17 March, 2025 | Publication, Waste and resource management
In DCW’s new paper with Andy Whiteman and Nicole Hennessy, published open access by the leading journal Oxford Development Studies, we spotlight the urgent need to rethink how to extend waste services to reach underserved communities. UNEP and ISWA’s GWMO2024 estimates that 2.7 billion people worldwide still lack access to solid waste collection, with at a least a billion more whose collected waste is open dumped or burned. Progress in extending services in upper middle income countries and in parts of larger cities in lower income countries has been steady, but too many unserved or underserved communities are proving hard to reach. We argue that it is time for a radical rethink of our approach to tackle this global waste emergency.
The benefits of extending services to underserved communities (i.e. reaching 95+% on both components of indicator SDG 11.6.1. i.e collection coverage and controlled disposal) are Win⁵ (i.e. win-win-win-win-win): better community services, reduced disease outbreaks, more sustainable livelihoods, reduced municipal solid waste quantities and management costs, and reduced local and global environment impacts. The costs are local but the benefits are global and local: extending services to meet SDG11.6.1 would reduce macroplastic dispersal to the environment by ~80% and significantly mitigate climate heating.
Cities can transition earlier to more circular, integrated, sustainable, waste and resource management (WaRM), through initiating governance reforms; making early no regret investments; and focusing on what money matters? No regret investments include extending collection services; supporting recovery value chains – e.g. separating (wet) organic wastes from (dry) recyclable materials at source unlocks markets for both; and upgrading existing designated disposal facilities. A blend of finance is needed, from national and city sources, resource revenues, disposal pricing, extended producer responsibility (EPR) and international development (including climate and plastics) finance). New multi-lateral impact funds are needed that target extension of services to underserved communities.
Thanks to the Oxford Development Studies editors Jo Beall and her co-editor Mansoor Ali for inviting us to contribute to the (in process) Special Issue on Integrated Sustainable (Solid) Waste Management.
20 November, 2024 | Waste Management
I have been writing articles and blogs for nearly 10 years to challenge the common misperception that waste and resource management contributes minimally to mitigation of climate heating. At long last, my peer-reviewed paper with ISWA co-authors collating the evidence has now been published open-access. We show that one can have HIGH CONFIDENCE that the sector’s potential is SIGNIFICANT. The paper provides a Call to Action to enable this global opportunity to be realised.
An earlier version of the paper featured at the first ever Waste and Resources pavilion, hosted by ISWA at COP28 in Egypt. This year in Baku, waste and resource management featured for the first time on the main COP29 agenda, with a Declaration On Reducing Methane from Organic Waste endorsed so far by 52 countries. The declaration has 8 objectives, which go beyond a narrow, waste sector focus on mitigating methane from landfill, to include also food waste reduction and separation of organic wastes at source for valorisation and recycling back to the soil.
The declaration highlights five enabling areas for waste sector transformation, calling for all countries to include reducing methane from organic waste in their climate mitigation plans at both national level (Nationally Determined Contributions – NDCs) and in regional and local implementation plans; stepping up finance; data for action and transparency; and innovative partnerships.
It is pleasing that this is already reflected in the Call to Action in our paper. The paper would never have been completed without the help and support of my co-authors, so heartfelt thanks to Johannes Paul, and to ISWA Technical Director Aditi Ramola and President Carlos RV Silva Filho.
Full reference: Wilson, D.C., Paul, J., Ramola, A., & Silva Filho, C. (2024). Unlocking the significant worldwide potential of better waste and resource management for climate mitigation: with particular focus on the Global South. Waste Management & Research, 42(10), 860-872.
22 October, 2024 | Waste Management
To tackle the on-going global waste emergency, with billions of people around the world still lacking basic services for solid waste collection and controlled recovery and disposal, it is important to know how much international development assistance, or Official Development Finance (ODF), has been directed to this issue. Our paper analysing two decades of data has now been published: the results are frankly shocking – it’s not how much? – but rather how little?
David Lerpiniere has worked on and off for 10 years on this rigorous but pain-staking project, requiring the manual assessment of some 10,000 project records to extract data on the SWM component. The results show that, yes, the $ amounts and the % share have increased over 20 years, but at 0.4% of the total is still an order of magnitude below the average 3% over the period 2015-2030 called for in UNEP and ISWA’s first Global Waste Management Outlook (GWMO) to extend collection services and controlled recovery and disposal to 95% of the world’s population, i.e. to meet SDG indictor 11.6.1. To add insult to injury, funding has mainly gone to relatively more developed countries middle-income countries, with just 8% of the limited SWM pot going to the low-income countries who need it the most. This paper provides the peer-reviewed evidence: now is the time for ACTION.
Full reference: Lerpiniere, D.J., Wilson, D.C., & Velis, C.A. (2025). Official development finance in solid waste management reveals insufficient resources for tackling plastic pollution: A global analysis of two decades of data. Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 212, 107918.
