WasteSafe 2017 - 5th International Conference on Waste Management in South Asia

Urban areas are a focal point of environmental problems. Their impacts extend over a wide range of spatial scales, i.e. the household, the place of work, the neighborhood, the city the wider region and ultimately the world. In the rapidly growing cities of the developing countries, urban solid waste management is currently regarded as one of the most immediate an serious problems faced by the city authorities. In the light of these challenges the project entitled "Integrated Management and Safe Disposal of Municipal Solid Waste in Least Developed Asian Countries" shortly termed as "WasteSafe" a 12 months feasibility study conducted at the Department of Civil Engineering, Khulna University of Engineering & Technology, co-financed by the European Commission's Asia Pro Eco Program, has explored an integrated waste management concept based on storage and separation of waste at a source/family level, reuse and recycling, primary collection, on-site storage in an hygienic way, efficient collection and transportation, appropriate waste treatment and eventually, safe disposal of residual wastes. WasteSafe also critically identified the present status and constraints of MSW management of the study areas and proposed an approach to solve this problem putting priorities on some specific areas. It advocates the need of demonstration projects for the reality check of the employed approach for required refinement. Then a three years research project, named as WasteSafe II, funded by the EU-Asia Pro Eco II Program was undertaken aiming to develop a safe and sustainable management of MSW in Bangladesh through the practical application and reality check of WasteSafe approach. In this project Khulna, the third largest city of Bangladesh was considered as the main case study area.