DCW’s magnum opus wins ISWA Publication Award 2024

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.

Socio-economic development drives solid waste management performance in cities

Our new open access paper tests and confirms for the first time the long-standing hypothesis that both the rate of municipal solid waste (MSW) generation in a city, and the performance of its MSW management system, depends on its level of socio-economic development level. We prepared the first consistent and comprehensive dataset for 40 cities around the world and used state-of-the-art statistical and machine learning techniques to correlate Wasteaware Cities Benchmark Indicators (WABI) with a broad range of explanatory socio-economic indices (including Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Social Progress Index (SPI) and Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI).

The results indicate that progress in collection coverage, and controlled recovery and disposal, has already taken place in low- and middle-income cities, although improvements in service quality often lag improvements in service coverage. However, the elephant in the room is that if we continue with ‘business as usual’ development, waste generation per capita and the total quantities (and cost) of waste management services will substantially increase. We urgently need to find new approaches to decoupling waste generation from economic growth and social progress.

The paper is open access and can be downloaded free of charge. It has taken a long time in preparation: thanks to my co-authors Costas Velis, Yoni Gavish, Sue M Grimes and Andrew Whiteman.