Development of a master plan for industrial solid waste management

Rapid industrial growth in the province of Khuzestan in the south west of Iran has resulted in disposal of about 1750 tons of solid waste per day. Most of these industrial solid wastes including hazardous wastes are disposed without considering environmental issues. This has contributed considerably to the pollution of the environment. This paper introduces a framework in which to develop a master plan for industrial solid waste management. There are usually different criteria for evaluating the existing solid waste pollution loads and how effective the management schemes are. A multiple criteria decision making technique, namely Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), is used for ranking the industrial units based on their share in solid waste related environmental pollution and determining the share of each unit in total solid waste pollution load. In this framework, a comprehensive set of direct, indirect, and supporting projects are proposed for solid waste pollution control. The proposed framework is applied for industrial solid waste management in the province of Khuzestan in Iran and a databank including GIS based maps of the study area is also developed. The results have shown that the industries located near the capital city of the province, Ahwaz, produce more than 32 percent of the total solid waste pollution load of the province. Application of the methodology also has shown that it can be effectively used for development of the master plan and management of industrial solid wastes. © Summer 2006, IRSEN, CEERS, IAU.