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

El-Hawi, MK

Abstract

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.

Citation

El-Hawi, M. Towards an environmentally sound sustainable solid waste disposal strategy : the Gaza Strip case. (Thesis). University of Salford

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Aug 1, 2011
• Publicly Available Date: Aug 1, 2011
• Award Date: Jan 1, 2004