ASPECTS REGARDING THE KINSHASA URBAN LANDFILLS ASSESSMENT AND PROPOSALS FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Landfill management is one of the major issues in the application of sustainable development principles and ecological maintenance of the cities. Promoting their appreciation, and even more preventing for their minimization, are at the heart of many debates within the scientific community, local communities, companies and civil society. The city of Kinshasa is demographically growing much too fast, its capacity to manage the waste produced by 10000000 inhabitants is more than overwhelmed. The question is What can be done? Today, it is acknowledged that these quantities of waste can be fruitfully put to use rather than looking at it simply like at a bothersome, congesting and polluting phenomenon. The authors have now to consider this above all a secondary raw materials resource. The problem is not the amount of waste, but the inability of governments and waste disposal companies to get rid of it. The city of Kinshasa seems today to have a certain disconnection from its environment because of the impacts of human actions these last fifty years.