Solid Waste Management

This study summarizes the findings of a non-lending analytical activity carried out by the World Bank in 2004 and 2005. The work was driven by concern over the quality of the urban environment, and undertaken in a context of uncertainty on the suitability and effectiveness of Bank investment in this area, particularly in regard to components that generate little or no direct revenue, like waste disposal and sewage treatment.

This note states that Latin America's urban population has grown, and its solid waste has increased at an even faster pace. Today the region's urban areas generate about 369,000 tons a day of solid waste. Ensuring that the waste is collected and disposed of properly will require strengthening the strategic role of municipalities. The private sector already plays a big part in waste collection. But private providers could do more in waste disposal and management, helping to improve service in close coordination with local authorities.

The Environmental, Health, and Safety (EHS) Guidelines are technical reference documents with general and industryspecific examples of Good International Industry Practice (GIIP)1. When one or more members of the World Bank Group are involved in a project, these EHS Guidelines are applied as required by their respective policies and standards. These industry sector EHS guidelines are designed to be used together with the General EHS Guidelines document, which provides guidance to users on common EHS issues potentially applicable to all industry sectors.

For the urban poor in developing countries, informal waste recycling is a common way to earn income. There are few reliable estimates of the number of people engaged in waste picking or of its economic and environmental impact. Yet studies suggest that when organized and supported, waste picking can spur grassroots investment by poor people, create jobs, reduce poverty, save municipalities money, improve industrial competitiveness, conserve natural resources, and protect the environment.

This study provides support to the Bank's ability to conduct client dialogue on solid waste management technology selection, and will contribute to client decision-making. The goal of the study was to fully explore the use of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the Research Triangle Institute (EPA/RTI) holistic decision model to study alternative solid waste systems in a wide array of waste management conditions, using data collected from cities selected in each region of the world.

Human activities create waste, and the ways that waste is handled, stored, collected, and disposed of can pose risks to the environment and to public health. Solid waste management (SWM) includes all activities that seek to minimize health, environmental, and aesthetic impacts of solid waste. In urban areas, especially in the rapidly urbanizing cities of the developing world, problems and issues of municipal solid waste management (MSWM) are of immediate importance. This book addresses the problem by focusing on India.

Along with economic growth and improved living standards, waste from households, industries, and commercial or service establishments is expected to increase rapidly over the next years. Managing this waste is a hard challenge for the Government of Vietnam because of its substantial cost and lack of awareness and participation of people and businesses. Wastes can be classified according to: their form (wastewater, solid waste); their origin (industrial wastes, agricultural wastes, urban (municipal) wastes); and their hazardous nature (non-hazardous or hazardous).

The overall amount of mercury in the mercury containing lamps (MCL) market in Sub-Saharan Africa is low compared to other sources of mercury, yet it can be further reduced up-stream by improving lamp lifetime and mercury content. One of the main objectives of this report is to provide policy-makers with the knowledge and tools they need when confronted with a potentially significant flow of end of life mercury containing lamps and the potential mercury pollution it could generate, either airborne or by seeping through the ground to water bodies.

The Korean government introduced its Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) system in 2000 that strengthened producers responsibility from the production stage up to collection and recycling. EPR system is applied to four packaging materials (paper packaging, glass bottles, metal cans, and plastic packaging), lubricants, tires, fluorescent light bulbs, batteries and electronic products.

This report presents the main results from cost models that were developed as an input to the High Powered Expert Committee on Urban Development in order to estimate the investment, operations, and maintenance requirements for urban water, sanitation and municipal solid waste in India. The cost models are designed as tools that allow linking the various building blocks of the cost estimation to one another, and tests the impact of the main model assumptions on the overall investment requirements.