Background

The principle objective of the Integrated Sustainable solid waste Management in Asia (ISSOWAMA) Coordination Action, funded by the European Commission under its FP7 is to raise awareness of the Integrated and Sustainable Waste Management (ISWM) approach. This focuses on all the elements in the waste management system from generation to final disposal. It also encompasses all the aspects such as social, institutional, legal, financial, economic, environmental and technical. It involves all the stakeholders at different levels in order to ensure the effective implementation of a sustainable system. It also aims at bringing together experts and stakeholders in the field of ISWM in Asian developing countries and Europe.

The project seeks to promote international cooperation between research organizations, universities, and social and governmental stakeholders (local waste processors, local municipalities and policy makers, local NGO representatives, etc) in the context of European and Asian countries.

With this aim, a solid waste management research coordination platform and a network will be established in order to coordinate, assess and guide suitable research and strategic activities for identifying aspects like cost effective and sorting technologies, environmental impacts, gaps in technical knowledge and socio-economic and policy barriers to further execution. The network will also propose directions for future research and local implementation.

Out of the overall six packages for the project, WII has been entrusted with the work of mapping and evaluation of solid waste management case studies. In order to select appropriate case studies for the activities foreseen for analysis of representative local case studies, and following a similar approach for mapping of solid waste management networks for existing networks, the beneficiaries defined a set of characterization criteria including technical and socio-economic parameters. These were later used to assess the performance of different technologies that are currently in place for managing the major waste streams in Asian developing countries. The evaluation was carried out along with the mapping of existing successful and non-successful case studies in solid waste management, which will allow better decision making.

Achievements

ISSOWAMA uses the case study approach. Good practice examples were sought out and documented in all the project countries in South Asia (Bangladesh, India), the Greater Mekong Sub-region (Cambodia, Thailand, China) and South East Asia (Indonesia and Philippines). These case studies demonstrated the ISWM method and showcased the wide variety of alternative approaches that have been adopted in the region and were used to draw out the lessons learned. This in turn helped the countries and cities to select the appropriate next steps in developing their own integrated and sustainable solid waste management system. Apart from evaluating the various cases received from partner countries (both objective and subjective evaluation), the team selected the best cases from each of the countries, ranked them and documented the best practices. WII also prepared cases from India regarding safe disposal of special wastes including e-waste, biomedical and other hazardous waste.


As a part of this project, the team has developed a performance assessment system for integrated waste management scenarios, which consisted of a set of qualitative sustainability criteria along with quantitative impact indicators, enabling assessment of waste management strategies. A mid-term review meet of the partner countries was held in Cambodia in May 2010. This meet discussed the understanding and the preliminary results of the various tasks undertaken by the different member countries including screening assessment and ISWM planning. During the course of this meet, thematic workshops and panel discussions on community-based and private initiatives on composting, recycling, final disposal at landfill and waste to energy conversion for different waste streams (municipal, medical, industrial, e-waste and agricultural) were held. The different impacts which were classified as technical, environmental and health, social and institutional and economic / financial were further discussed and deliberated. The agenda for the coming year was sorted out and the deadlines were also finalized in this meet.

The way ahead

Having successfully led the completion of ISSOWAMA work package-2, the project team is gearing up for the implementation of the work packages 3 and 4 during the next year. Work package 3 involves analysis of the relevant potential impacts of solid waste management in the Asian developing countries and review of the methodological approaches for the same. Work package 4, on the other hand, will focus on the evaluation of local case studies using different methodologies like EnTA, ERA, EIA and LCIA along with the ISWM approach. The learning from this activity is to be used to develop a set of guidelines for ISWM assessment methods in Asian countries.