Construction waste is a major source of urban waste received at many landfill sites around the world. A number of waste management methods have been in use to deal with the substantial amounts of various kinds of construction waste in order to relieve the heavy waste burden in many cities. To achieve sustainability in urban development, different waste management methods should be carefully exa...

The economic growth and demographic changes in Indian cities are posing a serious challenge to urban local authorities. By the year 2020, Indian urban centers including Bangalore will witness a huge increase in population. With the rapidly growing urban population, the need for infrastructure services increases manifold. The increase in per capita income and the concomitant industrial and servi...

Urban rivers are polluted with discharge from sewage treatment plants and overflowing sewage caused by rainfall (Nix and Merry, 1990; Shiraris et al., 1987). These waste waters accelerate eutrophication of aquatic environments. Since urban river water is the public water supply source, it is an i~0ortant for public health issue to determine whether or not urban rivers are polluted with fecal ef...

The composition of municipal wastewater and sewage sludge reflects the use and proliferation of elements and contaminants within society. In Sweden, official statistics show that concentrations of toxic metals in municipal sewage sludge have steadily decreased, by up to 90 %, since the 1970s, due to environmental programmes and statutory limits on metals in sludge and soil. Results from long-te...

Many waste utilities managers and some think-tankers have considered the waste market as one of the best macroeconomic indicators of a country (US.EPA, 1999). They defend that the production of waste is deeply linked to the financial health of the citizens (O’Neil & Locke, 2004) and, therefore, to the financial health at a national level. Figure 1 shows the growth of urban waste in line with th...

The three processes of urbanization, industrialization and globalization are positively correlated with municipal solid waste generation and energy consumption in global urban centers. Heavy reliance on fossil fuels in most world cities has contributed not only to global warming and climate change, but also to astronomical increases and volatility in the prices of energy sources. Africa has suf...

Ecological footprint analysis (EFA) can be used by cities to account for their on-going demands on global renewable resources. To date, EFA has not been fully implemented as an urban policy and planning tool in part due to limitations of local data availability. In this paper we focus on the material consumption component of the urban ecological footprint and identify the ̳component, solid wast...

The incineration of municipal waste has been the subject of controversy for many years and has been widely opposed because of concerns about the pollution of the air with toxic materials, particularly dioxins. Many incinerators have had to stop operation and many projects have been abandoned. At the same time, communities continue to be faced with the challenge of handling growing amounts of wa...