Anne Scheinberg, David C Wilson and Ljiljana Rodic have won the 2010 ISWA Publication Award for their book Solid Waste Managment in the World’s Cities, which they co-authored and edited for UN-Habitat. The award was presented to Prof Wilson and Ms Scheinberg by the ISWA President Jeff Cooper at a ceremony in the Town Hall at the ISWA World Congress in Hamburg on 15 November 2010, which was attended by Graham Alabaster on behalf of UN-Habitat. As a result of the award, Professor Wilson and Ms Scheinberg were invited to write the guest editorial for the December 2010 issue of Waste Managment & Research, under the title ‘What is good practice in solid waste management’.

The International Solid Waste Association (ISWA) presents an annual publication award to the best publication worldwide in the field of solid waste management. The 2010 award has gone to the three lead authors of this flagship publication, the third in UN-Habitat’s series on Water and Sanitation in the World’s Cities. The book draws out good practice using an innovative framework based on Integrated Sustainable Waste Managment (ISWM) as a ‘lens’ for viewing a city’s solid waste system: the focus is not only on the physical elements of the system (collection, disoposal and resource recovery) but also on the critical governance aspects that must be addressed for a system to be successful and sustainable (user and provider inclusivity, financial sustainability and sound institutions/ proactive policies). A new and innovative methodology was developed to gather consistent and comparable data from 20 cities, chosen to represent cities – rich and poor, large and small – in all six inhabited continents.

The award was presented to the three lead authors/ editors, but was the collective effort of a much larger team. More than 35 waste professionals contributed, largely drawn from a global community of practice, the Collaborative Working Group on Solid Waste Managment in Low- and Middle- Income Countries; in addition to teams in each of the 20 cities. The project was intiated and guided by Graham Alabaster on behalf of UN-Habitat.

Jeff Cooper, ISWA President and member of the Award judging panel, writes: ‘I commend this publication as essential reading for waste managers and all those concerned about resource management and the recovery of waste for further productive use.’

The book has recieved a number of positive and high profile reviews, including in the December 2010 issue of Waste Management & Research and the January 2011 issue of the member journal of the UK Chartered Institution of Wastes management, CIWM.

The book is published by Earthscan. A 20% discount is available on their website, using discount code AF20. 2012 update: the book is now also available via the WASTE website.