis presents an approach based on the Analitic Hierarchy Process to support decisions on solid wastes management to the Santa Catariina state's municipalities. So forth, criteria were produced from research on six municipalities, which provide a decision process grounded and organized. The implementation of the decision support system -DSS- used a computational programme (Saaty for Windows), which the major feature is to be user friendly. An application of the model is done to the municipality of Florianópolis, showing its approppriateness to all different realities.