Municipal Solid Waste and the Environment: A Global Perspective

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.

Predictors of Recycling Intentions among the Youth: A Developing Country Perspective

“…Unmanaged urban wastes affect biogeochemical cycles from local to global scales and hazardous wastes are particularly dangerous to the living organisms including humans [3][4][5]. Inadequate management of MSW has become a global concern that affects the quality of life in urban areas in many countries especially in the developing nations [6,7].…”

Optimizing Cellulase Production from Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) using Solid State Fermentation (SSF)

“…Municipal solid waste (MSW) management is one of the key topics in environmental protection [1]. In England, around 23.7 million tons of household waste was generated in 2009/10, which equates to 1036 Kg per household [2].…”

Gestão de resíduos sólidos urbanos nos municípios da Bacia Hidrográfica do Alto Tietê: uma análise sobre o uso de TIC no acesso à informação governamental

“…A comparação das características dos resíduos entre as cidades é muito difícil, sobretudo pela incerteza na precisão e tempestividade na coleta de dados. Mesmo entre os países, não há uma padronização nos critérios para mensurar a geração de resíduos sólidos, e embora muitas definições sobre RSU incluam os resíduos originados nas residências e comércio, outras incluem resíduos de varrição e de limpeza pública e até de origem industrial (Vergara & Tchobanoglous, 2012).…”

“…Em virtude da necessária flexibilidade e especificidade das condições locais, a gestão integrada de resíduos não prescreve soluções generalistas: essa visão sistêmica deve basear-se em princípios que permitam o desenvolvimento de soluções adequadas e compatíveis a nível local (Vergara & Tchobanoglous, 2012). Para alcançá-la torna-se necessário diferenciar três grupos de atores sociais que estão interligados nessa abordagem:…”