Urban organic waste management in Karachi, Pakistan

Inadequate collection and disposal of waste poses a serious health risk to the population and is an obvious cause of environmental degradation in most cities of the developing world. Mixed municipal solid waste is dumped either indiscriminately in the neighbourhood or, if collected by a waste collec...

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Main Authors: Noman Ahmed, Chris Zurbrugg
Format: Default Conference proceeding
Published: 2002
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Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/2134/29774
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spelling rr-article-95883892002-01-01T00:00:00Z Urban organic waste management in Karachi, Pakistan Noman Ahmed (7182617) Chris Zurbrugg (7217282) untagged Inadequate collection and disposal of waste poses a serious health risk to the population and is an obvious cause of environmental degradation in most cities of the developing world. Mixed municipal solid waste is dumped either indiscriminately in the neighbourhood or, if collected by a waste collection service, disposed of in uncontrolled dumpsites. The organic fraction of this waste, often contributing to more than 50% of the total waste amount, threatens the health of residents as the indiscriminate waste dumps attract rodents and other disease carrying vectors. Organic waste is also responsible for pollution of soil and water bodies through leachate, and in the process of uncontrolled anaerobic degradation it contributes to global warming by the production of methane. A possible step in mitigating these detrimental effects is enhancing resourcerecovering activities of the organic waste fraction. An obvious treatment and recovery option for organic waste is composting. However, before strategies can be developed on how to proceed, it is necessary to understand the existing organic waste management practices and try to assess current and potential markets for the converted organic waste. 2002-01-01T00:00:00Z Text Conference contribution 2134/29774 https://figshare.com/articles/conference_contribution/Urban_organic_waste_management_in_Karachi_Pakistan/9588389 CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
institution Loughborough University
collection Figshare
topic untagged
spellingShingle untagged
Noman Ahmed
Chris Zurbrugg
Urban organic waste management in Karachi, Pakistan
description Inadequate collection and disposal of waste poses a serious health risk to the population and is an obvious cause of environmental degradation in most cities of the developing world. Mixed municipal solid waste is dumped either indiscriminately in the neighbourhood or, if collected by a waste collection service, disposed of in uncontrolled dumpsites. The organic fraction of this waste, often contributing to more than 50% of the total waste amount, threatens the health of residents as the indiscriminate waste dumps attract rodents and other disease carrying vectors. Organic waste is also responsible for pollution of soil and water bodies through leachate, and in the process of uncontrolled anaerobic degradation it contributes to global warming by the production of methane. A possible step in mitigating these detrimental effects is enhancing resourcerecovering activities of the organic waste fraction. An obvious treatment and recovery option for organic waste is composting. However, before strategies can be developed on how to proceed, it is necessary to understand the existing organic waste management practices and try to assess current and potential markets for the converted organic waste.
format Default
Conference proceeding
author Noman Ahmed
Chris Zurbrugg
author_facet Noman Ahmed
Chris Zurbrugg
author_sort Noman Ahmed (7182617)
title Urban organic waste management in Karachi, Pakistan
title_short Urban organic waste management in Karachi, Pakistan
title_full Urban organic waste management in Karachi, Pakistan
title_fullStr Urban organic waste management in Karachi, Pakistan
title_full_unstemmed Urban organic waste management in Karachi, Pakistan
title_sort urban organic waste management in karachi, pakistan
publishDate 2002
url https://hdl.handle.net/2134/29774
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