Help more people benefit from green recycling jobs in some of the world’s poorest places.

Empower them to keep plastic out of the ocean and create a healthier future for everyone.

On 1 May we launched our UK Aid Match appeal, Widening the Net.

We also celebrated the official launch of our three year partnership with UK waste management company Biffa, who are providing financial support and professional expertise to help WasteAid grow.

WasteAid and Biffa on Sky News

Zoë Lenkiewicz, Head of Programmes and Engagement at WasteAid and Mick Davis, Chief Operating Officer at Biffa, interviewed by Sarah-Jane Mee on Sky Sunrise about the launch of our Proud Partnership and WasteAid’s UK Aid Match campaign, Widening the Net.

Download the press release.

WasteAid in the media

The Times (pictured) and the Brighton Argus also covered the launch event, and  Zoë Lenkiewicz and Mick Davis were interviewed by Radio Reverb, helping our campaign achieve national reach.

Give before 31 July, and all public donations to our Widening the Net appeal will be doubled by the UK government, up to £2 million.

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School children from St Andrew’s in Hove joined us on the promenade for some ocean-themed entertainment provided by the Invisible Circus, alongside a beach hut made of ecobricks made by children at St Mary’s Clayton Le Moors school.

WasteAid’s Widening the Net appeal has attracted UK Aid match funding, which means that all public donations received by 31 July will be doubled by UK government.

Help us make an impact by empowering people in poor parts of the world to capture ocean-bound plastic waste and turn it into useful products! Visit the Widening the Net appeal to find out more.

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The amount of waste we produce is expected to DOUBLE in the next 15-20 years. Where is it going to go?

A growing population, increasing urbanisation, and a shift to a consumer lifestyle are leading to the generation of ever great volumes of solid waste around the world. When our waste isn’t managed properly it can end up in drains and rivers, and eventually makes its way to the sea.

Quick facts:

• More than 90% of the plastic in the sea comes from land based sources.
• Every year, 4-12 million tonnes of mismanaged waste enters the oceans from within 50km of the coast. More than half of this is from five countries in east Asia.
• An additional 0.4-4 million tonnes waste reaches the oceans via rivers. More than 90% of this waste flows along 10 major rivers in Asia and Africa.
• Overall, mismanaged household and business waste in lower-income countries probably accounts for 50-70% by weight of plastics entering the oceans.

This is a major problem, but it is only part of the story.

With two billion people living without waste collection and three billion without controlled waste disposal, the poor management of solid waste is a global crisis.

Poor management of solid waste leads to a range of negative impacts on:

• The environment – polluting rivers and wells; causing local air pollution and climate change emissions; polluting the oceans with plastics and land, air and water with microplastics; harming wildlife; and blocking drains leading to flooding.
• Human health – burning waste leads to respiratory diseases; the pollution from waste causes childhood stunting; blocked drains exacerbate the spread of water-borne and infectious diseases, flooding and drowning.
• Local economies – healthcare costs a lot more when disease is commonplace; communities experience productivity losses and damage from flooding; tourists stay away; clean-up costs can be significant; and unmanaged waste worsens social inequality.

There is a flip-side…

Whilst badly managed waste represents a threat to human health, the environment and economic development, there are also many opportunities. Improved resource management can help people who are economically marginalised, and there is increasing interest from the global development community as to the opportunities that a more circular approach offers.

International donors are increasingly prioritising actions for the poorest and most marginalised, such as in the UK Department for International Development’s Leave No-One Behind agenda.

A pro-poor, inclusive approach to improve solid waste management would be a win-win:

Providing a vital service to some of the world’s poorest communities would make them a healthier place to live, grow and do business in, whilst creating green jobs.

Importantly, community-led waste management can also help limit climate change and stop plastic polluting our rivers and oceans.

How to improve the lives of the world’s poorest and halve the plastic entering the oceans

To address the global waste crisis, the international community needs to act.

WasteAid and CIWM are calling on the UK Government to:

Fund: Commit to increasing the proportion of aid spent on waste management to at least 3% from its current estimated level of 0.3%;

Champion: Promote the need for increases in aid to waste management within the Commonwealth and G7, for example as part of the blue economy priority; and

Lead: Spearhead negotiation of a binding international treaty to tackle marine plastic pollution, which should have at its core prevention through proper solid waste management, as well as efforts to clean up existing pollution.

Priorities to tackle marine plastic pollution at source:

1. Prioritise technical assistance to improve governance and the enabling environment, establishing multi-stakeholder coordinating bodies and scaling up contextually relevant community-based recycling approaches.
2. Where possible and especially in poorer countries, fund projects that work with local informal waste management approaches to develop sustainable solutions that enable local communities to create value and not rely on continued external support.
3. Avoid inappropriate large-scale, high-cost, high-technology projects, which often threaten waste picker livelihoods, are not suited to waste streams with high organic content and are reliant on very high capacity clients to ensure environmental standards are met.

4. Work with the resource management sector, universities and development groups to:
5. a) Leverage greater investment from the broader international development community and ‘mainstream’ waste;
6. b) Incubate and support novel approaches to delivery of waste services in low income countries;
7. c) Convene opportunities for international partnership and knowledge exchange;
8. d) Share technical guidance and best practice; and
9. e) Avoid the known pitfalls to move confidently towards a more equitable and sustainable future.

Read the WasteAid & CIWM briefing paper in full

On World Water Day (22 March 2018) WasteAid and CIWM issued a call to action to the UK Government with a detailed briefing paper on the relationship between solid waste management and the growing tide of marine plastics pollution.

“From the Land to the Sea” catalogues the impact that poor or non-existent waste collection and management practices in developing countries have on the growing quantity of plastic waste that is entering the oceans every year.

Written by Zoë Lenkiewicz

Now is the time to recognise waste management is vital for global sustainable development

There are more than 7 billion of us, and we’re producing waste every day. A staggering half of that waste isn’t collected, treated or safely disposed of, and it’s causing a global waste crisis.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) cannot be met unless waste management is addressed as a priority. Failing economic models treat resources as if they were infinite (SDG 12) and consumption patterns favour the disposable. How can we continue with a growing and increasingly urbanised global population without getting waste sorted?

The litter problem on the coast of Guyana, 2010 (Creative Commons 3.0)

The proliferation of plastics has been devastating for the planet and its passengers, both current and future. Three-quarters of the vastest open dumps in the world are on the coast, leaching hazardous materials into our oceans. It’s unlikely that there is a single beach in the world that doesn’t carry the residues of plastic fishing nets, cigarette butts and plastic straws (SDG 14). Large marine mammals are washing up on shore dead, their bellies so full of plastic that they have starved.

Just two generations ago, before the dawn of disposable plastic, people could throw their waste on the ground and it would rot. Not so today, with plastic now clogging up drains and being ingested by livestock. Chemicals seep from immense quantities of dumped waste, poisoning groundwater, streams and rivers. Life on land (SDG 15) can only be healthy when waste is properly managed.

Waste is polluting the air we breathe as well. When people have no waste management services, they can only dump waste in the open – or burn it. Open burning of waste is sadly commonplace. In days gone by, it wasn’t such an issue. But now, with plastics everywhere, the health impacts of open burning are catastrophic (SDG 3). Added to this is the climate change impact of methane and CO2 from poorly managed waste: within ten years dumpsites could be responsible for up to a tenth of manmade greenhouse gases (SDG 13).

The local community burn their waste in a corner of Kibati camp. School desks have been taken out of the nearby school to make room for people now seeking shelter there. (Eddy Mbuyi/Oxfam, Creative Commons 2.0)

If we want clean water and sanitation (SDG 6), we need to be looking at waste. It’s a key vector of disease, and provides abundant breeding grounds for mosquitoes. Women in particular can benefit hugely from improved waste management, through independent earning opportunities (SDG 5) and protecting their families from sickness caused by open dumping and burning.

Food waste, from farm to fork and post-consumer, needs to be cut dramatically. Redistribution of edible food (SDG 2) from supermarkets, restaurants and homes is an obvious first step and one that is thankfully gaining traction. Waste from the manufacture of food products can be fed to animals, and inedible remains converted into biogas and clean renewable energy (SDG 7).

Many children pick recyclable waste from dump sites instead of attending school. Watch the video: India Unheard, Children carry trash not books

SDG 1 aims for No Poverty. 1% of the global urban population make their living from recovering recyclable materials from waste (SDG 8). These informal waste champions provide a valuable and often no-cost service, and it is important that we recognise their role in urban sanitation and resource efficiency (SDG 10). Fair wages and basic employment rights for all waste workers are fundamental to equal, inclusive and sustainable communities.

The rewards of waste management far outweigh the cost. For our communities to prosper as healthy and resilient places to live, governments must urgently invest. Even the poor choose to pay for waste management (or participate in it) when they see its benefits. Producer Responsibility schemes and crucially – fiscal transparency – can help ensure everyone pays their fair share to keep the planet clean (SDG 16).

The formal waste management sector, employing another 20 million globally, is a current hotbed of inspiration and innovation (SDG 9). Attracting millennials, entrepreneurs and industry heavyweights, waste management provides excellent opportunities in science, technology and engineering, humanities, business studies and IT (SDG 4), and is a powerful catalyst for economic growth (SDG 8). The feedstock for an industry based on waste is plentiful.

An estimated 3bn coffee paper cups are thrown away in the UK every year, but it was revealed that fewer than one in 400 is recycled. Photograph: Guardian/Alamy

Sustainable waste management provides ideal opportunities to collaborate and work in partnership (SDG 17) – the wealthy and the poor, the formal and informal, communities, business, governments and the international donor community. Indeed, it is only when we work together that the most logical and valuable answers arise. As we have seen, waste crosses so many other aspects of society. Positive outcomes rely on us joining these dots.

In summary, we can achieve the Global Goals – and we’ll do it much more effectively once we recognise waste management as a powerful driver of sustainable development.

How waste management can help achieve the Global Goals

Written by Zoë Lenkiewicz

Further recommended reading:
• Global Waste Management Outlook UNEP/ISWA 2015
• WasteAid Toolkit for waste management in lower- and middle-income countries 2017