Municipal Solid Waste and the Environment: A Global Perspective
- 21 November 2012
- journal article
- Published by Annual Reviews in Annual Review of Environment and Resources
- Vol. 37 (1), 277-309
- https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-environ-050511-122532
Abstract
Municipal solid waste (MSW) reflects the culture that produces it and affects the health of the people and the environment surrounding it. Globally, people are discarding growing quantities of waste, and its composition is more complex than ever before, as plastic and electronic consumer products diffuse. Concurrently, the world is urbanizing at an unprecedented rate. These trends pose a challenge to cities, which are charged with managing waste in a socially and environmentally acceptable manner. Effective waste management strategies depend on local waste characteristics, which vary with cultural, climatic, and socioeconomic variables, and institutional capacity. Globally, waste governance is becoming regionalized and formalized. In industrialized nations, where citizens produce far more waste than do other citizens, waste tends to be managed formally at a municipal or regional scale. In less-industrialized nations, where citizens produce less waste, which is mostly biogenic, a combination of formal and informal actors manages waste. Many waste management policies, technologies, and behaviors provide a variety of environmental benefits, including climate change mitigation. Key waste management challenges include integrating the informal waste sector in developing cities, reducing consumption in industrialized cities, increasing and standardizing the collection and analysis of solid waste data, and effectively managing increasingly complex waste while protecting people and the environment.Keywords
This publication has 94 references indexed in Scilit:
- The anaerobic digestion of solid organic wasteWaste Management, 2011
- Solid waste workers and livelihood strategies in Greater Port-au-Prince, HaitiWaste Management, 2010
- Cairo’s Contested Garbage: Sustainable Solid Waste Management and the Zabaleen’s Right to the CitySustainability, 2010
- Factors influencing waste separation and utilization among households in the Lake Victoria crescent, UgandaWaste Management, 2009
- Problems and current practices of solid waste management in Port-au-Prince (Haiti)Waste Management, 2009
- Global warming factor of municipal solid waste management in EuropeWaste Management & Research: The Journal for a Sustainable Circular Economy, 2009
- Are forestation, bio-char and landfilled biomass adequate offsets for the climate effects of burning fossil fuels?Energy Policy, 2009
- Environmental implications of plastic debris in marine settings—entanglement, ingestion, smothering, hangers-on, hitch-hiking and alien invasionsPhilosophical Transactions Of The Royal Society B-Biological Sciences, 2009
- A review of waste management practices and their impact on human healthWaste Management, 2009
- Scavenger cooperatives in Asia and Latin AmericaResources, Conservation and Recycling, 2000