Recycling of Urban Organic Waste for Urban Agriculture

The accelerated growth of the global urban population implies an increasing demand for public services. Yet, urban centres in developing countries are unable to meet such demand – services such as sanitation are poor or inadequate to cope with the increasing rates of urbanisation and the associated higher standards of living. According to the UN 2002 Human Development Report, 2.4 billion people in the developing world lack access to basic sanitation. In Africa, Asia and Latin America, the sustainable management of waste is a major challenge for municipal authorities. Waste is a product or material that does not have a value anymore for the first user and is therefore thrown away; however, it could have value for another person in a different circumstance or even in a different culture (van de Klundert and Anschutz, 2001).