Solid Waste Management Practices in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia HASIN U. KHAN TAHIR HUSAIN SUHAIL M. KHAN Water Resources and Environment Division Research Institute King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals Dhahran, Saudi Arabia ABSTRACT/Solid waste management practices in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia are reviewed. The officials of various municipalities and agencies responsible for col- lecting and disposing of municipal waste were interviewed. The refuse generation rate found is in the range of 1.61-2.72 kg per capita per day. The refuse composition data indicate a high percentage of glass, metals, and wood. For storage purposes, 0.2-m 3 barrels are used in residential areas and 0.75 to 1.50 ma-capacity containers are used in commerical areas. The present solid-waste collection system is labor-in- tensive, and a significant part of the budget is spent on col- lection and haul operations. The unit collection and haul cost is much higher than the unit disposal cost of refuse. The di- rect haul of refuse is the common practice, and the use of transfer stations has not yet been considered. It is also ob- served that the disposal methods used at these sites are not in line with modern techniques for refuse disposal. Landfilling and combined burning and landfilling are the common dis- posal methods at all the sites. Proper management (storage, collection, and dis- posal) of solid waste requires accurate information re- garding waste-generation rates, and quantities, com- position, sources, and locations of waste. This type of information was not available for the cities in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. A few studies were conducted on solid waste management in the past (Heest 1983, Winzler and Kelly 1977), but these did not address waste-generation rate or waste composi- tion. There are no records indicating the amount of various types of waste collected and the volumes of waste generated per capita. A preliminary survey was conducted in five cities in the Eastern Province: Dammam, A1-Khobar, Dhahran, Rahima, and Abqaiq. The location of these cities is shown in Figure 1. The main objective of this survey was to collect information on waste-generation rate, waste quantities, and waste composition. This infor- mation is a basic requirement for planning the collec- tion strategies and disposal facilities for any area. An- other objective of this study was to collect information on present practices and procedures for solid-waste collection and disposal in order to evaluate the per- centage of money spent on collection and disposal operations. KEY WORDS: Solid waste; Composition; Collection; Disposal; Cost; Landfill Quantity and Composition of Solid Wastes The present method of storing and collecting solid wastes in the Eastern Province is inefficient because different sources of waste are mixed together. There- fore, only the total production of solid waste can be estimated. The basis for such estimation is the total number of loads collected, the average volume per load, the average density of the waste, and data ob- ! ~ . ~ " ~ IRA0, 2, At-Khob,r /3, -'J ~'~'3 3 Ohahran ~ ~4z~/~ "'<~N.~'~.-.~' -~. k t /D 5. Abqalq I ~ ____ t'~ 3 q. for study ~, Figure 1. Map showing the locations of cities in the Eastern Province considered for study: 1, Dammam; 2, A1-Khobar; 3, Dhahran; 4, Rahima; 5, Abqaiq. EnvironmentalManagementVol. 11, No. 6, pp. 729-734 9 1987 Springer-VerlagNew York Inc.