Solid waste management works best when engineers understand the entire material flow-not isolated technologies....
Does the existing reference material feel outdated for today's technologies, e-waste, EPR, and digital tools?
Are worked calculations and practical decision frameworks difficult to find in one affordable technical reference?
Do conventional U.S./OECD examples fail to reflect constrained infrastructure, informal recovery, and emerging-city conditions?
Written for engineers, environmental consultants, students, municipal professionals, and city authorities, Handbook of Solid Waste Management connects foundational engineering principles with practical system implementation. Its systems-based approach follows waste from characterization and generation through collection, transfer, MRF operations, biological treatment, landfills, thermal treatment, special waste, e-waste, circular economy, EPR, digital tools, and integrated planning.
Readers can learn to:
- Characterize waste streams
- Calculate generation rates
- Plan collection capacity
- Size waste-collection fleets
- Improve routing with GIS/GPS
- Evaluate transfer stations
- Understand MRF process flows
- Measure recycling performance
- Assess composting and anaerobic digestion
- Plan landfill airspace
- Understand leachate and landfill gas
- Evaluate WTE feasibility
- Manage hazardous and e-waste streams
- Apply EPR and circular-economy thinking
- Use digital analytics and smart-waste tools
A technical handbook should not merely repackage familiar concepts. This book is structured around worked calculations, decision frameworks, checklists, performance indicators, troubleshooting logic, and practical examples-features specifically identified as valuable to practitioners and certification-focused readers.
It also recognizes that cities do not all operate with the same infrastructure, budgets, markets, or service conditions. Rather than assuming a single universal solution, the handbook addresses resource constraints, phased implementation, informal-sector participation, Global South and emerging-city realities, and practical engineering tradeoffs.
If you want a practical foundation for modern solid waste management, then make this handbook a working reference.
