CHARACTERISTICS AND COMPOSITIONS OF SOLID WASTE IN NASSIRIYA CITY

Abstract

The improving of living condition and increasing of population density growth assist in increase the quantity and quality of domestic solid waste in households in Nassiriya city.A samples of solid waste have been collected from households in Nassiriya city to know the quantity of solid waste generated. Households classified into three zones according to economic status (high, middle and low income levels). Samples collected for seven months, from January to July 2008. This paper explains that the generation rate of solid waste for person or capita changes from each income level to another and from month to other and we can represent 0.68 kg/cap./day as average of domestic solid waste generated in present time in city, the quantity of solid waste generated in Nassiriya city is equal to 22.15 ton/day this only for domestic waste (solid waste from commercial, industrial and medical waste not reported in this paper).Value of density was calculated is equal to 275.33 kg/m3, the percent of each individual component for solid waste components also calculated and for seven months for each income level. These percent shows that the most common components is organic (food) waste which is participle and its percent in range of (61.88 % to 69.95 %) and these value is similar with other results in other cities of Iraq.The compressive of results of this paper with other results shows its similar to Iraqi cities and differs to Europe united cities.