PREDICTIve MODELS FOR MUNICIPAL SOLID WASTE (MSW) GENERATION AND COMPOSITION

Abstract

To develop an effective municipal solid waste management strategy for a givencommunity, it is essential to know the amount of waste generated and the composition of',the waste stream at a given time and to identify a mechanism for reliable estimation offuture waste quantities and compositions. It has been shown in literature that the amountof waste generated in a country is proportional to its population and the mean livingstandards of the people or their income in addition to many other demographic factors

This paper presents the findings of a study carried out in a suburban Municipal area inSri Lanka to develop a predictive model to estimate waste generation patterns at a giventime. Here, an attempt was made to analyse the quantity and composition of wastegeneration in a sample of households in the study area over a time period and relate thisto various demographic factors. Over 300 households were studied for this purpose.Through regression analysis the ,amount of waste and waste composition was related tothe demographic factors. It describes the basis for the sample selection, socio-economicparameters used for modeling and the methodology adopted for effective data collection.Stratified random sampling methodology based on Municipal wards and property valuewas used for the data collection. A technique that consider both the number ofhouseholds in a particular income group (property value range) and the standarddeviation of property values within a given income group was used to determine theappropriate sample sizes for each municipal ward.

The per-capita waste generation and average composition of waste generated werederived by analysing descriptive statistics. Organic waste constitutes the largestcomponent of the generated waste in the area and regression analysis shows that the percapitageneration of organic waste per day in kg decreases as the number of persons perhousehold increases. It is also shown that the generation of organic and paper waste perhousehold very clearly increases with the increase in property value.