ISWA 2018 CCAC Waste Initiative Session: Improving air quality and mitigating climate change through better waste management

The Climate and Clean Air Coalition's Municipal Solid Waste Initiative was launched in 2012 to assist cities and municipalities reduce short-lived climate pollutant (SLCP) emissions from waste management. Organizing and leading workshops involving city representatives has been one of the initiative’s key capacity building activities.

During the Coalition’s High-level Assembly meeting at COP 23 and through the Bonn Communique, the Coalition Partners resolved to develop policies and measures that encourage national, state, and local governments to work together with the private sector to reduce SLCP emissions from municipal solid waste and create healthy cities and communities. The commitment places a particular emphasis on the following workstreams:

• Preventing and reducing food loss and waste, including by setting up integrated solid waste management systems oriented towards resource and energy recovery;
• Diverting organic waste from landfills;
• Adopting measures to capture and use methane from landfills; and
• Reducing the open burning of waste, while working towards achieving universal waste collection by 2025.

The Coalition Partners have tasked the Waste Initiative with helping to fulfill these commitments. As part of this effort, the Waste Initiative is conducting a capacity-building session for stakeholders in Asia that will present best practices in each of these workstreams.

The three and a half-hour session will take place during the 2018 ISWA World Congress in Kuala Lumpur.  The session will include numerous technical and policy-focused presentations interspersed with case studies, organized as follows:

• An overview presentation will frame the session by providing information of the motivation for reducing SLCPs from the waste sector, the Coalition’s role, and the Waste Initiative’s efforts to date.
• The next series of presentations will focus on policies, strategies, and technologies for diverting organic waste from landfills. In addition, the session will include a deeper dive into food waste reduction approaches to keeping organic waste out of landfills.
• This will be followed by a series of presentations that focus on managing landfills, with a key focus on capturing and using landfill gas.
• The final portion of the session will focus on preventing open burning of waste through improved waste collection coverage and efficiency.