8 April, 2012 | Waste Management
Professor David C Wilson is an invited speaker at this week’s International Solid Waste Association (ISWA) 2nd Waste & Climate Beacon Conference in Copenhagen, 19-20 April,2012. DCW’s topic is ‘Comparing Solid Waste Management in the World’s Cities’, and combines two major strands of his current work: looking at SWM around the world and in developing countries in particular; and promoting waste prevention as a major component of resource management as the next phase in modernising SWM in developed countries. The latter also builds on his particular interest in food waste prevention. DCW’s full presentation is now on the conference website.
This conference will focus ISWA’s work to bring waste management firmly onto the agenda for UN COP18 on climate change in Qatar later in 2012, a process which began at COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009. End-of-pipe waste management contributes 3-5% to global emissions of greenhouse gases, but both waste prevention and recycling have the potential for reducing global emissions by perhaps 15-20%. Waste management has already made strides in cutting emissions of methane (25 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide) from landfill. But 20% of the UK’s carbon footprint is accounted for by the food we eat – and up to 50% of our food is either wasted before it gets to the kitchen or is bought and thrown away without being eaten. So eliminating avoidable food waste would reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 5-10% – which compares to the total contribution of end-of-pipe waste management of 3-5%.
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 July, 2010 | Waste Management
Al Jazeera English News today ran a feature on the Zabbaleen, the informal waste recyclers in Cairo. After the video clip, Professor David C Wilson was interviewed live by videolink between the Doha and London studios, to discuss waste management in developing countries more generally. He highlighted the financial benefits that informal recyclers bring to a city, and argued for co-operative solutions – the city recognises the recyclers and works with them, to provide the recyclers with dignity, access to the waste and more hygienic working conditions,; and in turn benefits from more efficient recycling and thus less waste that the city needs to collect and dispose of.
The feature was part of a series on ‘Our Wasteful World’. The video clip highlights the very high recycling rates achieved in Cairo, but also the lack of recognition of the Zabbaleen by the authorities and the unhygienic and degrading working conditions. David Wilson pointed out that cities like Paris and London had similar, relatively efficient, largely informal closed-loop recycling systems in the 19th century; these were displaced by formal, municipal collection systems, introduced to protect public health by removing wastes from the cities; and more recently also by modern systems focusing on the environmental standards of waste disposal. Western countries have thus had to rebuild recycling almost from scratch over the last 10-20 years, at considerable cost to the public sector, whereas the original informal sector recycling systems still operate in most developing country cities. These systems both provide livelihoods to large numbers of the urban poor, whose priority is where the next meal will come from; and also recycle a sizeable % of municipal solid wastes, thus saving city governments $millions in avoided collection and disposal costs – in effect, the poor subsidising the rich.
8 July, 2010 | Waste Management
If we were to design, from scratch, a sustainable waste management system for London suitable for the twenty first century, what would it look like?This is the topic of the first web-based ‘provocation’ launched by London REMADE. The starting point for the debate is a series of four essays, one of which was written by Professor David C Wilson. The format is truly participative – you can take part online simply by clicking ‘join the debate’ and adding your comment, amending what the original authors or other commentators have said or writing your own essay.
London REMADE is London’s independent promoter of resource efficiency and has built an extensive cross-sectoral network of experienced resource management practitioners. Now that the original funding has finished, it has relaunched itself as an independent environmental, economic and social think tank, which is unrestricted by sectoral or political interest or reliance on a funding source. The programme of provocations will consider resources in the broadest sense – materials, finances, people, infrastructure, institutions – and explore how they might be developed, deployed and distributed in London in the most sustainable way.
The first provocation essays are:
Essay 1 – Extreme producer responsiblity – where’s the decongestion charge? Kit Strange, resource Recovery Forum
Essay 2 – Sustainable waste & resource management – challenging the underlying assumptions. Professor David C Wilson
Essay 3 – The analogies from history. Dr Julian Parfitt, Resources Futures
Essay 4 – Just follow the money. David Fell, Brook Lyndhurst.
The essays suggest that the pattern and manner of waste collection inLondon is an historical accident. There is no reason to suppose that the current regime is ‘the best’. A waste management system built upon nineteenth century boundaries and twentieth century political assumptions is at odds with the economic, social and environmental objectives this century presents.
Click here to take part in the debate and to read the current state of the essays including contributions and rewrites from all the contributors, This is a unique opportunity through an open and interactive site to engage in deep and expansive debate between stakeholders throughout and beyond London. The outcome from each debate will be synthesised and available online for all to see and use.
8 February, 2009 | Waste Management
ISSOWAMA is a network for knowledge sharing, to promote the development and implementation of Integrated Sustainable Solid Waste Management in Asia. ISSOWAMA is funded by the European Commission as a coordination action under the 7th Framework Programme (FP7) and will run for 30 months. The 22 partner organisations met in Bangkok on 11-12 February 2009 for the kick-off meeting. Professor David C Wilson is participating in ISSOWAMA as an Associate of the Dutch not-for-profit foundation Waste.
ISSOWAMA seeks to improve the standards of solid waste management in Asia by promoting the concept of Integrated and Sustainable Waste Management (ISWM). The ISSOWAMA consortium includes 22 partner organisations from 8 Asian developing countries and 4 European countries, plus the International Soild Waste Association (ISWA), and will form the core of a wider expertise and knowledge sharing network. The concept https://samtech.edu/cheap-cialis/ of ISWM was first developed by the Collaborative Working Group on Waste Management in Low- and Middle- Income Countries (CWG) in 1996, and has been further developed, inter alia, by Waste for whom DCW is working as a member of the ISSOWAMA consortium.
