Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) composition established studies are important to the proper management of waste in municipalities and communities. The composition of generated waste is extremely varied due to seasonal, lifestyle, geographic, demographic, and legislative impacts. These variations make it difficult to obtain an accurate and representative waste composition sample. In order to ensure the statistical significance of project results, a sufficient number of samples must be sorted and a sufficiently large sample weight must be correctly collected for sorting. The objectives of this project were to (1) identify composition of component generation; (2) analyze physical, chemical, and biological properties of wastes; (3) estimate materials recovery potential for recycling; (4) aid in the design of processing equipment. To accomplish this objective, a composition and property project was designed and implemented continuously for Taiwan, from May 2004 to December 2004. This project was planned to sample 52 MSW sources, including residential and institutional (office buildings) areas, in Taiwan, once a season for every source and to analyze the physical and chemical compositions of MSW samples. Based on observations during the Taiwan waste composition analysis project, it was concluded that a well-established database of MSW using the results of long-term sampling and analysis projects could reduce bias in results. This project also provided important information regarding consideration of trend in MSW management.

Refuse sampling,proximate analysis,ultimate analysis,energy content