A Review on Disaster Waste Management

Disasters may generate vast quantities of debris and waste due to their design and magnitude. Waste amounts from a single incident will be the sum of the entire community's average amount of waste production several times over. Such amounts will overload the current infrastructure and resources for handling solid waste. Disaster waste mismanagement may impact both the response and the long-term rehabilitation of a region impacted by the disaster. Disasters may generate vast quantities of debris and waste due to their design and magnitude. The waste will overload existing solid waste collection systems and affect other emergency response operations and recovery. The waste may have major environmental and public health implications if improperly handled, which may impair the overall recycling cycle. Past “disaster waste management” work has been either context-specific or case-specific, rendering the transition of lessons from one hazard incident to another impossible. This work is aimed at creating a framework knowledge of disaster waste management and in effect providing meaning- and crisis-transferable decision-making guidelines for emergency and waste managers.