Community-based solid waste management and water supply projects : problems and solutions compared : a survey of the literature

The objective of this literature review has been to analyze experiences from community-based solid waste management projects and to link them up with experiences from community based water supply projects. The focus is on social and management problems of both kinds of projects and the ways to solve these. The main hypothesis has been that community participation and community management experiences from the water sector are relevant for the solid waste sector. Water supply projects provide an interesting comparison, because these have a longer history of operation, management and maintenance of systems by communities. During the study an inventory of community-based solid waste management projects was made. This inventory was used to generate an overview of the social and management problems in solid waste management projects. The overview was then used as a guideline for selecting literature from the water supply sector. Solutions for the identified social and management problems were sought. These solutions were analyzed with regard to their applicability to community -based solid waste management projects.