Municipal Solid Waste Management, a Major Impacted Sector of Urban Environment Due to Residential Land Use Activities- Study of Kozhikode City

According to United Nation's World urbanization prospects Report, urban population in the world is expected to touch 70% of the total population by 2050. Urbanization trend in the world has made residential land-use, a major shareholder amongst urban land uses. This land-use has become the major deciding factor for urban infrastructure development at large. Municipal solid waste management and its related infrastructure provision have become a major concern to many of the urban local self-governments in India. Major objective of this paper, which is based on a doctoral research work on the residential land use impact on urban environment is to examine the relative position of municipal solid waste management sector among the other identified sectors of urban environment and also to evolve a waste management index that can be used to compare urban areas in terms of its waste generation and management perspective. An AHP based expert questionnaire survey of 93 experts across India was conducted to identify the significance of municipal solid waste management sector along with the identified impacted sectors of urban environment due to residential land use activities. A household survey was conducted in 51 wards of Kozhikode Corporation to check the performance of the waste management index generated out of the expert survey. The results of the survey show that the municipal solid waste management sector is the most impacted sector among the urban environment sectors. Waste management index of the surveyed wards revealed that the index is aligning very well with the residential density as well as the residential land-use characteristics of the area under consideration. This index has immense potential to identify the urban areas that require intervention possibly by providing infrastructure for municipal solid waste management. Survey inputs are gathered, compared and composed in this regard and the results are presented and communicated in this paper.