CHAPTER 05 - CITIES FOR LIFE: URBAN ENVIRONMENT
5.2 URBAN ENVIRONMENT LANDSCAPE
The urban environment landscape includes everything from naturally occurring green space, to built-up areas to cultural heritage sites – all of which are important for the mental health and physical wellbeing of city inhabitants. This landscape is degraded, conserved or enhanced through human interactions and land use. Solid waste management in Afghan cities is one of the most significant issues, which can degrade both land and water in the urban environment landscape. Unfortunately, there is no comprehensive data for all provincial capitals on solid waste generation, what percentage of solid waste is collected and the percentage of that which is recycled or properly treated. Visual evidence suggests that current solid waste collection is inadequate for the current and growing Afghan urban populations. This is supported by city-specific information for Herat, Kabul and Jalalabad which shows that a significant proportion of waste is not systematically collected: nearly threequarters in Kabul and half in Herat and Jalalabad.20 Uncollected and untreated solid waste has a major impact on the natural environment because untreated solid waste contaminates both land and water. Solid waste is usually the leading contributor to local flooding because it blocks local waterways and drainage.21 In addition, in areas where solid Uncollected solid waste is a significant issue in all Afghan cities
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waste is not collected frequently, the incidence of diarrhea can be twice as high and incidence of acute respiratory infections six times higher than in areas where collection is frequent.22 Solid waste management is costly and is typically one of the largest expenditures of a municipal operational budget. The World Bank has identified that the cost for collection in low-income countries is 20-50 USD/ ton and the cost for sanitary landfill23 is an additional 10-30 USD/ton (therefore total cost for adequate solid waste collection and disposal is between 30-80 USD/ton).24 Table 5.2 gives an overview of estimates of solid waste generation in the 34 cities. It assumes a solid waste generation of 0.22 tons per person, per year (based on a World Bank analysis), and multiplies this by number of people per dwelling (conservative estimate of 7.5, equating to 1.65 tons per dwelling per year), and the number of dwellings in each city, taken from the SoAC GIS analysis. This is the most conservative estimate, as it takes the lowest cost per ton, and smallest dwelling population size. Even with these conservative figures, Kabul is estimated to generate 653,557 ton per year (1,790 ton per day). Collection and proper sanitary disposal of this quantity of solid waste would cost close to 20 Small scale recycling in Jalalabad