Waste Management in Developing Countries: An Overview

Abstract

This chapter summarizes and compares the current situation of waste management practices in developing countries as reported in other chapters of this book. Due to increasing rate of urbanization, population, and economic growth, generation of waste is also on the rise. It further makes the waste management situation trickier for developing countries as effective regulations and policies are either lacking or their stringent enforcement is absent. Thus, it leads to major issues of inefficient waste collection, open dumping, open burning, and over-reliance on landfilling. It was also discovered that holistic approach of all relevant stakeholders from governmental level to waste generators level is glaringly missing in most of the developing countries. At the end of the chapter, several recommendations are presented to overcome the challenges.