4 December, 2025 | Waste Management
WHO is launching a new global report, “Throwing away our health: The impacts of solid waste on human health.” Join the launch webinar on 16 Dec 2025, 13:00–14:00 UTC / GMT. DCW was pleased to advise on and review this important report and will join the panel discussion at the launch.
Formal municipal solid waste (MSW) management services were introduced in 19th century cities to protect public health. This report is a timely reminder of the continuing importance of that role, drawing attention in particular to the continuing public health risks where municipal solid wastes are not collected (UNEP/ISWA GWMO: 2.7 billion people without waste collection) and/or when they are open dumped or burned (~40% of global MSW collected). The report brings together current knowledge on how solid waste can impact health in both the global south and the global north; where the evidence is still missing; and what the health sector can do to drive change.
1 October, 2025 | Publication, Waste and resource management
DCW was delighted to write the Introduction to October’s editorial in the ISWA peer-reviewed journal Waste Management & Research (WM&R), where Mike Webster gives his personal reflections from five years of working to extend waste collection services to previously underserved communities in Indonesia. The world is struggling to deal with the global waste emergency of more than 2.7 billion people worldwide lacking access to the basic service of municipal solid waste collection. Mike’s reflections offer a ‘breath of fresh air’ – using his words to summarise: let’s not forget the basics of solid waste collection and controlled disposal, let’s be clear-eyed about the challenges, and let’s get on with it…
Thank you to the Editors-in-Chief Anke Bockreis, Arne M. Ragossnig and Costas Velis for publishing the editorial this month in the Special Issue of WM&R for the ISWA2025 World Congress in Buenos Aires from October 27-29 2025.
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.
28 January, 2019 | Publication, Resource and waste management
Professor David C Wilson has been working for the last two years with the Rwandan academic Telesphore Kabera to apply the Wasteaware indicators to benchmark performance of the solid waste management (SWM) and recycling system in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. Their results form the basis of a paper published today in the first ever open access issue of the long established ISWA peer-reviewed journal Waste Management & Research. The paper uses previously unpublished results from the Wasteaware database to compare Kigali’s performance with four other East African capital cities – Dar-es-Salaam, Kampala, Nairobi and Maputo.
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The Wasteaware benchmark indicators grew out of work originally carried out for UN-Habitat’s Soild Waste Management in the World’s Cities (2010). They provide a standardised method to characterise the performance of a city’s SWM and recycling system across some 15 indicators, some quantitative and some qualitative, covering both waste generation, the physical aspects of waste and resource management, and various governance aspects. Results for the first 40 cities were used extensively in UNEP and ISWA’s inaugural Global Waste Management Outlook (2015). They are now being applied widely, both to characterise the baseline position in a city; to identify priority areas for improvement; and to monitor progress over time.
From this paper on East Africa, the stand-out result is the relatively high collection coverage achieved in two of the cities: in Maputo with extensive international technical assistance, and in Kigali using its own local resources. In both cases, governance factors are key. Kigali uses a public-private partnership (PPP), with exclusive franchises in 35 sectors being tendered every three years; households pay an affordable fee depending on their ability to pay (the service is free to the poorest category); 95% fee collection rates are achieved, partly through co-collection with charges for local security patrols, which is a service people value highly given the recent history of the country.
Another key priority to improve solid waste management across East Africa is to eliminate open dumping – only Kampala currently has an engineered disposal site. Recycling rates also need to be increased – only Nairobi currently has a good baseline to build on (30%). Common weaknesses include a lack of segregation at source; and of institutional capacity and of available and reliable waste data.
14 November, 2018 | Awards, Resource and waste management
DCW hands over his CIWM Presidential Medal for 2018 to Mike Webster
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At the CIWM Presidential Dinner at the Intercontinental Hotel in Dublin, after the inauguration of Enda Kiernan as the next President, DCW’s last act as the retiring President was to award his CIWM Presidential Medal for 2018. The recipient was Mike Webster, the founder and CEO of the new charity Wasteaid, which is working directly with local communities in some of the least developed countries to tackle the global waste crisis. The text of DCW’s speech is reproduced below.
‘Being able to award the President’s Medal is one of the perks of being President, and indeed the only thing that is expected of you after you hand over the chain…. The standard advice is to give it to someone who has particularly helped in my career or in my Presidential year.
I started out in 1974, so my early influencers are now either quite old or have already moved on to the great Circular Economy in the sky.
Looking back on my career, one of the aspects I take most pride in is the number of (then) young people whom I have either brought into the resource and waste sector, or to whose development I have made some contribution; and who I hope won’t be offended if I refer to them, tongue in cheek as, at least in part, my “protégées”.
I am also aware that, in the twilight of my own career, I am leaving behind much unfinished business. So, my thoughts here have gone to one of those protégées, whom I believe can take forward, and make a difference in, an area that is close to my heart. I devoted at least 20 years of my life to working with international organisations, national governments and large cities to develop integrated and sustainable waste management systems.
I have recently drawn attention to the global waste crisis, the more than 3 billion people worldwide who still lack access to basic solid waste management services, which reinforces the comparative failure of such top down approaches; yes, we have made some progress, but it is painfully slow, and corruption often impedes progress. So, I have come to the realisation that, in parallel, we also need to work from the bottom up.
This person is already making an impact, by opening-up opportunities for you and me, as individual resource and waste management professionals and as companies, to get involved and to make a real difference by helping local communities in some of the poorest countries to help themselves by making products to sell locally from the low value organics and plastics in the waste – thus helping to solve their local waste problems, keeping plastics out of the oceans AND giving themselves sustainable livelihoods to feed and educate their families.
This person has done this at considerable personal sacrifice, giving up a secure job to set up a new charity, initially drawing little or no salary while their children were still very young. The charity is now taking off, helped in part by the success of the CIWM-sponsored Toolkit; income has doubled this year, and looks set to triple that figure next year to more than a quarter of a million pounds.
The winner the 2018 CIWM President’s medal is Mike Webster, the Founder and CEO of our sector’s very own charity, Wasteaid.’
