What is Solid Waste Management?

Solid waste management is a term that is used to refer to the process of collecting and
treating solid wastes. It also offers solutions for recycling items that do not belong to garbage
or trash. As long as people have been living in settlements and residential areas, garbage or
solid waste has been an issue. Waste management is all about how solid waste can be
changed and used as a valuable resource. Solid waste management should be embraced by
each and every household including the business owners across the world. Industrialization
has brought a lot of good things and bad things as well. One of the negative effects of
industrialization is the creation of solid waste.

According to Britannica,

Solid-waste management, the collecting, treating, and disposing of

solid material that is discarded because it has served its purpose or is
no longer useful. Improper disposal of municipal solid waste can
create unsanitary conditions, and these conditions in turn can lead to
pollution of the environment and to outbreaks of vector-borne disease
that is, diseases spread by rodents and insects.

Waste management hierarchy and sustainable way of management

Traditionally, people rely solely on municipalities to deliver services to solve the solid waste
problem. Municipalities also do it on its own tax-based resources, using top-down approach
with hardly any consultation with the people. The waste management hierarchies and stages
are the key solution for a better management. Waste avoidance, minimisation, separation and
recycling are ranked as the most preferred and dumping, open burning are least preferred
options of a good hierarchy. The desirable steps optimise the conservation of natural
resources, create employment and income, reduce the burden of waste collection and
disposal, extension of service life of landfills.

Recovery and Recycling

Recycling or recovery of resources is the process of taking useful but discarded items for next
use. Traditionally, these items are processed and cleaned before they are recycled. The
process aims at reducing energy loss, consumption of new material and reduction of landfills.
 Recycling is a process to create new items from old and used materials. This helps in
reducing energy and potentially useful materials from being wasted.

Solid waste management activities

Street sweeping, drain cleaning, waste collection, transportation and disposal are mandatory
functions of the municipality. Now the municipality does the functions involving his
workforce, vehicles and other logistics in an inappropriate and unhygienic way that indirectly
offsets the city's image and economy. The way of waste storage, handling, transportation and
final disposal are much criticised by people, as the present practice is detrimental to their
health and wellbeing. The street sweeping is virtually confined in the main roads, does not
bring any impact in the locality. Occasionally, the surface drains are cleaned but the heaps of
silts are left to dry for a period of time.

Good practices in waste management

In addition to the traditional practices of waste management in Dhaka and some other cities,
some good practices are taking place, which compliment and supplement the efforts of the
municipal authorities.

Community-based house-to-house waste collection

Encouraging effort of organic waste recycling
Management of clinical wastes
Development of public-private-community partnership, a model of co-management
and sharing
Activity of civil society and environmental awareness group
Development of micro-enterprises in waste recovery and recycling
Involvement of NGOs and media in environmental awareness program.

Conclusion

Finally, it can be recommended that individual level capacity and awareness towards
cleanliness should be grown first. Then promotion of appropriate technology and replication
of good practices, establishment of legislative and enforcement mechanism, development of
linkage and partnership program should be adopted and implemented for a better waste
management system. If we can change our habit and manage our waste properly we can keep
a healthy and liveable environment for our next generation.