Book Description

With progressing urbanisation, solid waste management is becoming a major public health and environmental concern in urban areas of many developing countries. The overall goal of urban solid waste management is to collect, treat and dispose of solid waste generated by all urban population groups in an environmentally and socially satisfactory manner using the most economical means available. However, a typical solid waste management system in a developing country displays an array of problems, including low collection coverage, irregular collection services, indiscriminate open dumping and burning without air and water pollution control, breeding of ies and vermin, as well as handling and lack of control of informal waste picking or scavenging. This public health, as well as environmental and management problems are caused by various factors constraining the development of effective solid waste management systems. Waste management and disposal is an alarming problem encountered by many of the urban and industrial areas in developing economies in Asian countries. Waste generation has witnessed an increasing trend parallel to the development of industrialization, urbanization, and rapid growth of population. The problem has become one of the primary urban environmental issues. Sometimes it is burnt to reduce its volume and to minimize attraction of animals and also to retrieve recyclable items. Despite the degradation of valuable land resources and creation of long-term environmental and human health problems, uncontrolled open dumping is still prevalent in most developing countries which indeed desperately need an immediate action due to the associated harmful impacts. Aside of the concern on increasing waste generation, and inefcient collection and transportation infrastructure system, the composition of waste (high organic matter and high moisture content) and climatic condition are among the other factors that need to be considered in waste management. This book discusses the effective ways in which solid waste management can be carried out. My sincere thanks to my mentors in Loyola College, Anna University, National Metallurgical Laboratory (NML) and National Aerospace Laboratory (NAL), CSIR for their constant encouragement in my research work.