Characterization of municipal solid wastes as well as projection of waste generation and
disposal rates are needed to plan and implement disposal and recycling activities. The
objectives of this study were to assess and determine the composition and generation rate
of household solid waste along with determination of moisture content and calorific value
in some components of the waste stream in Hawassa town.
Samples have been randomly selected from various households and analyzed for the solid
waste generation rate per capita and composition. Questionnaire survey has been carried
out to collect data from inhabitants including solid waste collection frequency, access to
communal bins for primary collection, waste reuse and recycling. The households
surveyed were categorized in to low, medium and high income groups.
Results of the survey showed that a substantial proportion consists of various putrescible
materials (59.7%) with ash/dust or “fines” forming another significant proportion (31.3%),
paper (2.7%), plastics(2%), miscellaneous(1.6%), textiles (1.1%), rubber (0.5%), metals
mostly old cans and bottle corks (0.48%) and glass (0.46%) form only minor proportion
of the total HHSW generated. The solid waste generation rate was 0.95 kg/cap/day for
high income households while for low and medium income households the rates were 0.1
and 0.36 kg/cap/day respectively. The over all average HHSW generation rate was 0.2
kg/cap/day and the total quantity of HHSW has been estimated as 39.7 tones per day.
The study also revealed that only 24 percent of households have access to regular waste
collection services, energy recovery from the combustible fraction of the waste is feasible,
the non compacted HHSW density is 342.36 kg/m3
.The waste needs to be sorted at the
source as much as possible to reduce the amount that needs disposal, markets for recycled
materials needs to be encouraged, waste dumped along roads, drainage channels and open
spaces need to be cleaned.