Characterization of Municipal Solid Waste Composition and Disposal System at Transfer Stations and Landfill Sites in Dilla Town, Ethiopia

Municipal solid waste is defined as discarded items from households, including bulky waste, waste from commerce and trade, institutions, small businesses, yard and garden, street sweepings, and market cleansing. Expansion in generation rate and quality of solid waste composition in municipalities coupled with ineffective management has led to severe environmental problems. This research was initiated to characterize the physicochemical property of municipal solid waste (MSW) in Dilla town. The extensive field investigation for data collection and laboratory analysis were used for quantification and analysis of the physicochemical property of MSW in selected transfer stations and landfill sites. A simple random sampling technique was applied to select the representative transfer stations from each sub-city, and purposively landfill was selected. The solid waste weight analysis method was applied for waste quantification, field observations, and key informant interviews were also used for data collection. The result of the study shows that the dominant solid waste of the municipality at transfer stations was organic which accounts (70%), followed by others (13%), textiles (7%), plastic (5%), paper (3%), medical (1%), and glass (1%) which gives us the direction of how we will try to reduce indiscriminate disposing of the waste to the landfill site. The percentage of organic waste at the landfill site is relatively low (36%), others (23%), demolish (13%), plastic (7%), textile (6%), stone (5%), shoes (4%), glass (3%), paper (2%), medical (1%). The municipal did nothing to organize the private sector to invest in recycling and reusing the waste. As a result, the waste is disposed to landfills, roadside, and open areas. The result showed that a large proportion of the generated wastes is compostable and recyclable from which bio-manure can be reclaimed. Therefore, the municipality has to reduce the waste that goes to a disposal site through composting. It is better to organize the private sectors and enterprises to share the burden of the municipality in waste conversion to energy sources