Towards an environmentally sound sustainable solid waste disposal strategy : the Gaza Strip case

Solid waste management has been recognized as one of the most immediate andserious problems confronting the Palestinian institutions especially those responsiblefor service delivery, policy and strategy formulation.The complexity and historical context of integrated and sustainable wastemanagement with special focus on the disposal options of municipal solid waste isstudied within the context of sustainable development. This is the core of the research,which seeks to make a contribution to the understanding and assessing of wastemanagement process including relations and mandates of institutions involved in solidwaste management decision-making process which forms the basis for thedevelopment of an environmentally sound sustainable disposal strategy of municipalsolid waste for the Gaza Strip.The work is based on case studies derived from four holistic case studies in the GazaStrip. Soft system methodologies are used to illuminate the qualitative concerns. It isapplied to the solid %%-asmtea nagement in order to analyse and assesst he solid wasteexisting situation and recommends some actions in order to improve the disposalsituation. The quantitative information from practice is placed alongside thequalitative data to give further insight into the issues being studied. Solid wasteindicators and scoring system as triangulation with the soft system approach wereselected to represent and evaluate disposal alternatives of the four case studies. Anevaluation of the four disposal options as percentages was the outcome of theevaluation of disposal matrix.It was discovered that an overlaps between Palestinian institutions involved in solidwaste decision-making. Clear mandates, responsibilities, legislation is not efficientlyfunctioning. Its concluded that soft system methodology supported with case studiesmethodologies, have proved to be a suitable approach for structuring, expressing,modeling the available information and as a result solving the problem of wastemanagement.Comprehensive solid waste management legislation must be formulated so thateffective sustainable solid waste management programs can be laid out. Nationalwaste management strategy considering landfilling, composting, 311's, andincineration as an integrated sustainable disposal option was recommended to beadopted by the Palestinian National Authority