Impact of urbanization on municipal solid waste management: a system dynamics approach

Rajesh R. Pai, Lewlyn L. R. Rodrigues, Asish Oommen Mathew, Sunith Hebbar

Journal Title:International Journal of Renewable Energy and Environmental Engineering
Abstract

Today, increasing population and rapid development are posing challenges on the “environmental sustainability”. One of the major concerns is on effective management of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW). This includes nonhazardous garbage, rubbish, and trash from homes, institutions, and industrial facilities. Garbage contains moist wastes like food, meat and vegetables; rubbish encompasses mostly dry constituents such as glass, textiles, paper, and plastic objects; and trash includes bulky waste materials and objects that are not collected routinely for disposal such as discarded mattresses, appliances, and pieces of furniture. Therefore waste should be traced and has to be recovered as much as possible. Even though, there are different policies to counter this problem, the compliance is a cause of concern. Having identified this need, an attempt has been made to study the impact of increasing population on the amount of waste generation through System Dynamics (SD) Modeling on the basis of which effective strategies could be developed for managing the same.

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