Title: Enablers of sustainable municipal solid waste management system in India

Authors: Mohd Nishat Faisal; Faisal Talib; M. Khurrum Bhutta

Addresses: Department of Management and Marketing, College of Business and Economics, Qatar University, P.O. Box 2713, Doha, Qatar ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Zakir Hussain College of Engineering and Technology, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, 202002, India ' Management Department, College of Business, 1 Ohio University, Athens, Ohio, USA

Abstract: The present study moves beyond the traditional focus of municipal solid waste management (MSWM) of collection and disposal to sustainable MSWM that takes a systems view and addresses issues related to waste prevention, waste reduction, and waste segregation. The empirical study was conducted in large cities in North India that have a very high rate of solid waste generation. The study was conducted in two stages - in the first stage, an empirical study with two major stakeholders, the elected and government officials was conducted. In the second stage, interpretive structural modelling (ISM) is applied to evolve a hierarchy-based relationship among the enablers of sustainable MSWM. According to the results of empirical study, there are disagreements on several issues considered as strategic to implement a sustainable municipal solid waste management. Thus, there is a need to bring all the stakeholders agree on common policy issues of sustainable MSWM. Further, the ISM model shows that there exists a group of variables having a high driving power and low dependence requiring maximum attention and are of strategic importance.

Keywords: sustainability; municipal solid waste management; MSWM; India; interpretive structural modelling; ISM.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEWM.2019.099002

International Journal of Environment and Waste Management, 2019 Vol.23 No.3, pp.213 - 237

Received: 29 Nov 2017
Accepted: 29 May 2018

Published online: 12 Apr 2019 *

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