Abstract
Iran law makes municipalities responsible for recycling or disposing of household waste. Therefore, municipalities can use the geographical and cultural potential of each area as an opportunity to improve the situation. However, waste management would be impossible without people's participation. In Iran, neither has much effort been made to increase people's participation, nor have appropriate policies been implemented to increase the amount of recycling at source. In this study, an attempt was made to get citizens to participate voluntarily in household waste management for six months. They were encouraged to dry their food waste. The results of this study showed that due to the hot and arid climate of Iran and the pattern of Iranian food consumption, dehydration of food waste at the source of production can reduce their mass by a maximum of 80%, and as a result, the cost and frequency of collecting them will drop drastically. Moreover, implementing this method not only removed leachate but also increased people's responsibility for the produced waste. Therefore, one can conclude if people participated, Iran's geographical and climatic circumstances would allow food waste to dry at the source by imposing the lowest cost and energy consumption on households. In that case, the costs of collecting, disposing, managing of waste and leachate, as well as the environmental damage will reduce significantly. Also, waste separation will be done better because households have to separate their food waste from dry and recyclable waste.
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Acknowledgements
This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. The authors are indebted to Sadr-eddlin Alipour, managing director of TWMO and TWMO staff, as well as Hassan Khalilabadi, a member of the Islamic Council of Tehran for valuable information, statistics, and criticism on this paper.
All of the authors edited the manuscript and approved the final version of the manuscript, and it was edited by Dr. Negar Ahmadi, an English language specialist. The usual disclaimers apply.
The authors did not receive support from any organizations for the submitted work.
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Nourbakhshsamani, N., Fami, H.S. & Amadeh, H. Quantitative and qualitative benefits of household efforts to dry food waste at source. Int. J. Environ. Sci. Technol. 19, 4723–4736 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13762-021-03614-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13762-021-03614-6