THE CURRENT STATUS AND STEPS TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE WASTE MANAGEMENT IN THE DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Abstract

The increasing anthropogenic activities as a result of significant growth in population, urbanization, and industrialization has resulted in a tremendous amount of municipal solid waste (MSW). The municipal authorities are under extreme pressure from the epidemiological evidence towards human and environment as a result of injudicious waste disposal to landfills without any material recovery. In this article, the current status and limitations in treating MSW by the developing countries have been overviewed with a case study from Peshawar-Pakistan. The daily waste production in Peshawar city is about 650.8 tons with 0.4 kg/capita/day. Among the total waste, food waste contributes 14.3% fallowed by plastic waste (4%), paper (2.7%), glass (1.2%), wood (1.1%) and metals/rubber (0.6%). The waste collection efficiency is very low and about 40% of waste are collected whereas 60% of the waste remains in streets or at collection points. Currently there well-organized and specialized waste management practices such as composting, incineration, gasification, pyrolysis, biological treatment, and recycling for treating waste according to environmental deliberation. The directives of the developed countries had strictly imposed the regulations to increase the waste recycling and material recovery whereas in the developing countries the lack of proper legislation, planning, awareness regarding waste reduction has worsened the municipal solid waste-related problems. Moreover, in this article, an attempt has been made towards various important steps that need to incorporate in formulating the strategy for sustainable MSW management along with various aspects for their assessment in term of their sustainability in the developing countries.