Sustainable solid waste management in the city of Mecheria (western Algeria)

The collection and disposal of household wastes is a daily concern of urban centres. The situation is even worse in developing countries. Indeed, while these countries are facing great economic difficulties, managers have no choices to make but to prioritize social investments and waste management has not always the lion's share. Technical means used so far to face problems caused by wastes are of financial and technical natures. The town of Mecheria seems to be an exception to the rule. However, although investments neared 61% of the municipality budget in 2011, only 55% are effectively collected and put into landfill. Many areas in the town are not covered by municipality services, which push these same services to argue that certain parts of the town are not accessible. An argument that confirms the impact urban planning quality has on the success of waste management policy in the town of Mecheria. This paper aims at proving that waste management in the municipality of Mecheria is not a problem that has no relation with urban and geographical realities, and there are no possibilities to achieve an efficient collection and disposal without an account of these factors. In other words, it is necessary to integrate geographical factors especially, urban growth problems, waste emission sites and urban planning quality in every programme of waste collection and disposal. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/). Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Euro-Mediterranean Institute for Sustainable Development (EUMISD)