study of strategic factors of rasht city solid waste management by swot method and qspm matrix formation

population growth and consequently increasing waste are made concern about resources degradation. thus, municipal solid waste management (mswm) becomes a priority for experts in recent decades. to apply new technology in mswm and engineering methods is the base of determining strategies, health and environmental policies. mswm is included some factors such as waste generation, collection, transportation, disposal, land filling and recycling. therefore it can be defined a wide and varied range for mswm organization. the organization can't be administrated by operational method and just should be managed as strategic management. swot (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) is a new important tool designed to be used in functions analysis. the present investigation is a case study of rasht; it was aimed at identifying the internal and external factors and then analyzing and formulating strategy by means of qspm matrix. population of rasht is 577366 and waste generation is more than 560 tons per day. to disposal the waste it is necessary to apply management based on professional and engineering principals. results of internal and external factor matrix shows solid waste management of rasht with the point of view internal factor act weak while assessment of external factors considering to achieved scores in present states with improvement opportunities and removal of threats can operate well. also results of qspm matrix shows the most attractiveness is related to execution of solid waste management low and the less attractiveness is related to education of proper method of pollution abatement in landfill.