8 March, 2012 | Publication
Solid waste management has always suffered from a lack of consistent and reliable data to compare progress between countries. So the publication today of a seminal research paper, Comparative analysis of solid waste management in 20 cities, written by Professor David C Wilson and 4 co-authors in the peer-reviewed journal Waste Management & Research, represents a major step forward. The World Bank website is still reporting low collection coverage and a prevalence of open dumping in all developing countries: the new data analysed here shows that significant progress has been made over the last decade, with levels of both collection coverage and controlled disposal above 90% in most middle-income developing countries.
This comparative analysis uses the comprehensive and consistent dataset collected for 20 reference cities, developed and developing, in all 6 inhabited continents, for the 2010 UN-Habitat book . The paper was written by DCW; with his two co-authors from the original book, Dr Ljiljana Rodic of the University of Wageningen who led the city data collection and Dr Anne Scheinberg of WASTE; Dr Costas Velis of Imperial College, who carried out the statistical analysis; and Dr Graham Alabaster, who initiated the original work for UN-Habitat.
The paper presents comparative data for waste arisings per capita and waste composition; for the three physical elements of a waste management system – collection, disposal and recycling; and for the main governance factors – both user and provider inclusivity, financial sustainability and sound institutions/ proactive policy. The conclusions stress that there is no ‘one size fits all’: rather, each city needs to develop its own locally sustainable solution, identifying what already works well and building on that, and addressing both the technical and the governance issues.
Full data tables are available in the book, and in a previous paper to the WASTE 2010 conference. A more descriptive account of the 20 cities was published in the proceedings of the ISWA 2010 conference in Hamburg.
Update July 2012: The conclusions in the paper regarding the recent progress that has been achieved, particularly in middle-income countries, are reinforced by a new World Bank report, which gives average collection coverage of 86% in upper-middle, 68% in lower-middle, and 41% in low-income countries – these figures are considerably lower than our 2009 data; they come from a much larger sample size, but are somewhat older, with a median date of 2001.
8 February, 2012 | Publication
Prof David C Wilson is the scientific co-ordinator for the ISWA Task Force which has been tasked to report to the 2012 World Congress in Florence on a number of major challenges posed to the long-term sustainability of waste management by increasing globalisation. He is also co-leading, with his Imperial College colleague Dr Costas Velis, the Task Force’s work on the informal recycling sector in developing countries, which is one of his long-standing research interests. This part of the work kicked-off with an international workshop in Buenos Aires, held alongside the ISWA Beacon Conference on Waste Prevention and Recycling, on 21-23 June, 2011. November 2012 update: A July 2012 progress report, a general paper and a peer-reviewed paper on the informal sector integration work were all published for the Florence Conference. An update on DCW’s informal sector related activities is also available.
The impacts of globalisation on waste management are a major concern for the International Solid Wastes Association (ISWA), bringing new and unprecedented challenges for the long-term sustainability of both material resources and society. Recognising these substantial changes for solid waste management, ISWA established the Globalisation and Waste Management (GWM) Task Force (TF) in September 2010. The TF aims to examine and make recommendations on a range of issues arising from the interaction between globalisation and waste management, including for example the dependence of Europe and North America on exporting materials to Asia for recycling in order to sustain their high recycling rates. The TF will present its interim findings to the ISWA World Congress in Florence in September 2012.
One focus for the ISWA GWM TF is to investigate and address the issues around informal sector waste management activities. Many developing country cities aspire to modern waste management systems, a key feature of which is their high recycling rates of clean, source separated materials, driven in large part by the need to find a cost-effective alternative to expensive anddifficult to site waste treatment and disposal facilities. Most low-income cities already have informal sector recycling systems, which are driven solely by the revenues derived from selling recovered materials, even though they are saving the formal sector money by reducing waste quantities. There is clear potential for ‘win-win’ co-operation between the formal and informal sectors, as providing support to the informal sector, to build recycling rates and to address some of the social issues, could reduce the overall costs of waste management for the formal sector.
This part of the work kicked-off with an international workshop onIntegrating informal sector recyclers into waste management in developing countries, which was held in Buenos Aires, alongside the ISWA Beacon Conference on Waste Prevention and Recycling, 21-23 June, 2011. The opening presentation by Costas Velis and DCW explored global experiences, and looked at Key steps towards effective inclusion in 21st century SWM systems. They also gave a keynote presentation at a Clinton Global Initiative meeting on the Informal Waste Sector in New York on 19 September 2011, entitled: Informal sector recycling at the crossroads – challenges of stakeholder systems. Click here to see a November 2012 update on progress.
8 January, 2012 | Waste Management
Prof David C Wilson will chair the morning session of the workshop: The Waste Prevention Programme – Exploring the Evidence, at Church House, London on 29 February 2012. This workshop, organised by CIWM on behalf of Defra and WRAP, aims to showcase recent evidence on how to achieve waste prevention and resource efficiency, and to provide participants with an opportunity to update on, and contribute to, government thinking on the forthcoming Waste Prevention Programme for England.
Waste prevention is at the top of the waste hierarchy, and is now also at the top of the policy agenda as EU governments prepare to introduce their national Waste Prevention Programmes by the end of 2013, as required by the revised Waste Framework Directive. The morning session of this workshop will focus on recent evidence, with a particular focus on business waste prevention and resource efficiency, but including also a new carbon tool for local authorities. The afternoon will allow every participant to contribute to round-table discussions, with the key issues from each table being put to a high-level panel for further consideration.
DCW has been advising Defra on their waste and resources evidence programme, and in particular on the evidence relating to waste prevention, for a number of years, and has managed two evidence reviews for them, on household waste prevention, published in October 2009, and on business waste prevention, which will be launched at this workshop.
8 December, 2011 | Waste Management
A new legal requirement for waste generators and handlers to implement the waste hierarchy, which requires precedence to be given to waste prevention, reuse and recycling, prior to consideration of recovery or disposal, came into force on 28 September 2011, following transposition into UK law of the 2008 revised Waste Framework Directive. Defra published guidelines on how to apply the hierarchy to hazardous wastes on 30 November 2011.
Professor David C Wilson has represented the Chartered Institution of Wastes Management (CIWM) on the Hazardous Waste Steering Group that has advised Defra on developing the guidelines, and also on the Technical Working Group that assisted the Environment Agency on drafting the guidelines. DCW chairs CIWM’s Special Interest Group on hazardous wastes.
8 May, 2011 | Conference
Professor David C Wilson gave the keynote presentation to open the Intersessional Conference on Building Partnerships for Moving towards Zero Waste, held in Tokyo, Japan from 16 to 18 February 2011. His subject was ‘Acting Alone to Partnerships – Strategic Approach for Sustainable Municipal Waste Management’, in which he drew in particular on his recent work for UN-Habitat. The conference contributed to deliberation on the theme of Waste Management at the 19th session of theUnited Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) in May 2011, which in turn will feed into the Rio+20 Earth Summit in 2012. DCW’s presentation is now available.
The Tokyo conference was organized by the Division for Sustainable Development (DSD) of the United NationsDepartment of Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA), in close collaboration with the United NationsCentre for Regional Development (UNCRD) and the Ministry of the Environment Japan.
The United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) was established by the UN General Assembly in December 1992 to ensure effective follow-up of United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the Earth Summit. The CSD meets annually in New York, in two-year cycles, with each cycle focusing on clusters of specific thematic and cross-sectoral issues: solid waste management is one of the current themes, as outlined in the multi-year programme of work (2003-2017)(E/CN.17/2003/6).
CSD-19 is the policy session where intergovernmental decisions are made on policy options for overcoming obstacles and challenges in solid waste management, while taking into account lessons learned and best practices in relation to the theme. The Tokyo conference aimed build on the outcome and recommendations of the CSD-18 (review session) as well as the “International Consultative Meeting on Expanding Waste Management Services in Developing Countries,” held in March 2010 as an intersessional meeting for CSD-18.
The February 2011 conference brought together relevant stakeholders (including representatives from cities, public waste utilities, private sector, key research and policy institutes, community-managed waste management programmes, and international institutions, among others), to discuss possible policy recommendations that would contribute to expanding waste management services in developing countries. The conference aimed to identify constraints and obstacles in the implementation of waste management policies, and to explore ways and means in which these stakeholders could partner with each other to strengthen their collaborative efforts to deal with growing waste management challenges in the perspective of ever increasing urbanization and consumption trends.
