Towards Integrated Municipal Solid Waste Management: a Case of Urumqi, China

The rapid industrialization, continuous economic development, as well as increasing urban population and people's living standards in Urumqi have resulted in a great increase of the total generated amount of municipal solid waste (MSW). Urumqi government strives to improve its municipal solid waste management (MSWM), and the MSW safe disposal rate was already up to 92.9% in 2011. This study presents an detailed overview on current MSWM practice in Urumqi municipality, including MSW characteristics and current status of MSW generation, collection, transportation and final disposal. It shows that more than 80% of MSW was final disposed by landfill and current landfill based MSWM system lack of effectiveness and efficiency. The major barriers and challenges that inhibit effective and efficient MSWM are imperfectness and inefficient enfoMement of relevant policies, inappropriate waste treatment fee system, backward technology, insufficient public education and participation, as well as lack of fundamental research. Finally, to overcome such barriers, we propose a detailed integrated MSWM system to facilitate MSWM in Urumqi.