Future of Waste Management

Why it is important?

“Solid waste management is everyone’s business. Ensuring effective and proper solid waste management is critical to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals,” said Ede Ijjasz-Vasquez, Senior Director of the World Bank’s Social, Urban, Rural and Resilience Global Practice. “Left unmanaged, dumped or burned, waste harms human health, hurts the environment and climate, and hinders economic growth in poor and rich countries alike.”

“Waste not, want not,” they say. This old adage is especially relevant today, as global leaders and local communities alike ask for a solution to the so-called “throwaway culture.” However, trash is a larger issue that affects human health and livelihoods, the environment, and economic development in addition to individuals and households.

Impact of Waste

Over the next 30 years, increased urbanisation, population expansion, and economic development will cause global waste to increase by 70%, reaching a startling 3.40 billion tonnes of waste generated yearly.

Solid waste management is a global issue that affects every individual on the planet. And because over 90% of rubbish is dumped or burned openly in low-income nations, the poor and most vulnerable are disproportionately harmed.

Landslides of rubbish dumps have buried homes and individuals under heaps of waste in recent years. And it is the poorest who frequently live near waste dumps and rely on rubbish pickers to power their city’s recycling system, putting them vulnerable to major health consequences.

More than 70% of collected urban waste is thrown in India’s landfills, which are already overflowing.

Environmental Issues

“Poorly managed waste is contaminating the world’s oceans, clogging drains and causing flooding, transmitting diseases, increasing respiratory problems from burning, harming animals that consume waste unknowingly, and affecting economic development, such as through tourism,” said Sameh Wahba, World Bank Director for Urban and Territorial Development, Disaster Risk Management and Resilience.

Waste-related greenhouse gas emissions are also a significant contributor to climate change. Solid waste management, excluding transportation, accounted for 5% of global emissions in 2016.

Solutions

“Environmentally sound waste management touches so many critical aspects of development,” said Silpa Kaza, World Bank Urban Development Specialist and lead author of the What a Waste 2.0 report. “Yet, solid waste management is often an overlooked issue when it comes to planning sustainable, healthy, and inclusive cities and communities. Governments must take urgent action to address waste management for their people and the planet.”

Waste disposers will “no longer be burying or burning people’s garbage as they do now” by 2025, according to Marcus Gover, director of the UK advocacy organisation WRAP. These businesses will merge to form the “reprocessing industry,” in which the primary goal is to return “useful materials to producers” rather than dump waste.

Designers and manufacturers must also rethink their approaches. Gover claims that today’s items must be viewed as tomorrow’s raw materials. When that happens, items will start to be designed to survive longer and be easier to fix and eventually deconstruct. The easy-to-disassemble lightbulb from Phillips is an excellent example.

According to research, investing in sustainable waste management makes financial sense. Uncollected rubbish and improper waste disposal have serious health and environmental consequences. The expense of dealing with these consequences is many times that of constructing and managing basic, adequate waste management systems.

The World Bank is working with governments, communities, and partners around the world to develop and finance effective solutions that can lead to improvements in environmental, social, and human capital.

Since 2000, the World Bank has invested more than $4.7 billion in over 340 solid waste management programmes around the world, including the initiatives and areas of engagement listed below.

Understanding how much and where trash is generated, as well as the sorts of waste produced, allows local governments to allocate budget and land more realistically, evaluate applicable technology, and consider strategic service providers such as the private sector or non-governmental organiZations.

Data Driven Waste Management That Works

Waste management’s future begins and ends with technological advancements. To advance its work sector, the waste management industry, like every other industry, must become digitised and data-driven. Smart and competitive is the future! Businesses, in particular, are expected to be one step ahead of their competitors.

Data is collected when smart waste management technologies are used over time. These data from hand sensors can be utilised to spot fill trends, optimise driver routes and schedules, and cut expenses. The cost of these sensors is continuously reducing, making smart bins increasingly affordable to use and appealing to businesses and city officials.

Greater innovation in waste segregation

Think of carbon fibre. On the one hand, it’s at the forefront of transportation innovation, with companies like McLaren and Airbus ecstatic about its strength, weight, and energy efficiency. However, little care has been given to its re-use or recycling. He goes on to say that closing these “resource cycles” is critical. “We’ll also need more ingenious technologies to swiftly and efficiently separate materials for recycling.”

One requirement is to automate the separation of plastic from paper. It’s also crucial to distinguish one plastic polymer from another. Near-infrared spectroscopy could provide an answer in this case. The approach uses diffuse reflection to differentiate individual polymer compositions based on their spectral characteristics.

Making Composting Mandatory

In 2012, only 5% of food waste avoided landfills. This means that millions of tonnes of food are still sitting at the bottom of a landfill, waiting to be transformed into nutritious compost for personal or municipal consumption. As a result, more cities around the world are implementing organic material composting programmes, with some even making it mandatory. We can only hope that the growing interest in composting will continue.

Eco-Friendly is more than a buzz

Since the last century, the term “sustainability” has been used in the media, but business module approaches to sustainability have recently acquired prominence. Companies have begun to promote themselves as environmentally friendly in order to improve their sustainability and customer service.

Measuring demographic awareness for home and individual waste management practices and taking action against them is viewed as a benefit to society that the government can deliver. We shall see a lot more recycling actions in the future of garbage management. Although recycling appears to be the most important system component here, more widespread public participation in the creation of a more effective waste management framework is critical.

Ban on Plastics

It’s no news that most plastics take hundreds, if not thousands, of years to disintegrate (which is still awful for the environment), and that they’re extremely harmful to local ecosystems and species. As a result, several communities are addressing the plastic garbage generated within their borders. Styrofoam in particular has been widely addressed over the years, and cities and towns around the country are gradually enacting restrictions on polystyrene foam food packaging. While it is cost-effective and sturdy enough for packaging, its small weight makes it susceptible to wind dispersal, and it can seep substances such as styrene into the groundwater. With Styrofoam restrictions, plastic shopping bag bans, and even plastic bottle bans, the movement to phase out unsustainable and widespread plastics like these should continue.

3D Printing: Effective use of materials

3-D printing has opened doors to manufacturing that were never imagined before: from commercial and mass-production applications to more private, personal applications at home. 3-D printing technology may be able to construct a house in a single day. Of course, this technology has the potential to increase our reliance on plastic even more. Thankfully, some people are discovering that ground-up plastics from around the house — including used Legos and other plastic garbage – may be used to print with. Imagine if a completely new market for plastic trash was created to be used in 3-D printing. In many cases, recovered plastics are cheaper per pound than virgin plastics. 3-D printing has numerous advantages, but we must ensure that the materials used are as environmentally friendly as possible.

Supporting governments in making essential solid waste management funding, policy, and planning decisions is critical with a focus on waste data. Some suggestions are:

• Providing financial assistance to the poorest countries, particularly those with the fastest developing economies, in order to establish cutting-edge waste management systems.
• Supporting major trash-producing countries with comprehensive waste reduction and recycling initiatives to reduce plastic usage and marine litter.
• Consumer education, organics management, and coordinated food waste management initiatives are all used to reduce food waste.