Over the last decades, the state of Kuwait has experienced a continuous surge of development and modernisation. Despite the many positive effects of this prosperity, this also generates new challenges. Like in many other high-income countries, the increase in consumption also brings higher amounts of waste and the question of how to reduce and manage this waste in a safe and environmentally friendly way.

As of today, almost 50 percent of the generated waste in Kuwait is disposed in un-engineered landfills, much further waste is used for backfilling. Waste separation and recycling is only practiced selectively. This not only means the loss of valuable resources, but also has negative effects on our environment.

Thus, the Kuwait Environment Public Authority has initiated and developed the Kuwait National Waste Management Strategy (KNWMS) 2040 in cooperation with all other concerned public authorities that promotes the waste hierarchy and the circular economy principles. One of the cornerstones for a safe and environmentally friendly waste management is a solid data base. Over the last four years, within the project “Survey and Establishment of a Comprehensive Database for Waste Management in Kuwait (eMISKWaste)”, data on the amounts, properties and current management of waste in Kuwait as well as the status of landfills have been collected.

The present Waste Management Atlas of Kuwait displays selected results of the eMISKWaste project to illustrate the current status of waste and landfill management in Kuwait. Then, it looks ahead and presents the main aspects of the KNWMS 2040, including its 25 ambitious targets to prevent future harm to humans and the environment and increase waste recycling and recovery.
Download Waste management Atlas