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Learning from the past to plan for the future: An historical review of the evolution of waste and resource management 1970–2020 and reflections on priorities 2020–2030 – The perspective of an involved witness

Improving waste and resource management (WaRM) around the world can halve the weight of plastics entering the oceans, significantly mitigate global heating and contribute directly to 12 of 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs). Achieving such results demands understanding and learning from histori...

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Autor principal: Wilson, David C
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: SAGE Publications 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10693744/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37732707
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0734242X231178025
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author Wilson, David C
author_facet Wilson, David C
author_sort Wilson, David C
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description Improving waste and resource management (WaRM) around the world can halve the weight of plastics entering the oceans, significantly mitigate global heating and contribute directly to 12 of 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs). Achieving such results demands understanding and learning from historical evolution of WaRM. The baseline is 1970, prior to environmental legislation. Early steps in the Global North focused on the ‘technical fix’ within strictly enforced legal frameworks, first bringing hazardous wastes and municipal solid wastes (MSW) under control, then gradually ramping up environmental standards. Using modern technologies to the Global South often failed due to institutional and financial constraints. From 1990, focus switched to integrating technical and governance aspects: local institutional coherence, financial sustainability, provider inclusivity, user inclusivity, national legislative and policy framework. The Global North rediscovered recycling, using policy measures to promote segregation at source; this relied on new markets in emerging economies, which had largely disappeared by 2020. The Global South is making progress on bringing wastes under control, but around 2.7 billion people lack access to waste collection, while ~40% of collected MSW is open dumped or burned – a continuing global waste emergency. So, much remains to be done to move further towards a circular economy. Three policy priorities are critical for all countries: access to sustainable financing, rethinking sustainable recycling and worldwide extended producer responsibility with teeth. Extending services to unserved communities (SDG11.6.1) requires a people-centred approach, working with communities to provide both quality services and decent livelihoods for collection and recycling workers.
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spelling pubmed-106937442023-12-04 Learning from the past to plan for the future: An historical review of the evolution of waste and resource management 1970–2020 and reflections on priorities 2020–2030 – The perspective of an involved witness Wilson, David C Waste Manag Res Original Articles Improving waste and resource management (WaRM) around the world can halve the weight of plastics entering the oceans, significantly mitigate global heating and contribute directly to 12 of 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs). Achieving such results demands understanding and learning from historical evolution of WaRM. The baseline is 1970, prior to environmental legislation. Early steps in the Global North focused on the ‘technical fix’ within strictly enforced legal frameworks, first bringing hazardous wastes and municipal solid wastes (MSW) under control, then gradually ramping up environmental standards. Using modern technologies to the Global South often failed due to institutional and financial constraints. From 1990, focus switched to integrating technical and governance aspects: local institutional coherence, financial sustainability, provider inclusivity, user inclusivity, national legislative and policy framework. The Global North rediscovered recycling, using policy measures to promote segregation at source; this relied on new markets in emerging economies, which had largely disappeared by 2020. The Global South is making progress on bringing wastes under control, but around 2.7 billion people lack access to waste collection, while ~40% of collected MSW is open dumped or burned – a continuing global waste emergency. So, much remains to be done to move further towards a circular economy. Three policy priorities are critical for all countries: access to sustainable financing, rethinking sustainable recycling and worldwide extended producer responsibility with teeth. Extending services to unserved communities (SDG11.6.1) requires a people-centred approach, working with communities to provide both quality services and decent livelihoods for collection and recycling workers. SAGE Publications 2023-09-21 2023-12 /pmc/articles/PMC10693744/ /pubmed/37732707 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0734242X231178025 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
spellingShingle Original Articles
Wilson, David C
Learning from the past to plan for the future: An historical review of the evolution of waste and resource management 1970–2020 and reflections on priorities 2020–2030 – The perspective of an involved witness
title Learning from the past to plan for the future: An historical review of the evolution of waste and resource management 1970–2020 and reflections on priorities 2020–2030 – The perspective of an involved witness
title_full Learning from the past to plan for the future: An historical review of the evolution of waste and resource management 1970–2020 and reflections on priorities 2020–2030 – The perspective of an involved witness
title_fullStr Learning from the past to plan for the future: An historical review of the evolution of waste and resource management 1970–2020 and reflections on priorities 2020–2030 – The perspective of an involved witness
title_full_unstemmed Learning from the past to plan for the future: An historical review of the evolution of waste and resource management 1970–2020 and reflections on priorities 2020–2030 – The perspective of an involved witness
title_short Learning from the past to plan for the future: An historical review of the evolution of waste and resource management 1970–2020 and reflections on priorities 2020–2030 – The perspective of an involved witness
title_sort learning from the past to plan for the future: an historical review of the evolution of waste and resource management 1970–2020 and reflections on priorities 2020–2030 – the perspective of an involved witness
topic Original Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10693744/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37732707
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0734242X231178025
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