Abstract
This paper presents the current status of municipal solid waste management (MSWM) in the municipality of Phnom Penh (MPP), Cambodia. MPP is a small city with a total area of approximately 374 km2 and an urban population of about 1.3 million in 2008. For the last 14 years, average annual municipal solid waste (MSW) generated in MPP has increased rapidly from 0.136 million tons in 1995 to 0.361 million tons in 2008. The gross generation rate of MSW per capita was 0.74 kg d-1. However, the per capita household waste generation was 0.487 kg d-1. Food waste is the predominant portion of generated waste, at 63.3%, followed by plastics (15.5%), grass and wood (6.8%), and paper and cardboard (6.4%). The remaining waste, including metals, glass, rubber/leather, textiles, and ceramic/stone, accounted for less than 3%. Currently, the overall technical arrangement, including storage and discharge, collection and transport, and disposal, is still in poor condition, which leads to environmental and health risks. To overcome this problem, there is a need to improve MSWM practices together with strict enforcement of regulation from the national to the local level.
