Investigation the Potential of Recycling Urban Solid Wastes (Case Study: Ardakan City)

Recycling is a solution to control the problem of managing urban solid wastes such as incineration and sanitary landfill. It consists re-processing of products and materials, which have been consumed several times. The methods which are presently used for recycling and processing the wastes of Ardakan City consists of collection by wastes collectors, separation by urban service labors and separation in landfill. Existence of unofficial and non-hygienic recycling workshops in the region, presence of unauthorized factors who are mostly non-local and usually call homes with carts or Nissan cars and buy the household dry wastes, lack of sufficient training to recycle, absence of processing and technical knowledge in processing field, low public and specialized knowledge on recycling among managers and citizens, unhygienic items produced by recycling and hucksters going door to door with a highly unsuitable clothes and carrying a containing the wastes and garbage in the area are among the problems, weaknesses and limitations that exist in the processing and recycling in the district. The results of research show that recycling elements such as plastic, metals, glasses, paper, cardboard and boxes in production origin is possible in the region. With respect to 648 grams waste per capita in a day and population of 54500, around 35.5 tons wastes are produced in the city of Ardakan. 58.53 % of wastes are made of organic materials (highest amount in summer with 68.88 % and least amount in winter with 47.48 percent, 8.9% is paper, newspaper and card boxes, 3.8 % is glass, 6.30 % metals and 10.1 % is plastic and PET. In sum, around 87.63 percent of wastes of Ardakan city could be consumed again (compost and recycle) and since 29 percent of the wastes are dry recyclable wastes, around 10 tons dry recycle could be recycled. In sum, annual 12535.5 tons wastes are recyclable of which amount, 3656 tons are dry wastes. Since daily 3056 kilograms papers and cardboard, 3022 kilograms plastic, 2164 kilograms metals and 447 kilograms PET are recyclable in the origin and the approximate price of each one of the above-mentioned items in the zone in Rials per kilogram is 800 Rls., 2800 Rls., 3000 Rls., And 2000 Rls. The total price of the recycled elements is 18292400 Rials per day. This is a significant amount and could meet demands of parts of relevant costs related to collection, transportation and final disposal of urban wastes. By performing recycling plans in production origin, not only there will be savings in raw materials, but also new jobs will appear. In addition, environment pollution is decreased and the transfer of diseases cause by wastes in the society is prevented significantly.

Recycle, Solid waste, Ardakan