ABSTRACT
The present study was developed to comprehensively analyze experts' views and content of documents focusing on goals and criteria of sustainable waste management system in Tehran, Iran. To this end, the suitable goals for sustainable waste management system in Tehran city were adopted from domestic, national and international documents. For this purpose, 27 national and international documents and 2 domestic documents related to waste management were selected and analyzed by using content analysis according to Gall, 1994. Further, in order to formulate goals in case of bottlenecks and challenges of waste management in Tehran, the focus group technique was used based on Stewart and Shamdasani, 2014. At this stage, 24 key experts in the field of waste management were interviewed in the form of 4 focus groups. Data collection were performed via audio recording and word-for-word implementation of conversations, taking notes and writing field notes. The data collection continued until reaching theoretical saturation. Next, content analysis and coding methods were used to analyze the data. Finally, the goals of waste management were divided into five general categories including: institutional (with emphasis on the integration and inclusion of the key elements of the urban waste management system), technical and infrastructural (with emphasis on the optimization of existing processes in the use of urban waste management technologies), environmental (with emphasis on minimizing the adverse health and environmental effects of the urban waste management system, economic (with emphasis on the economic and financial sustainability of the urban waste management system), and cultural-social (with emphasis on attracting the maximum participation of citizens and service recipients). The results clearly showed that sustainable waste management measures in Tehran should follow these five components in order to reduce the problems caused by unrealistic waste management and make sustainable use of basic, natural, financial and human resources.
ABSTRACT
Compacted clay liners (CCLs) when feasible, are preferred to composite geosynthetic liners. The thickness of CCLs is typically prescribed by each country's environmental protection regulations. However, considering the fact that construction of CCLs represents a significant portion of overall landfill construction costs; a performance based design of liner thickness would be preferable to 'one size fits all' prescriptive standards. In this study researchers analyzed the hydraulic behaviour of a compacted clayey soil in three laboratory pilot scale columns exposed to high strength leachate under simulated landfill conditions. The temperature of the simulated CCL at the surface was maintained at 40 ± 2 °C and a vertical pressure of 250 kPa was applied to the soil through a gravel layer on top of the 50 cm thick CCL where high strength fresh leachate was circulated at heads of 15 and 30 cm simulating the flow over the CCL. Inverse modelling using HYDRUS-1D indicated that the hydraulic conductivity after 180 days was decreased about three orders of magnitude in comparison with the values measured prior to the experiment. A number of scenarios of different leachate heads and persistence time were considered and saturation depth of the CCL was predicted through modelling. Under a typical leachate head of 30 cm, the saturation depth was predicted to be less than 60 cm for a persistence time of 3 years. This approach can be generalized to estimate an effective thickness of a CCL instead of using prescribed values, which may be conservatively overdesigned and thus unduly costly.
