Abstract
As more people move to urban areas and as consumption levels rise, cities are producing ever-growing volumes of waste. In 2012, worldwide flows of municipal solid waste (MSW, known more commonly as trash or garbage) totaled some 1.3 billion tons, a figure that could rise to 2.2 billion tons per year by 2025. Much of this waste ends up in landfills, which generate serious air and water pollution and contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. MSW is the third largest source of human-caused methane emissions, and the open burning and transport of waste release significant amounts of black carbon particulates and carbon dioxide (CO2). Leachate from landfills contaminates groundwater and poses a risk of vector-borne disease.
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Notes
- 1.
Daniel Hoornweg and Perinaz Bhada-Tata, What a Waste: A Global Review of Solid Waste Management (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2012); United Nations, Municipal Solid Waste Action Statement and Plan, prepared for Climate Summit 2014: Catalyzing Action, New York, September 23, 2014.
- 2.
Mark Roseland, Toward Sustainable Communities: Solutions for Citizens and Their Governments (Gabriola Island, Canada: New Society Publishers, 2012), 100.
- 3.
Table 13–1 from International Labour Organization (ILO), Working Towards Sustainable Development (Geneva: 2012), 112.
- 4.
Roseland, Toward Sustainable Communities, 102.
- 5.
ILO, Working Towards Sustainable Development.
- 6.
C40 Cities, “Solid Waste Management Initiative. Sustainable Solid Waste Systems: Network Overview,” www.c40.org/networks/sustainable_solid_waste_systems, viewed October 9, 2015.
- 7.
United Nations, Municipal Solid Waste Action Statement and Plan.
- 8.
Office of the City Auditor, Portland, Oregon, “5.33.080 Environmentally Preferable Procurement,” February 20, 2013, www.portlandonline.com/auditor/?c=37766&a=441003; City of Portland, Oregon, Planning and Sustainability, “2015 Sustainable City Principles, 2030 Objectives,” www.portlandoregon.gov/bps/article/527220; Mary Mazzoni, “Two Years In, Lessons from Portland’s Composting Program,” Earth911.com, September 17, 2013.
- 9.
Virali Gokaldas, “San Francisco, USA. Creating a Culture of Zero Waste,” in Cecilia Allen et al., On the Road to Zero Waste. Successes and Lessons from Around the World (Quezon City, The Philippines: Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA), June 2012).
- 10.
New York City Mayor’s Office of Sustainability, “Waste and Recycling,” www.nyc.gov/html/planyc/html/sustainability/waste-recycling.shtml; Buenos Aires from Siemens and C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, “C40 and Siemens Honor Cities for Leadership in Tackling Climate Change,” press release (New York: September 23, 2014); Vancouver from Roseland, Toward Sustainable Communities, 107.
- 11.
Aimee Van Vliet, “The Story of Capannori – A Zero Waste Champion,” Zero Waste Europe, written for GAIA (Brussels: September 2013); Silvia Giannelli, “Pioneering Italian Town Leads Europe in Waste Recycling,” Inter Press Service, May 17, 2013.
- 12.
Joan Marc Simon, The Story of Gipuzkoa (Brussels: Zero Waste Europe, June 2015).
- 13.
Erika Oblak, The Story of Ljubljana (Brussels: Zero Waste Europe, June 2015).
- 14.
Cecilia Allen, Flanders, Belgium: Europe’s Best Recycling and Prevention Program (Quezon City, The Philippines: GAIA, June 2012).
- 15.
C40 Cities, “Waste Management System Case Study: Oslo, Norway,” December 4, 2012, www.c40.org/case_studies/waste-management-system; John Tagliabue, “A City That Turns Garbage into Energy,” New York Times, April 29, 2013; Sustainable Cities, “Waste and Energy Management, Oslo,” www.sustainablecities.eu/local-stories/oslo-waste-management; Stefan Holmerz, “Oslo’s Colourful Solution to Waste Management,” Waste Management World 16, no. 3 (2015).
- 16.
Waste and population data from C40 Cities, “Waste Management System Case Study: Oslo, Norway.” Box 13–1. based on the following sources: Nate Seltenrich, “Incineration Versus Recycling: In Europe, A Debate Over Trash,” Yale Environment 360, August 28, 2013; Helen Russell, “Trash to Cash: Norway Leads the Way in Turning Waste into Energy,” The Guardian (U.K.), June 14, 2013; Confederation of European Waste-to-Energy Plants, “Waste-to-Energy in Europe in 2013,” www.cewep.eu/information/data/studies/m_1459; Eurostat, “Municipal Waste Statistics,” July 2015, http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Municipal_waste_statistics; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Advancing Sustainable Materials Management: Facts and Figures 2013 (Washington, DC: June 2015), Table ES-1.
- 17.
ICLEI–Local Governments for Sustainability and International Renewable Energy Agency, Belo Horizonte, Brazil: Waste to Energy for More Effective Landfill Site Management (Abu Dhabi: 2012); EPA, “Energy Projects and Candidate Landfills,” March 4, 2015, http://www3.epa.gov/lmop/projects-candidates/index.html; Ann Ballinger and Dominic Hogg, The Potential Contribution of Waste Management to a Low Carbon Economy (Brussels: Zero Waste Europe, Zero Waste France, and ACR+, 2015); C40 News Team, “Waste Management a Priority for C40’s African Cities,” National Geographic, March 3, 2014.
- 18.
Natalie Mayer, “100% Biogas-Fuelled Public Transport in Linköping, Sweden,” in Mark Swilling et al., City-Level Decoupling: Urban Resource Flows and the Governance of Infrastructure Transitions. Annex: Case Studies from Selected Cities, A Report of the Working Group on Cities of the International Resource Panel (Paris: United Nations Environment Programme, 2013), 84–86.
- 19.
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and ICLEI, “Lille Metropole, France. Waste to Fuel: Biogas Powered Buses in Lille Metropole,” Urban NEXUS Case Study 07 (Bonn: August 2014); European Biofuels Technology Platform, “Biogas/Biomethane for Use as a Transport Fuel,” www.biofuelstp.eu/biogas.html.
- 20.
Bellamy Pailthorp, “Renewable Natural Gas from Landfill Fueling Local Buses,” KPIU 88.5 Seattle, August 16, 2013, www.kplu.org/post/renewable-natural-gas-landfill-fueling-local-buses; Big Blue Bus, “Big Blue Bus, Fueling a Renewable Future One Bus at a Time,” press release (Santa Monica: July 15, 2015).
- 21.
ILO, Working Towards Sustainable Development.
- 22.
Allen et al., On the Road to Zero Waste.
- 23.
Ibid.; Collaborative Working Group on Solid Waste Management in Low- and Middle-income Countries and GIZ, The Economics of the Informal Sector in Solid Waste Management (St. Gallen and Eschborn: April 2011).
- 24.
Neil Tangri, “Pune, India. Waste Pickers Lead the Way to Zero Waste,” in Allen et al., On the Road to Zero Waste.
- 25.
Apiwat Ratanawaraha, “Socialisation of Solid Waste Management in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam,” in Swilling et al., City-Level Decoupling, 81–83.
- 26.
Melanie Samson, ed., Refusing to Be Cast Aside: Waste Pickers Organising Around the World (Cambridge, MA: Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO), 2009); ILO, Working Towards Sustainable Development. Box 13–2 from ILO, idem, and from Sonia M. Dias, Overview of the Legal Framework for Inclusion of Informal Recyclers in Solid Waste Management in Brazil, Urban Policies Briefing Note No. 8 (Cambridge, MA: WIEGO, 2011).
- 27.
Oscar Ricardo Schmeiske, “Incentivised Recycling in Curitiba, Brazil,” in Swilling et al., City-Level Decoupling, 79–81.
- 28.
Ibid.
- 29.
Cecilia Allen, “Buenos Aires City, Argentina. Including Grassroots Recyclers,” in Allen et al., On the Road to Zero Waste.
- 30.
Ibid.
- 31.
Kristie Robinson, “Buenos Aires Embraces ‘Cartoneros’ in Push for Zero Waste,” Citiscope.org, October 16, 2014; C40 Cities, “Buenos Aires – Solid Urban Waste Reduction Project,” City Climate Leadership Awards 2014, www.c40.org/awards/1/profiles/13.
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Renner, M. (2016). Source Reduction and Recycling of Waste. In: State of the World. State of the World. Island Press, Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-756-8_18
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