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Sustainable Industrial Design and Waste Management
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its nature and impact on our community and consists of hazardous and non-
hazardous waste. It is a fact that solid waste composition differs from one
community to another according to their culture and socioeconomic level.
However, solving the problem of MSW in general is very challenging because
of its heterogeneous nature. On the other hand, solving the problem in rural
and developing countries is more challenging because of two factors: the low
socioeconomic level of the majority of the population and their lack of aware-
ness of the size of the problem as well as the lack of a suitable technology
platform needed to face the problem.
These problems can be classified as social, economic, technical, and envi-
ronmental. Social problems, include environmental awareness and visual
pollution caused by the piles of garbage in the streets which in turn causes
psychological problems proven to affect individual work efficiency. In addi-
tion to this, there are economic problems concerning the cost of MSW man-
agement including cost of collection, sorting, incineration, and landfill.
Another economic problem arises from leaving MSW without recycling,
which is loss of resources and energy. Moving to the technical problem, the
lack of suitable technologies to convert the heterogeneous MSW into products,
even after sorting, represent a very challenging approach for sustainable
development in order to save the natural resources for future generations.
On the other hand, the unavailability of a technological platform in devel-
oping countries makes it a must to import the technology needed, which might
be infeasible because of the cost and the need for adaptation of the foreign
technologies to suit developing countries’ environments. Concerning the envi-
ronmental problem, bad odors of the waste attract all kinds of flies and mos-
quitoes which carry diseases to humans causing health problems in addition
to pollution. Therefore, the main objective of this chapter is to develop a cradle-
to-cradle approach for MSW in order to achieve a sustainable municipal solid
waste management for conservation of natural resources.
The most general type of waste produced by humans on earth is MSW.
In order to properly evaluate the rating of MSW within the whole waste pro-
duction sectors, an overall view of the amounts of waste produced is needed.
According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD) Environmental Outlook regarding waste, the following represent
the composition of the waste sectors in OECD countries: the major waste
constituent results from manufacturing at 25% (industrial waste) followed
by agricultural at 21%, and then MSW 14%, mining 14%, construction 14%
and other minor sources (OECD, 2001) as shown in Figure 5.1.
However, the waste composition in developing countries will not be
the same as developed countries; the typical waste composition in Egypt (El-
Haggar, 2000b) shows that agricultural waste is the biggest constituent, while
MSW represents 21.5% of the total waste produced. The composition of
total waste generated in Egypt is presented in Table 5.1.
Global resource consumption is growing and accordingly the waste gen-
erated is also growing but at a much higher rate. The rate of waste generated