Food Waste Management in Kuwait: Current Situation and Future Needs

The dramatic increase of municipal solid waste generally and food waste particularity as the results of the rapid urbanization, improvement of living standards along with consumption patterns, has been considered as one of the major challenges towards achieving sustainability internationally. Currently, Kuwait has no waste treatment facilities other than limited recycling and the only ultimate way to handle waste is landfilling. Kuwait Municipality is dedicated to provide efficient services in collection and disposal of all the generated waste, yet lack strategies for waste prevention, reduction or recycling. Kuwait's municipal solid waste has a high fraction of organic waste and combustible components that can be composted or incinerated. Therefore, this study highlights the potential of composting and incineration for food waste management as an alternative to landfilling in the State of Kuwait. A simple decision-making methodological approach was adopted in view of prioritizing the waste management methods in hands, where Literature review based on environmental, economic, technical/operational and social perspectives has been utilized in the comparisons of the waste management methods taking into consideration Kuwait's socio-economic and environmental context. It appeared that the most viable sustainable waste management approach for State of Kuwait is to adopt composting to process the organic fraction of the municipal solid waste along with incineration facility to handle the remaining amount of the waste. This waste management strategy will not only minimize the negative impacts of waste landfilling but also has economic benefits in the same time as a result of material/energy recovery.