Comuter Model for Municipal Solid Waste Management in Developing Countries

Abstract

Many integrated solid waste management (ISWM) sophisticated models are available but are of little use to developing countries like India since it does not take into account typical developing countries municipal solid waste characteristics such as high organic content, poor performance of formal sector, high activity of scavengers and waste pickers etc. A cost minimisation model is proposed, which has the prime objective of minimizing the overall systems cost and identifying the low cost alternatives for managing waste effectively. To demonstrate its applicability, the model was applied to the Indian city Amritsar. A typical Indian city like Amritsar generates around 500 tons of MSW per day with 45% moisture content, 30% volatile matter and calorific value of 1500 Kcal/kg. Software model was run for various technologies. Results show that for developing countries incineration incurs a expenditure of Rs. 296 whereas landfilling, composting and biomethanation gives a income of Rs 6.4, Rs. 9 and Rs. 11 per ton of MSW respectively. The model is both user-friendly and sophisticated. This empirical exercise not only reveals the model’s strengths such as highlighting important interdependencies in the waste management sector, but also its weaknesses such as its great demand for high quality data.