Pakistan’s Waste Problem Is Bigger Than Garbage Collection

Why collection, outsourcing and cleanliness drives cannot replace permanent urban infrastructure

By Dr Adnan Hafeez | CEO, Imperial Group

For decades, the public conversation around municipal waste in Pakistan has begun and ended with one question: was the garbage lifted? If it disappeared from a street, market or neighbourhood, the system was considered to be working. Where it went next—and what happened there—received far less attention.

That is the first misconception we need to correct. Waste management is not merely the movement of refuse from the public eye to a designated, or sometimes undesignated, dumping place. It is basic urban infrastructure. Like drainage, water supply and roads, it needs land, protected access, long-term financing, engineering standards and a place in every city’s master plan.

Collection has expanded. Infrastructure has not kept pace.

Pakistan now has several recognizable service-delivery models. Punjab has moved toward province-wide outsourced operations under Suthra Punjab. Sindh has used the Sindh Solid Waste Management Board to manage outsourced services in participating cities, while major transfer, landfill and dumpsite-closure investments are being pursued through the World Bank-supported SWEEP program. Peshawar has an established municipal utility structure through WSSP. Islamabad has again moved toward integrated outsourcing.

These are meaningful institutional developments. But they do not, by themselves, prove that the complete waste stream is being managed. A fleet can collect efficiently and still deliver waste to an open dump. A command centre can count trips without confirming environmentally safe disposal. A composting plant can exist on paper—or even operate—without a reliable market for its output.

An official Punjab Urban Unit plan for Sahiwal illustrates this distinction. It described a segregation, treatment and disposal facility designed for roughly 120 tonnes a day, while regular treatment was reported at around 35–40 tonnes. The lesson is not that treatment plants are unnecessary. It is that installed capacity, actual throughput and product offtake must be measured separately.

Even Islamabad shows the planning gap

Islamabad is Pakistan’s purpose-planned capital, yet recent CDA statements show that an integrated system, additional transfer capacity and a scientific landfill were still being pursued in 2025–26. That is a revealing national benchmark. If permanent waste infrastructure was not fully secured in the country’s planned capital, the challenge in Karachi, Lahore, Gujranwala and other rapidly expanding cities is understandably much greater.

The real problem is often improper land allocation rather than the complete absence of land. Sites are selected without protecting access roads, buffer zones or expansion areas. Urban development then moves toward them, sometimes with official approval. A facility planned on the edge of a city eventually finds itself surrounded by housing, while the authority has no replacement ready.

Outsourcing is an operating model—not an urban policy

The first large-scale outsourcing experience in Lahore helped establish a belief that capable contractors could solve the waste problem. Contractors can bring vehicles, equipment, personnel, technology and management discipline. They cannot independently reserve land, regulate development, redesign public behaviour or protect infrastructure for decades. Those are functions of the state.

A practical system should begin with community collection infrastructure located within a prescribed distance and separated from normal traffic movement. Small, appropriately placed portable compactor transfer units can contain waste and reduce the need for garbage vehicles to remain on the road throughout the day. Bulk movement can then be scheduled during lower-traffic periods.

At household level, Pakistan can begin with a simple two-bin system: wet organic waste and dry recyclable waste. Large restaurants, hotels, marriage halls, food markets and institutional kitchens should form a separate commercial-organic stream because their volume and collection requirements are different.

Organic waste needs a market, not another pilot

Dry recyclables already have an informal market. Organic waste is more difficult. A number of composting initiatives struggle because the plant was planned before the buyer. Low offtake leaves projects dependent on grants or operating support, even when the environmental case for composting is sound.

Government horticulture departments should therefore become the first anchor users of certified municipal compost—for parks, green belts, public nurseries and urban forestry. Private nurseries, housing societies and large landscaped developments can follow through licensing rules and procurement incentives. The sequence should begin with demand the government can control, then widen toward private users.

For the near future, two structures appear practical: government-owned plants operated by specialist contractors, and well-designed public-private partnerships. Fully private plants will struggle until waste supply, processing payments, product quality and offtake are predictable.

What Pakistan should measure next

A national comparison should no longer ask only how many tonnes were lifted. It should disclose how much waste was generated, collected, transferred, recovered, composted and finally disposed of in engineered facilities. Fleet availability, verified workforce, complaint resolution, operating cost, landfill capacity and replacement-site readiness should also be public.

The absence of current official data in Balochistan, AJK and Gilgit-Baltistan is itself an important finding. Without a comparable public baseline, governments cannot plan investment properly and citizens cannot distinguish a functioning system from a cleanliness campaign.

The direction is clear

Pakistan does not need to begin with the most expensive technology. Segregation, material recovery, composting, refuse-derived fuel and engineered landfilling are more immediate priorities than waste-to-energy. The latter may eventually serve selected urban contexts, but it should not distract from the basic systems that remain incomplete.

The next stage of reform must move beyond buying vehicles and outsourcing collection. It must reserve land, build transfer and recovery infrastructure, create markets for recovered products, protect sanitary landfill sites from encroachment and prepare successor facilities before existing sites close.

Clean streets matter. But a city is not managing its waste merely because the waste is no longer visible. The real test begins after collection.