Towards an environmentally sound sustainable solid waste disposal strategy : the Gaza Strip case

• Main Author: El-Hawi, M. K.
• Published: University of Salford 2004
• Subjects: 363.728509531; Built and Human Environment
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.401979

Solid waste management has been recognized as one of the most immediate and serious problems confronting the Palestinian institutions especially those responsible for service delivery, policy and strategy formulation. The complexity and historical context of integrated and sustainable waste management with special focus on the disposal options of municipal solid waste is studied within the context of sustainable development. This is the core of the research, which seeks to make a contribution to the understanding and assessing of waste management process including relations and mandates of institutions involved in solid waste management decision-making process which forms the basis for the development of an environmentally sound sustainable disposal strategy of municipal solid waste for the Gaza Strip. The work is based on case studies derived from four holistic case studies in the Gaza Strip. Soft system methodologies are used to illuminate the qualitative concerns. It is applied to the solid %%-asmtea nagement in order to analyse and assesst he solid waste existing situation and recommends some actions in order to improve the disposal situation. The quantitative information from practice is placed alongside the qualitative data to give further insight into the issues being studied. Solid waste indicators and scoring system as triangulation with the soft system approach were selected to represent and evaluate disposal alternatives of the four case studies. An evaluation of the four disposal options as percentages was the outcome of the evaluation of disposal matrix. It was discovered that an overlaps between Palestinian institutions involved in solid waste decision-making. Clear mandates, responsibilities, legislation is not efficiently functioning. Its concluded that soft system methodology supported with case studies methodologies, have proved to be a suitable approach for structuring, expressing, modeling the available information and as a result solving the problem of waste management. Comprehensive solid waste management legislation must be formulated so that effective sustainable solid waste management programs can be laid out. National waste management strategy considering landfilling, composting, 311's, and incineration as an integrated sustainable disposal option was recommended to be adopted by the Palestinian National Authority.