“The continuously rising income of urban dwellers in Pakistan leads to increase consumption and consequently the production of higher levels of solid wastes. About 12,000 tons of solid waste is generated in Karachi alone and is expected to be doubled by the end of 2020(KCCI- 2018). The arrangements made by the public and private sector entities in disposing-off and recycling wastes are improper. A combined and simultaneous impact of rapid growth of urbanization and incapability of public sector organizations resulted in the unmanaged part of the solid waste collected, sorted and marketed by the private sector through a chain of activities in a manner that remains informal and exploitative. The problem will further aggravate in the coming years because of a lack of appropriate planning, governance, public resources devoted to managing the problem and inefficiency at management level.

In light of the above, the proposed study plans to focus on (1) assessment of the current process of SWM by categorizing the type of wastes generated by households, Industries and hospitals etc. and the process of managing the different types of wastes. (2) Evaluation the capacity of the public sector in SWM (3) Identify the incapacity/gap in the provision of services delivered by the public sector (4) Evaluate the role of the private sector. The type of activities performed by the private sector (5) The extent of informality in managing the SW (6) Evaluating prospects of collected waste for recycling (7) the proposed study will provide policy options for efficient management of solid waste using public-private partnerships (8) In the final part of the study, households’ WTP will be estimated. For the assessment purposes, the proposed study plans to conduct comprehensive surveys/interviews of key players involved in the management of solid waste.”