3 December, 2025 | Waste Management
DCW was pleased to co-author two papers on a system-wide assessment of Indonesia’s plastic value chain. One, mapping external stakeholders, was published this week in the journal Environment Systems and Decisions. The other mapped both plastic and monetary flows and stakeholders dynamics, and was published in July in the high impact Journal of Cleaner Production. A third part of the trilogy was published in the Journal of Circular Economy in April 2025. All three papers demonstrate the innovative use of the structured systems-based framework provided by CVORR (Complex Value Optimisation for Resource Recovery), for the earlier development of which I chaired the Steering Committee. I also sat on the Advisory board of PISCES, a collaborative research project on preventing plastics pollution in Indonesia, from which these papers are outputs.
I am grateful to the two lead authors Eleni Iacovidou and Spyridoula Gerasimidou; and to my fellow co-authors Professor Susan Jobling; Eddy Setiadi Soedjono; Jessika Luth Richter; Mike Webster; Andre Kuncoroyekti; and Elena Lovat.
24 June, 2025 | Environmental legislation, Waste and resource management
After several years of fraught negotiations, 98 Member States of the UN agreed on 20 June 2025 to set up a new Intergovernmental Science-Policy Panel on Chemicals, Waste and Pollution. The official acronym is ISP-CWP, to sit alongside the existing Intergovernmental Science-Policy Panels on climate heating IPCC and biodiversity IPBES. This is excellent news, but much of the detail was left to the first plenary session, now set for 2-6 February 2026. Much further work is needed, both to ensure that the new Panel has teeth, and that waste is a core part of its ongoing programme.
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.
26 September, 2024 | Waste Management
My 2024 ISWA Publication Award for my ‘magnum opus’ was presented this week at the Gala Dinner at ISWA 2024 World Congress in Capetown. My thanks to Costas Velis for collecting the award on my behalf. The paper documents the evolution of waste and resource management over the last 50 years from my personal perspective as an involved witness, and uses that to reflect on current and future priorities.
In their citation ISWA say: ‘David emphasises the need for understanding and learning from the (past) to achieve improved (waste and resource) management around the world. The paper zooms in on three policy priorities that are critical globally: access to sustainable financing, rethinking sustainable recycling and worldwide extended producer responsibility. (In the Global South this) require(s) a people-centred approach, working with communities to provide both quality services and decent livelihoods for collection and recycling workers.’
The paper could not have been written without the work and support of the countless colleagues I have worked with over my now 50 year career – my warm thanks to you all! I have been motivated in writing this to ‘pass on the baton’ to the next generations – so please do follow ISWA’s endorsement and dip into the open access paper – I hope it gives you some inspiration.
As well as the full paper, I published a ‘taster’ version in March 2024 in the ISWA magazine Waste Management World. I struggled to squeeze 50 years of evolution since the first environmental controls over solid waste management were introduced in the 1970s, and reflections on priorities for the next decade(s), into my 50,000 word (but very accessible and readable!) contemporary witness magnum opus. I had to write a 200 word abstract, but it took me a while to prepare this short (2,500 word) ‘taster’ version. My basic thesis is that policy makers, practitioners and academics need to understand where waste and resource management has come from to plan confidently to meet future challenges and to avoid ‘reinventing the wheel’. So please have a read, pass it on to colleagues and dip into the full paper!
The title of the full paper is: Learning from the past to plan for the future. An historical review of the evolution of waste and resources management 1970-2020 and reflections on priorities 2020-2030 – The perspective of an involved witness.
27 March, 2024 | Publication, Resource and waste management, Waste Management
I am very pleased to collaborate with Tearfund to reframe the discussion around waste management in the Plastics Treaty negotiations. The Plastics Treaty is once-in-a-generation opportunity to end Plastic Pollution. We absolutely need to ‘turn off the tap’ by upstream actions to reduce plastic production, but we also need to ‘stop the bath-tub overflowing’ through proper waste management.
This is not a ‘cop out’ for the plastics producers – they are responsible for the high plastics content in municipal solid waste in lower income countries, which cannot afford proper management; so it is their responsibility to ensure that their wastes are collected and recycled properly and to pay all of the associated costs. The scientific part of the Tearfund report shows that extending municipal solid waste collection and controlled recovery and disposal to services to all (95% on SDG indicator 11.6.1) would not only address a major public health and environmental crisis impacting billions worldwide, but also reduce macroplastics dispersal to the environment (and thus available for onward transport to the ocean) by 77% and open burning by 90% . So, let’s make sure that is done!
UPDATE. The report puts forward a fit-for-purpose text on waste management for negotiators. The initial report was issued prior to the negotiation meeting INC-4 in Ottawa from 23-29 April 2024. A second edition was issued in September, to provide specific inputs to the final text negotiations which should have been concluded at INC-5 in Busan 25 November – 1 December 2024.
UPDATE. The modelling for this report by Costas Velis, Ed Cook and Josh Cottam of the University of Leeds used their SPOT model. Their seminal paper showing that uncollected municipal solid waste accounts for 85% of uncontrolled macroplastic dispersal to the environment was published in Nature in September 2024.
