Research Article Assessment of Municipal Solid Waste Management System in a Developing Country A. Ahsan, 1,2 M. Alamgir, 3 M. M. El-Sergany, 4 S. Shams, 5 M. K. Rowshon, 6 and N. N. Nik Daud 1 1 Department of Civil Engineering, University Putra Malaysia (UPM), 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia 2 Materials Processing & Technology Lab, Institute of Advanced Technology, University Putra Malaysia (UPM), 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia 3 Department of Civil Engineering, Khulna University of Engineering and Technology, Khulna 920300, Bangladesh 4 e-School of Health and Environmental Studies, Hamdan Bin Mohamed Electronic University, P.O. Box 71400 Dubai, UAE 5 Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Institut Teknologi Brunei, Bandar Seri Begawan BS8675, Brunei Darussalam 6 Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, University Putra Malaysia (UPM), 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia Correspondence should be addressed to A. Ahsan; ashikcivil@yahoo.com Received 4 October 2013; Accepted 20 January 2014; Published 27 March 2014 Academic Editors: M. W. Bo and L. Mai Copyright © 2014 A. Ahsan et al. his is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. his study represents a few basic steps of municipal solid waste management practiced in the six major cities of Bangladesh, namely, Dhaka, Chittagong, Khulna, Rajshahi, Barisal, and Sylhet. A six-month ield study was conducted to identify the solid wastes management steps such as storage at source, separation, on-site storage, collection, transportation, treatment, reuse, recycling, and ultimate disposal. his study addresses the role of the city authority to meet the demand of the city dwellers in solving this emerging socioenvironmental issue and the initiatives taken by some nongovernmental organizations and community based organizations. he problems and constraints of the solid wastes management system are also identiied to ind a sustainable management concept for the urban areas of Bangladesh. 1. Introduction During the last few decades, the problems associated with municipal solid waste (MSW) management have acquired an alarming dimension in the developing countries. High population growth rate and increase of economic activities in the urban areas of developing countries combined with the lack of training in modern solid waste management practices complicate the eforts to improve the solid waste management services. In developing countries, the per capita generation of the solid wastes in urban residential areas is much less compared with the developed countries; however the capacity of the developing countries to collect, process, dispose, or reuse the solid wastes in a cost efective man- ner is signiicantly limited compared with the developed countries [1]. he wastes generated by human settlements and the associated problems are similar in the developing nations with variances between regions and locations based on geographic, sociocultural, industrial, infrastructural, legal, and environmental factors [2]. In Bangladesh, like in most developing countries, the solid waste management has so far been ignored and least studied environmental issues. Recently the concerned stake- holders have begun to consider this area to be an essential component to protect human health and nature. he urban population in Bangladesh has increased at a very steep rate of about 6% per year and concentrated mostly in six major cities, namely, Dhaka, Chittagong, Khulna, Rajshahi, Barisal, and Sylhet. Current estimations showed that about 13% of total population and 55 to 60% of total urban population are living in these cities [3]. In these cities, the city authority, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), community based Hindawi Publishing Corporation Chinese Journal of Engineering Volume 2014, Article ID 561935, 11 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/561935