Title: Sustainability-based Decision-Support System for solid waste management

Authors: Siby John

Addresses: Department of Civil Engineering, Punjab Engineering College, Chandigarh 160 012, India

Abstract: Rapid growth in population and urbanisation coupled with diminishing land availability has aggravated the problems of solid waste management. As partial solution to this problem, there has been an increase in the number and complexity of integrated waste management alternatives that divert materials from the landfill including programmes for waste reduction, recycling, backyard composting and green waste mulching. It was felt that along with the technical and economical issues, sustainability could be a consideration to evaluate these technical alternatives. In this study, an attempt was made to propose a sustainable alternative for solid waste management, which can facilitate diversion of household waste from landfill site in the study area by using a multi-criterion decision matrix. The alternative centralised composting of source-segregated organic waste was found to be the sustainable choice.

Keywords: DSS; decision support systems; household waste; landfill; sustainability; trade-off analysis; composting; vermicomposting; solid waste management; sustainable development; segregated organic waste.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEWM.2010.033982

International Journal of Environment and Waste Management, 2010 Vol.6 No.1/2, pp.41 - 50

Published online: 06 Jul 2010 *

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