Strategic Analysis of Household Waste Separation at Source Using Swot Matrix, a Case Study: Ahvaz, Iran

Separation of household waste at the source plays an important role in the sustainable management of MSW. In the present study, SWOT analysis, which is one of the strongest strategic planning techniques, was used to determine the effective factors and the most appropriate strategies for household waste separation in Ahvaz, Iran. Data were collected from 20 experts and 523 households using questionnaires. The overall priority scores of the internal and external factor evaluation matrices were 1.579 and 2.736, respectively, which indicates the unfavorable conditions of internal factors and relatively favorable conditions of external factors in the separation of household waste at the source. SWOT analysis showed that the competitive strategy is the most appropriate strategy for household waste separation at the source in Ahvaz, which is based on the maximum exploitation of opportunities with simultaneous reduction of weaknesses. The potential of energy saving as a result of recycling materials and electricity generation from municipal solid waste by anaerobic digestion process in Ahvaz was obtained at about 176 and 53 GWh/year, respectively. The results showed that SWOT analysis can be a promising method to determine the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of separation of household waste at the source and provide the most appropriate strategy for their segregation.