Characterization of the Municipal Solid Waste in Eskisehir City, Turkey

Abstract

The solid waste, namely municipal solid waste, generated in big cities, is a mixture of all kinds of materials produced by many industries for the use of human beings where they throw away the unusable parts all together in containers or plastic bags. Such kinds of mixed material consists of recyclable components that will be used for the production of secondary materials and nonrecyclable components, which will be treated to produce some other matter for conservation of natural sources and the sake of environment. In order to design a sustainable managing system of municipal solid waste (MSW) components (MSWC), the generation rate of, percentage of, and some properties of each component in MSW have to be known. In this study, it has been investigated to determine some data about the MSWC generated by the community in order to support the integrated solid waste management system in Eskisehir, Turkey. Therefore, samples of MSW have been collected for a year to determine the change in MSWC with season and socioeconomic structure of residents. On the other hand, SPSS 10.0 statistical software was used to determine the correlation coefficients of MSWC and higher heating value (HHV) relative to the temperature of seasons and socioeconomic structure of the residents. For the determinations of the amount of MSWC, the MSW samples, collected, were separated into the groups of: paper-cardboard, metals, glass, plastics, food wastes, ash, and miscellaneous, manually. The current situation, including recycling and recovering of MSWC and disposing of solid waste in Eskisehir, was characterized. Also, moisture content and higher heating value of the waste were determined. It was found that the percentages of the components of the solid waste (on a wet basis) in Eskisehir were: paper-cardboard 10.07%, metals 1.26%, glass 2.49%, plastics 5.62%, food wastes 67.06%, ash 3.86%, and miscellaneous 9.64%. According to statistical analysis, it was seen that the effects of socioeconomical changes on waste composition is very great. It was concluded that local authorities must use these results to achive a sustainable and an integrated solid waste management system for the evaluation of all the components.