Computational dynamics of solid waste generation and treatment in the presence of population growth

Abstract

Solid waste management is a global challenge and the situation is worse in urban areas of the developing countries where, in most cases, there are no data of how much solid waste is generated over a specific period of time. Worse still, solid waste continues to pile up as population continues to grow and authorities in developing countries are increasingly becoming unable to manage the waste. This calls for a means for anticipating the solid waste to be generated in order for the authorities to take proactive actions in managing the solid waste. In this paper, a deterministic compartmental mathematical model that can be used to predict the amount of solid waste generation and treatment needed with population growth as major factor is proposed and analysed qualitatively using the stability theory of differential equations. Numerical simulation is performed to validate the qualitative results.