2 September, 2013 | Awards, Publication
The ISWA World Congress 2013 will be held in Vienna from 7-11 October, with more than 1000 participants from over 70 different countries already registered. Professor David C Wilson is a member of the Scientific Committee, and will Chair two sessions as well as presenting two of his own papers and co-authoring a third paper. DCW’s two papers are Operator Models for Delivering Municipal Solid Waste Management Services in Emerging and Developing Countries, presenting results from a major project funded by German International Assistance (GIZ) in Session 3; and Benchmark Indicators for Integrated & Sustainable Waste Management (ISWM), reporting on recent progress with a major project to compare SWM performance in cities around the world, which he has been leading for the last five years (Session 23).
ISWA – the International Solid Waste Association – represents waste management professionals worldwide. It is a global, independent and non-profit making association, working in the public interest ‘To Promote and Develop Sustainable and Professional Waste Management Worldwide’. Its Annual Congress is one of the world’s most important congresses in the field of waste management.As a member of the Scientific Committee,
DCW reviewed papers submitted to the Congress’s Call for Papers on Electronic and Electrical Waste, and Chairs Session 19 on that topic. DCW is also Scientific Co-ordinator of ISWA’s Task Force on Waste and Globalisation and Chairs Session 53 which reports outputs from their work on Global Flows of Materials for Recycling. He is also co-author of a paper on waste management and recycling in Bishkek (Session 14) and of last year’s paper which has won the ISWA Publication Award 2013, which will be presented at the Gala Dinner.
8 May, 2013 | Awards, Publication
David C Wilson, Ljiljana Rodic and Costas Velis have published a major overview paper in this month’s Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Waste and Resource Management, on Integrated Sustainable Waste Management in Developing Countries: Concept, Realities and Challenges. The data presented show that the waste management performance of developing country cities has improved significantly over the last 10 years. Levels of collection coverage and controlled disposal of 95% in middle-income, and 50% in low-income, countries are already commonplace. Recycling rates of 20-30% are achieved by the informal sector in many lower income countries, at no direct cost to the city – presenting a major opportunity for all key stakeholders, if the persistent challenges can be resolved.
UPDATE 05 June 2014. This paper has won an ICE Publishing Award, and is now free to download.
This paper uses the lens of ‘Integrated sustainable waste management’ (ISWM) to examine how cities in developing countries have been tackling their solid waste problems. The history of related concepts and terms is reviewed, and ISWM is clearly differentiated from integrated waste management (IWM), used mostly in the context of technological integration in developed countries. Instead, ISWM examines both the physical components – collection, disposal, recycling – and the governance aspects – inclusivity of users and service providers; financial sustainability; and coherent, sound institutions underpinned by proactive policies.
The evidence suggests that efficient, effective and affordable systems are tailored to local needs and conditions, developed with direct involvement of service beneficiaries. Despite the remaining challenges, evidence of recent improvements suggests that sustainable solid waste and resources management is feasible for developing countries.
The paper builds on substantial recent research by DCW and his colleagues. Other papers compare the performance of a sample of 20 cities around the world; and provide a framework for designing city-specific initiatives for the inclusion of the informal recycling sector within a municipal solid waste management system. Professor David C Wilson is at Imperial College London; Dr Ljiljana Rodic at Wageningen University and Research Centre, the Netherlands; and Dr Costas Velis at the University of Leeds, UK.
8 November, 2012 | Publication
One of Professor David C Wilson’s long-standing research interests at Imperial College is the contribution made to solid waste management (SWM) in developing country cities by the often large informal recycling sector (IRS). This autumn has seen a flurry of activity. The leading French newspaper Le Monde ran a feature article by Gilles van Kotte on the importance of the IRS on 01 September 2012, including an interview with DCW. A major paper presented at the ISWA Annual Congress in September sets out a framework for professionalisation and integration of the IRS into SWM systems. DCW made a presentation to an Agence Française de Développement (AFD) conference in October, on the role of the role of public-private partnerships in SWM in developing countries, including that of the IRS. And DCW chaired an invited workshop in November to discuss partnerships between global producers of consumer goods and the IRS, to achieve product stewardship goals in developing countries.
Many developing country cities aspire to modern waste management systems, which are associated with relatively high recycling rates of clean, source separated materials. Most 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’ solutions, which increase recycling rates, protect people’s livelihoods, improve working conditions and reduce child labour, bring the recyclers within the formal economy, and reduce further the overall costs of waste management for the formal sector.
DCW is currently leading work on the IRS for the International Solid Waste Association (ISWA)’s Task Force on Waste and Globalisation, which is aiming both to make the case for, and also to provide guidance on how to achieve, such professionalisation and integration. The ISWA Congress paper, presented on 18 September and published in an open-access special issue of the peer-reviewed journal Waste Management & Research, sets out an analytical framework for selecting a set of interventions which is appropriate in a particular local situation. Possible interventions are grouped into four categories: one of these focuses on organisation and capacity building of the IRS; while the other three are the interfaces between the IRS and the formal SWM system, the materials and value chain, and society as a whole. The recommendation is that IRS professionalisation and integration initiatives should consider all four categories in a balanced way, and pay increased attention to their interdependencies which are central to success, including specific actions such as the IRS having access to source separated waste and to microfinance.
DCW was invited to present at the AFD conference in Paris on 25 October by PROPARCO, which promotes private sector investment in development. A special issue of their journal Private Sector & Development, on Waste: the challenges facing developing countries,was launched at the conference.
The Product Stewardship – Informal Sector Forum in Berlin on 14-15 November was hosted by the German Technical Co-operation AgencyGIZ, and organised for them by the consultancies RWA and Waste.
Extended producer responsibility (EPR) was developed in Europe as a policy tool, aiming to transfer the responsibility and costs of managing post-consumer product waste back from the local authorities to the ‘producer’ or supply-chain which provided the original product. The aim of this informal forum was to exchange and develop practical, workable ideas for sustainable, inclusive product stewardship in middle-income countries, where the existing recyclers are largely in the informal sector.
8 September, 2012 | Publication
Waste prevention is a current policy priority for governments across Europe. It is thus timely that Professor David C Wilson has published a seminal paper, which he also presented at the ISWA Annual Congress last week, reviewing the international evidence base on business waste prevention, in order to underpin policy making. DCW managed the original review on behalf of Defra, the English Environment Ministry, the work being undertaken by a consortium comprising Oakdene Hollins, Brook Lyndhurst and the Resource Recovery Forum.
The paper written by DCW and co-authors was presented at the International Solid Waste association (ISWA)’s Annual Congress in Florence on 18 September, and is published in an open-access special issue of the peer-reviewed journal Waste Management & Research. The papersummarises the scale and benefits of business waste prevention; categorises waste prevention initiatives into four approaches; presents a conceptual framework and uses that to analyse attitudes and behaviours; and providess selected examples to show the effectiveness of eight different types of policy intervention.
The original Defra project was published in February 2012. The results were presented for ease of use as 28 inter-linked modular reports. They can be accessed here (check on ‘search’ and enter ‘WR1403’ as the keyword). The results of the review were showcased at a Defra-WRAPworkshop on 29 February 2012, at which DCW chaired the morning evidence session.
Waste prevention is at the top of the waste hierarchy. The revised EUrevised Waste Framework Directive requires Member States to introduce a national Waste Prevention Programme by December 2013. DCW has been advising Defra (the English Environment Ministry) on their waste and resources evidence programme, and in particular on the evidence relating to waste prevention, since 2004.
The definition of waste prevention used in this evidence review of business waste follows the Directive, including waste avoidance, waste reduction at source or in process and product reuse – recycling is outside the scope. The search for evidence was very broad, covering UK and international, academic and ‘grey’, electronic and printed, and English, French and German language sources dating back at least to 1995. Almost 1,000 relevant documents were identified, of which nearly 600 passed initial screening.
The analysis followed the broad logic of waste prevention actions by business, starting from the basic drivers of legislation and competition. Central to any analysis of the evidence is a detailed examination of the attitudes and behaviours of business. The other two fundamental perspectives used in sorting and assembling the evidence were the particular commercial or industrial sector and the types of intervention to encourage action. A key analytical tool was to characterise the actions that a business can take to prevent waste into a number of approaches.
DCW also managed a previous Defra project, published in October 2009, which reviewed the available evidence on household waste prevention and received an internal Defra award for ‘excellence in the communication of science/engineering to policy makers’. This formed the basis of a special issue of the peer reviewed journal Waste Management & Research, published in March 2010, for which DCW co-wrote the guest editorial and co-authored four papers based on the Defra work.
8 August, 2012 | Publication
Professor David C Wilson is co-author of a research article: Resource management performance in Bahrain: a systematic analysis of municipal waste management, secondary material flows and organizational aspects, published in the August issue of Waste Management & Research, 30 (8) 813-824. The research was undertaken by one of his students, Maram Al Sabbagh, using the methodology for profiling waste management originally developed by DCW and colleagues for UN-Habitat. Bahrain fills a gap in both the geographical and income level coverage of the previous sample of 20 cities.
8 May, 2012 | Publication
Professor David C Wilson is co-author of two recently published original research articles on cost estimation and cost function analysis for waste management in developing countries. DCW has been working for several years as an external supervisor with Shantha Parthan, a PhD student at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. Shantha’s research is on improved cost planning for municipal solid waste management in developing countries, where problems are severe, expectations for improvements are high, but finances are constrained.
One paper is Cost estimation for solid waste management in industrialising regions – Precedents, problems and prospects, published in the March 2012 issue of the journal Waste Management, 32(3) 584–594, which examines alternative approaches used in both industrialised and industrialising countries. The other is Cost function analysis for solid waste management: a developing country experience, published in the May 2012 issue of Waste Management & Research, 30(5) 485–491, which explores the potential use of cost functions, using as a case study an extensive data set covering some 300 Indian cities.
