Productive landscapes as a sustainable organic waste management option in urban areas

• Published in: Environment, development and sustainability development and sustainability, 2019-04, Vol.21 (2), p.709-726
• Main Authors: Amritha, P. K., Kumar, P. P. Anil
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Degradation; Developing countries; Division of labor; Earth and Environmental Science; Ecology; Economic Geology; Economic Growth; Environment; Environmental Economics; Environmental Management; Green infrastructure; Households; Land; Landscape; LDCs; Management development programmes; Municipal waste management; Neighborhoods; Onsite; Organic wastes; Parks & recreation areas; Plant growth; Reuse; Sustainable Development; Urban areas; Urban planning; Urbanization; User groups; Waste disposal; Waste management; Waste management industry
• ISSN: 1387-585X; 1573-2975
• DOI: 10.1007/s10668-017-0056-0

Disposing waste on land is one of the major effects of urbanization and has adversely affected the urban landscape quality of the cities especially in developing countries. In the process, the quality of the wastes which has the potential for reuse in productive landscape purposes is not considered/tapped. This paper considers unused land/existing dumpsites as specific example cases that can be transformed or upgraded to a productive landscape space by exploiting up the nutrient potential of the major fraction of urban waste that is organic in nature. In order to achieve this idea, the work proposes a waste management strategy developed based on an onsite experiment at the neighbourhood level. Here the organic waste from the households in the neighbourhood is segregated, collected and brought to an identified vacant/unused land area within a neighbourhood where it is processed, maintained and transformed to a green space simultaneously as a cyclic process. The onsite experiment has helped to come out with a nomogram which incorporates depths, degradation time of the waste and plant growth period as variables based on the number of households, and their expected quantity of waste generation within the neighbourhood premises. Wherever applicable a refinement of this neighbourhood level attempt can be replicated at an urban scale to develop productive landscape spaces that cater to larger user group. The work thus analyses the process of developing any vacant land/dumpsite as a space having the potential to naturally process the waste adding to the aesthetic appeal of the city in a structured manner.