For many cities the disposal and treatment of waste is a growing burden that is increasingly difficult to tackle. From 2000-2012, waste generated in cities approximately doubled, increasing from 680 million tonnes to 1.3 billion tonnes per year. As a result of population growth, urbanisation, and changing consumption patterns, waste is expected to nearly double again to 2.2 billion tonnes by 2025.
The waste problem is most severe in urbanizing regions and developing countries, where collection and disposal services do not exist or cannot cope with increasing amounts of waste. As a result, waste is either disposed in open and uncontrolled dumpsites, or openly burned. These practices have deleterious impacts on public health, the environment, and the wellbeing of waste workers and nearby residents.
Waste is a significant source of short-lived climate pollutants. As the third largest man-made source of methane, waste contributes to climate change and ozone pollution. Open waste burning and the use of polluting collection vehicles emit black carbon, a key component of particulate matter (PM2.5) air pollution. When unsustainably managed, waste is also a breeding ground for toxins and microbes that contaminate the air, soil, and water.
There are proven solutions to improve waste management practices that will reduce emissions from the sector and lead to cleaner, more sustainable cities. The Climate and Clean Air Coalition’s Municipal Solid Waste Initiative works with a network of cities around the world to advance waste sector mitigation practices in three key areas:
The Initiative brings together technical experts and policymakers from all levels of government to offer the following types of assistance :
Since the circumstances in each city are different, these activities are determined based on individual needs. These activities may cover: preventing or reducing waste generation, strengthening policy planning, scaling up individual city action to the national level, banning open burning and open dumping, diverting organic waste from landfills, optimising waste collection routes, reducing emissions from waste collection vehicles, and recovering methane from landfills for energy production.
Activities under the Municipal Solid Waste Initiative support the commitments made by Coalition ministers to:
To achieve these goals, the Initiative has set out to help 1,000 cities develop robust waste management systems. The ultimate goal is to enable these cities, and their national governments, to track emissions reductions, self-fund or obtain sustainable financing for capital projects that reduce and prevent emissions, and scale up actions beyond the existing network.
Our activities in the solid waste sector support commitments made by Coalition ministers to encourage actions by national, state, and local governments to avoid and reduce methane emissions from organic waste, prevent the open burning of waste, and work towards achieving universal waste collection by 2025. Our key achievements to date include:
Waste methane emissions targeted in 36 CCAC partners’ NDCs
Lead Partner: A Coalition partner with an active role in coordinating, monitoring and guiding the work of an initiative.
Implementer: A Coalition partner or actor receiving Coalition funds to implement an activity or initiative.
Globally, landfills are the third largest anthropogenic source of methane, accounting for approximately 11% of estimated global methane emissions, or nearly 800 MtCO2e. Uncollected waste can contribute to open burning and illegal landfilling or open dumping, contributors to methane and black carbon.
The World Bank projects that municipal solid waste streams will nearly double worldwide by 2025, which not only places increasing pressure on cities to provide proper collection and management services in order to avoid open dumping and open burning, but also significantly increases the load on the environment in terms of air pollutants like methane and black carbon within a business-as-usual scenario.
More efficient collection of waste and sanitary landfills as opposed to open dumping helps keep cities cleaner and thus improves surrounding ecosystem health.
Improvement of waste management systems is one of the best ways for cities to enhance real estate values and overall local value and quality of life. While waste management will always ultimately incur economic costs for a city, as a public service that needs to be provided, appropriate waste management strategies can reduce costs from environmental damage and help improve a city’s marketability. Proper waste management can create significant job opportunities as well. A recent study published by the European Commission shows that full implementation of EU waste legislation would save €72 billion a year, increase the annual turnover of the EU waste management and recycling sector by €42 billion and create over 400,000 jobs by 2020.
Waste can also be a resource. For some cities, generating energy from waste either through landfill gas capture or incineration as a part of an integrated solid waste management plan has the potential to help offset fossil fuel derived energy sources and therefore improve resource efficiency. Additionally, compost produced from organic waste can be used as a soil amendment displacing synthetic fertilizers comprised of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium.
Food waste is addressed through one of the elements of an integrated solid waste management system through the diversion of organics. Organics management is a challenge to both developed and developing cities like New York City and Penang (Malaysia). A range of technologies exists to avoid emissions of methane from decomposition of organic waste in landfills and dumps, from processing organic waste simple windrow composting to anaerobic digestion technology. Food waste can also be addressed through prevention, for example awareness raising, and outreach and incentive programs. The Initiative will continue to feature cities like New York and Penang who have specific expertise to share with the network in order to scale up successes across the globe.
Furthermore, the Initiative has identified that a key challenge to the sustainability of organics programs that is not commonly addressed by the industry is how to create a market for the generated compost or other products. That is why the World Bank is designing a results-based incentive mechanism to increase the diversion of organic waste in Penang and is developing a learning tool to help cities from both developed or developing countries on creating sustainable markets for composting to ensure the success of their food waste and organics programs.
In the waste sector, it is important to note that reductions are guaranteed as you move up the waste hierarchy, from open dumping to waste avoidance. However, because the widely varying situations in the world – for example waste composition, climate, economic and social consequences, there is no standardized approach to easily calculate the magnitude of SLCP reduction via waste management efforts.
Although estimates can be made based on proxies, they will not be realistic or verifiable. The initiative has begun work to build a calculator to be able to quantify baseline emissions and projected emissions reductions with standardized methodology. We expect the tool to be functional by October.
Again, rapid action to reduce black carbon and methane can be achieved through banning open burning, optimizing transportation routes and upgrading equipment, diverting organics etc. However these activities cannot be implemented alone as there are considerations for economic and social challenges. That is why the initiative supports the development of tailored integrated solid waste management at the local and national levels. The initiative stresses that there are no one-size-fits-all solutions.
In the waste sector, it is important to note that reductions are guaranteed as you move up the waste hierarchy, from open dumping to waste avoidance. However, because the widely varying situations in the world – for example waste composition, climate, economic and social consequences, there is no standardized approach to easily calculate the magnitude of SLCP reduction via waste management efforts.
Although estimates can be made based on proxies, they will not be realistic or verifiable. The initiative has begun work to build a calculator to be able to quantify baseline emissions and projected emissions reductions with standardized methodology. We expect the tool to be functional by October.
Again, rapid action to reduce black carbon and methane can be achieved through banning open burning, optimizing transportation routes and upgrading equipment, diverting organics etc. However these activities cannot be implemented alone as there are considerations for economic and social challenges. That is why the initiative supports the development of tailored integrated solid waste management at the local and national levels. The initiative stresses that there are no one-size-fits-all solutions.
Stratus Consulting conducted a short study on mitigation options for short-lived climate pollutants (SLCP) mitigation from the waste sector and identified that the greatest potential to reduce black carbon comes from the transportation of and open burning of waste. Open burning is a challenge in many developing cities due to lack of landfill space and lack of awareness.
The Initiative’s work with cities will focus on moving up the waste hierarchy and developing integrated solid waste services, and one of the first steps is to gather data on open burning and identify options to mitigate this practice. Another important element in addressing black carbon is to challenge the transport system by optimizing collection routes and upgrading equipment.
As a part of an integrated approach to waste management, once an assessment has been conducted (first stage of city support), the initiative will be able to report on how many cities will address open burning and transportation of waste as key sources of black carbon.
The CCAC MSW Knowledge Platform is a tool that has been established to promote, share and exchange information and provide outreach resources to support cities and governments to reduce short-...
Methane, a greenhouse gas with a warming potential more than 80 times higher than CO2 over a 20-year time frame, is responsible for half a degree Celsius of warming to date. Methane’s...
This report is a product of the Global Methane Assessment (GMA) that details projections of anthropogenic methane emissions through 2030 under various baseline scenarios and assesses the...
Resources from the webinar "Methane matters - A roadmap for the waste sector"
- Presentations
Resources from the webinar "Opportunities in Waste Sector and Agriculture: Animal Feed from Organic Waste, the climate-friendly Way - Black Soldier Fly".
- Presentations
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The document provides information on programs and policies for organic waste diversion, including primary sources of organic waste; methods to separate organic waste; and policy options for...
The purpose of this tool is to collect municipal solid waste data in order to have a rapid assessment of the main aspects of the management of solid waste in any city.
This tool is a...
The purpose of this tool is to collect municipal solid waste data in a consistent manner to serve the following purposes: ...