Towards a sustainable municipal solid waste management system: waste characterisation for high income districts

Abstract

Municipal solid waste (MSW) management represents a major expenditure for third world countries, and could be very challenging as it results in environmental impacts including pollution of water resources. The major expenditure of the municipal solid waste management is attributed to overlooking revenues generated from waste. Due to the uncertainties of data, the value of the recyclables is overlooked. Therefore, a key in the development of an effective and sustainable waste management system is having reliable information and a clear characterisation of the municipal waste generated from the community being studied. Hence, this paper presents a waste audit to characterise household waste and more importantly estimate revenues generated from recyclables. The focus was on household waste generated from high income districts. The study found that there was a surplus resulting from the difference between the revenue of recyclables and the cost of its management. This surplus could be used to fund the deficit in waste management system in other lower income districts.