The book provides an overview of best practices in urban waste management in the zero waste framework, assuming a multidisciplinary perspective. By analysing exemplary cases of firms and local governments, significant ownership, governance, and performance issues are discussed, along with key drivers of sustainable urban waste management.
Solid waste management affects every person in the world. By 2050, the world is expected to increase waste generation by 70 percent, from 2.01 billion tonnes of waste in 2016 to 3.40 billion tonnes of waste annually. Individuals and governments make decisions about consumption and waste management that affect the daily health, productivity, and cleanliness of communities. Poorly managed waste is contaminating the world’s oceans, clogging drains and causing flooding, transmitting diseases, increasing respiratory problems, harming animals that consume waste unknowingly, and affecting economic development. Unmanaged and improperly managed waste from decades of economic growth requires urgent action at all levels of society. What a Waste 2.0: A Global Snapshot of Solid Waste Management to 2050 aggregates extensive solid aste data at the national and urban levels. It estimates and projects waste generation to 2030 and 2050. Beyond the core data metrics from waste generation to disposal, the report provides information on waste management costs, revenues, and tariffs; special wastes; regulations; public communication; administrative and operational models; and the informal sector. Solid waste management accounts for approximately 20 percent of municipal budgets in low-income countries and 10 percent of municipal budgets in middle-income countries, on average. Waste management is often under the jurisdiction of local authorities facing competing priorities and limited resources and capacities in planning, contract management, and operational monitoring. These factors make sustainable waste management a complicated proposition; most low- and middle-income countries, and their respective cities, are struggling to address these challenges. Waste management data are critical to creating policy and planning for local contexts. Understanding how much waste is generated—especially with rapid urbanization and population growth—as well as the types of waste generated helps local governments to select appropriate management methods and plan for future demand. It allows governments to design a system with a suitable number of vehicles, establish efficient routes, set targets for diversion of waste, track progress, and adapt as consumption patterns change. With accurate data, governments can realistically allocate resources, assess relevant technologies, and consider strategic partners for service provision, such as the private sector or nongovernmental organizations. What a Waste 2.0: A Global Snapshot of Solid Waste Management to 2050 provides the most up-to-date information available to empower citizens and governments around the world to effectively address the pressing global crisis of waste. Additional information is available at http://www.worldbank.org/what-a-waste.
Rapid population growth, high standards of living, and technological development are constantly increasing the diversity and quantity of solid waste. The production of solid municipal waste associated with the high proportion of organic waste and its improper disposal lead to considerable environmental pollution due to the emission of greenhouse gases such as methane, carbon dioxide, etc. In such a challenging environment, municipal authorities need to develop more effective solutions to manage the growing urban solid waste. Most of the municipal solid waste mainly constitutes degradable materials, which represent a significant role in greenhouse gas emissions in urban localities. Integrated solid waste management approaches must be developed and improved to manage the increasing organic fractions of municipal solid waste, which helps to reduce greenhouse emissions with potential economic benefits. A sustainable management of municipal solid waste systems constitutes a promising and attractive trend to study current consumption behaviors responsible for waste generation, and to protect the global ecosystem. This book presents the management of municipal of solid waste, including recycling and landfill technologies. Moreover, composition and types of waste will be investigated. As a result, the most appropriate and feasible scenarios for the management of municipal solid waste are presented to provide the respected readership with the scientific background for sustainable development in these processes, which are increasingly supported by innovative methodologies for holistic assessment of process sustainability.
Solid waste has grown into a relatively difficult problem to solve for those responsible for its management; these responsibilities include the collection, transport, treatment, and disposal of solid wastes, particularly wastes generated in medium and large urban centres. This problem is even more intense in economically developing countries, where the financial, human, and other critical resources are scarce in general. In the last decade, there has been a great interest and awareness regarding the environmentally safe management of waste worldwide, centralised in legislative, administrative, standardisation, and research activities in this field. Therefore, it is essential to develop short- and long-term waste management strategies (often named the 3Rs) and their consequent implementation in compliance with the formulated priorities for waste: (1) Reduce, (2) Recycle, (3) Reuse and (4) environmentally safe disposal. Several contradictions and lack of agreement still exist, even regarding the major basic definitions, e.g., which material should be treated as "waste" and which as a "beneficial raw material", which wastes are "hazardous" and which are "non-hazardous", etc. Quite often, different approaches and as a consequence, waste management/disposals are adopted for the same situation/materials. Environmental risk assessment procedures and mode of actions are varied greatly not only within national levels, but also at regional levels within the same country by different groups of scientists and/or policy makers. The general idea of the book has arisen from the mutual experience of many specialists in numerous disciplines from different countries involved in the problem of environmental assessment, economic and monitoring approaches, and control approaches for chemicals generated from solid waste disposal. Solid waste worldwide issues nowadays reflect the complexity and unbalanced development of our world at the beginning of the 21st century. This book covers a broad group of wastes, from biowaste to hazardous waste. The contributors to the book are recognised experts in the diverse fields associated with the issues of waste management and the reuse-recycle of materials, and are from different parts of the world. Authors present their experience and approaches considering both international and national/local specifics. The book is addressed to the wide range of end-users, decision-makers and professionals involved in environmental and agricultural issues: administration, designers, manufacturers, policy makers, farmers, researchers, academics and university students, and is focused on waste properties, environmental behaviour and management in an environmentally safe way. It was not the intention of the editor/authors to exhaust the subject, which is intensely broad, but to give a general idea with updating trends in the field of solid waste management concerning disposal, monitoring, assessment and remedial options, which are demonstrated also in case studies. The authors hope that this book to some extent will contribute to the trials and efforts for the proper, environmentally safe practices of solid waste disposal, and will provide state-of-the-art information and discussion, monitoring strategies, advanced approaches and methods, techniques and equipment for environmentally safe disposal and remediation of solid wastes.
Solid Waste Management (SWM) is a matter of great concern in the urban areas of developing countries. The municipal authorities who are responsible for managing municipal solid waste are unable to discharge their obligations effectively because they lack the in-house capacity to handle the complexities of the process. It is heartening to see that the World Bank has prepared this book covering all important aspects of municipal SWM in great depth. The book covers very lucidly the present scenario of SWM in urban areas, the system deficiencies that exist, and the steps that need to be taken to correct SWM practices in compliance with Municipal Solid Waste (Management and Handling) Rules 2000 ratified by the Government of India. The book shares examples of best practices adopted in various parts of the country and abroad, and very appropriately covers the institutional, financial, social, and legal aspects of solid waste management, which are essential for sustainability of the system. It provides a good insight on how to involve the community, nongovernmental organizations, and the private sector to help improve the efficiency and cost effectiveness of the service, and shows how contracting mechanisms can be used to involve the private sector in SWM services. This book will be a very useful tool for city managers and various stakeholders who deal with municipal solid waste management in the design and execution of appropriate and cost-effective systems.
Solid waste was already a problem long before water and air pollution issues attracted public attention. Historically the problem associated with solid waste can be dated back to prehistoric days. Due to the invention of new products, technologies and services the quantity and quality of the waste have changed over the years. Waste characteristics not only depend on income, culture and geography but also on a society's economy and, situations like disasters that affect that economy. There was tremendous industrial activity in Europe during the industrial revolution. The twentieth century is recognized as the American Century and the twenty-first century is recognized as the Asian Century in which everyone wants to earn ‘as much as possible’. After Asia the currently developing Africa could next take the center stage. With transitions in their economies many countries have also witnessed an explosion of waste quantities. Solid waste problems and approaches to tackling them vary from country to country. For example, while efforts are made to collect and dispose hospital waste through separate mechanisms in India it is burnt together with municipal solid waste in Sweden. While trans-boundary movement of waste has been addressed in numerous international agreements, it still reaches developing countries in many forms. While thousands of people depend on waste for their livelihood throughout the world, many others face problems due to poor waste management. In this context solid waste has not remained an issue to be tackled by the local urban bodies alone. It has become a subject of importance for engineers as well as doctors, psychologist, economists, and climate scientists and any others. There are huge changes in waste management in different parts of the world at different times in history. To address these issues, an effort has been made by the authors to combine their experience and bring together a new text book on the theory and practice of the subject covering the important relevant literature at the same time.
In a world where waste incinerators are not an option and landfills are at over capacity, cities are hard pressed to find a solution to the problem of what to do with their solid waste. Handbook of Solid Waste Management, 2/e offers a solution. This handbook offers an integrated approach to the planning, design, and management of economical and environmentally responsible solid waste disposal system. Let twenty industry and government experts provide you with the tools to design a solid waste management system capable of disposing of waste in a cost-efficient and environmentally responsible manner. Focusing on the six primary functions of an integrated system--source reduction, toxicity reduction, recycling and reuse, composting, waste- to-energy combustion, and landfilling--they explore each technology and examine its problems, costs, and legal and social ramifications.
