Sustain­able solid waste management (SWM) is a challenge to most local and national governments in developing countries. The German Technical Cooperation Agency – GIZ has recently launched a 3-year programme to develop pilot projects and guidance materials to fill specific gaps in the knowledge base on sustainable SWM. The study focusing on the delivery of waste management services (‘operator models’) has been commissioned to ERM and Wasteaware – Professor David C Wilson is global advisor and lead analyst in the project team.

UPDATE 03 March 2014: The final Operator Model reports have now been published.

Past experience has shown that there is no such thing as ‘a standard operator model’.  Contexts in which the various solid waste management systems exist and operate vary diversely.  The team will collect and analyse case study experiences in various low- and middle-income countries and different areas along the waste chain to identify what works under which circumstances. The case studies will be analysed in terms of:

   What services are provided?

    Who provides those services and under what conditions?

     How are the services managed, supervised and paid for? and

      At what (geographical) level are the services provided?

The results will be presented in a ‘source book’ and guidance paper to assist decision-makers in selecting the most appropriate and efficient model (or mix of models) for service delivery in any particular local situation.