Assessment of the Generation Rate and Composition of Municipal Solid Waste in Mekelle City

Abstract

Municipal solid waste (MSW) is a waste discarded by the public in their everyday activities. The generation of municipal solid waste at Mekelle city has grown steadily mainly due to increase in population. There is severe health and environmental impact due to lack of awareness and
technologies for the utilization of municipal solid waste into valuable assets by methods of energy conversion, recycling, incineration and decomposing is still a problem to the society of Mekelle city. The objective of this study was therefore assessment of the generation rate of
municipal solid waste per head and its composition in Mekelle city. To achieve this objective, the MSW were collected from selected households at specific time, which were given two bins to collect and sort the different types of wastes. The MSW were collected from a systematically
selected 59 households that are estimated to represent the overall area of the city, all classes of income levels; low, middle and high and almost all types of age limits. The numbers of occupants in these 59 households were 335 people. Waste generation rate at Mekelle city per capita per day was found to be 0.33 kg/capita/day. With a population of 273,601 at Mekelle city, annual generation was 33,454.56 tons/year. The main composition of the generated waste was sorted and constitutes71.43 % food wastes, 13.59 % mixed plastics, 8.80 % cardboards, and 1.99 % mixed dry leaves. Textile products, mixed paper, diaper and others (shoe, bones and
mobile card) constitutes for 1.77 %, 1.61 %, 0.61 % and 0.19 % respectively. Segregation of the waste clearly showed that humid waste (organic) takes the lion share with 71.43 % of the total waste generated in the city.