Integrated urban waste management with respect to sustainable development: a comparative approach for Tehran and its comparison with the five major cities in the world

Municipal waste management is one of the important issues in municipal services management and it entails a lot of costs for those in charge of collecting and disposing of it. Increasing social awareness and understanding of health and environmental issues, reducing raw material reserves and energy shortages along with increasing demand and expanding urbanization led urban planners to find a way to optimally manage municipal waste. Achieving such a program requires a vision Comprehensive and holistic to all the factors affecting municipal waste management. Among these, the composition of waste plays a significant role in choosing the method of waste management. In this paper a comparative study was done between waste management methods of five global major cities (Adelaide, San Francisco, Delhi, Istanbul and Nairobi) to design an optimal method of waste management for Tehran. In this comparative study five indexes of population, income Level, GDP per capita, HDI level, and Per capita waste production are studied and their impacts on the waste management policies are discussed. As results of this study recommands to have an optimal waste management system Tehran municipality has to develop a law on waste control and its continuous review and updating, establish a detailed study of the composition and ingredients of waste, organize tourists and waste collectors in the city within the framework of hygiene, assign important and sensitive parts of waste management to companies and private institutions, also the main focus of waste management must be on the waste separation at source.

Keywords:

Waste Management , Urban Waste Management , Integrated Waste Management , Sustainable Development , Environment , Tehran