Solid waste should be deemed as opportunity instead of crisis
Commissioner Rawalpindi vows to replicate IRRC model in Rawalpindi district Background: Municipalities in the low-income, developing countries spend a major proportion of their municipal revenues on Solid Waste Management (SWM). Yet service levels remain low while most disposals are deemed as unsafe. The situation is likely to worsen due to continuing population growth and urbanization in these countries. Like other developing countries, Pakistan too faces serious environmental problems. A large proportion of the municipal waste is either burned, dumped or buried illicitly on vacant land in many towns and even major cities, causing significant environmental damage and threatening human health. Worse, there are no SWM systems in place to deal with potentially hazardous waste; systems dealing with medical waste are particularly inadequate. Therefore solutions are needed urgently. All major cities, be it Islamabad, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Karachi, Quetta and Peshawar are facing enormous challenges in tackling the problem of urban waste.…