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 May, 2011 | Publication
Prof David C Wilson has published a paper with Rachel Cahill, one of his former students, and Prof Sue Grimes, on Extended producer responsibility for packaging wastes and WEEE – a comparison of implementation and the role of local authorities across Europe. The paper was published as a review article in the May 2011 issue of the peer-reviewed journal Waste Management & Research.
Extended producer responsibility (EPR) is one of the most important policy tools available in waste management, which in principle transfers 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. However, despite common EU Directives covering EPR for packaging waste and waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), among other waste streams, implementation has varied markedly between Member States. This paper compares a representative sample of eleven EU countries based on five indicators: stakeholders and responsibilities; compliance mechanisms; role of local authorities; financing mechanisms and merits and limitations, with four countries selected for more detailed case study analysis. Similarities, trends and differences in national systems are highlighted with particular focus on the role of local authorities and their relationship with obligated producers and the effect on the operation and success of each system.
On the whole, EPR for packaging and WEEE has been successfully implemented throughout Europe in terms of Directive targets. It is, however, clear that the EPR systems currently in application across Europe differ primarily due to contrasting opinion on the legitimacy of local authorities as stakeholders and, in some cases, a fear on the part of industry of associated costs. Where local authorities have been engaged in the design and implementation of national systems, existing infrastructure used and defined roles established for producers and local authorities, results have been significantly more positive than in the cases where local authorities have had limited engagement.
8 November, 2008 | Publication
One of DCW’s research interests at Imperial College is the contribution made to waste management in developing country cities by the often large informal recycling sector. This paper focuses on quantifying the contribution of the informal sector, and particularly that of the itinerant waste buyers who collect clean, source separated materials from door to door; and on how to build further on this solid foundation. The paper is published in the February 2009 volume of the journal Waste Management, and is available online.
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’ 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 paper shows that recycling rates already achieved by the informal sector can be quite high, typically in the range from 20-50%; often up to half of this is in the form of clean, source separated materials collected directly from households and businesses by itinerant waste buyers (IWBs). Four country case studies provide a number of lessons on how this solid foundation could be used to build high recycling rates of clean materials. DCW’s co-authors are Dr Chris Cheeseman, also in the Centre for Environmental Control and Waste Management at Imperial; former MSc student Kaine Chinwah; and Adebisi Araba, his PhD student in the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial. The paper reference is doi:10.1016/j.wasman.2008.06.016; Waste Management, Volume 29, Issue 2, February 2009, pages 629-635.
8 October, 2007 | Publication
DCW was co-author of four papers at this week’s 20th anniversary Sardinia 2007, the Eleventh International Waste Management and Landfill Symposium. Three of the paper’s are a result of DCW’s research at Imperial College.
- DCW was lead author of a paper on Building recycling rates through the informal sector in developing countries.
- One of DCW’s former students, Nina Zetsche, presented on The clean development mechanism: incentive improving solid waste management in developing countries?
- Another former student, Costas Velis, presented on Early 19thcentury London dust-yards: a case study in closed loop resource efficiency.
- Molly Morgan presented a Defra paper on Science policy for sustainable waste and resources management: putting principles into practice.
8 June, 2007 | Publication, Waste Management
The June issue of the ISWA journal Waste Management & Research (WM&R) is a special issue on Driving waste management towards sustainable development. DCW wrote the keynote paper on ‘Development drivers for waste management’.
http://worklife.wharton.upenn.edu/sildenafil-online/
This explores how drivers have varied over time, and how they vary today across the world (Waste Manage Res 2007, 25 (3), 198-207). DCW also co-authored a paper on ‘Using research-based knowledge to underpin waste and resources policy’ (Waste Manage Res 2007, 25 (3), 247-256), which examines the theory and practice of ‘evidence-based policy making’ in the waste and resources field.
