A territorial analysis of the city of Rio de Janeiro is presented in order to contribute to the planning of selective solid waste collection and decision making in public management of urban cleaning. The applied methodology took into consideration primary and secondary data of the current solid waste collection system in the context of metropolitan geography, crossing this information with the data of road infrastructure, demographics and socioeconomic profile of the municipal population through geoprocessing tools. This information, combined and spatialized, indicated that the use of different modes, depending on the characteristics of each region, can optimize the collection process, reducing operation costs and improving service delivery. These results corroborate the importance of geographic data analysis for the optimization of resources, efficiency and quality of the selective collection programs, in order to comply with the National Solid Waste Policy.