Abstract:
Human activities create waste, and it is the way these wastes are handled,
stored, collected and disposed of, which can pose risks to the environment and to public
health. Where intense human activities concentrate, such as in urban centers,
appropriate and safe solid waste management (SWM) are of utmost importance to allow
healthy living conditions for the population. Rapid increase in volume and types of solid
and hazardous waste as a result of continuous economic growth, urbanization and
industrialization, is becoming a burgeoning problem for national and local governments
to ensure effective and sustainable management of waste. The environmental
degradation caused by inadequate disposal of waste can be expressed by the
contamination of surface and ground water through leach ate, soil contamination
through direct waste contact or leach ate, air pollution by burning of wastes, spreading
of diseases by different vectors like birds, insects and rodents, or uncontrolled release of
methane by anaerobic decomposition of waste. This fact has been acknowledged by
most governments, however many municipalities are struggling to provide even the
most basic services. Typically one to two thirds of the solid waste generated is not
collected (World Resources Institute, et al., 1996). Solid Waste (SW) generation in
Chennai, the fourth largest metropolitan city in India, has increased from 600 to 3500
tons per day (tpd) within 20 years. The highest per capita solid waste generation rate in
India is in Chennai (0.6 kg/d). Chennai is divided into 10 zones of 155 wards and
collection of garbage is carried out using door-to-door collection and street bin systems.
The collected wastes are disposed at open dump sites located at a distance of 15 km
from the city. The community-based solid waste decomposition is an ideal and a safe
disposal method, is more beneficial for solid waste management, as it easily converts
waste to valuable fertilizer.
