The management of solid waste is a growing challenge with rising trends in industrialisation and population growth, and has become a public and environmental health concern. The challenge spills over to negatively affect the realization of sustainable development goals (SDGs). This chapter focuses on how solid waste management (SWM) can be used to promote the realizations of SDGs while prioritizing on economic, social, and environmental growth. Findings show that systematic SWM has the capacity to influence most SDGs and hence the need to uptake it. This can be done by promoting circular economic models, formulating, implementing, and enforcing SWM regulations that are pro-sustainable development, improving governance of the solid waste sector through planning and adoption of better technologies to valorise waste.
Top1. Introduction
In more recent times around the globe, urbanization and population growth trends are on an upward trajectory, which has translated to lifestyle changes that encourage the consumption of natural resources and ultimately, more solid waste generation (Gupta et al., 2023). Other authors have also reported similar trends (Nyika & Dinka, 2022a; Pujara et al., 2019). Projections show that by 2030, solid waste production globally will rise to more than 2.2 billion tons annually compared to the current rate approximated at 2.01 billion tons of waste a year, most of which is untreated, unsorted and disposed (Al-Dailami et al., 2022). Such a change will have negative effects on economic, environmental, and social aspects of sustainable development (Gupta et al., 2023) and has been confirmed in several case studies.
A study based in municipalities of Chile for instance, quantified the cost of unsorted municipal waste to £297.66 per ton (Sala-Garrido et al., 2023). In Yemen, which mainly used landfill disposal for solid waste management (SWM) and particularly the vicinity of Sana landfill, negative environmental impacts in terms of natural resources (land and water) contamination, air pollution and degrading aesthetic value of land were evident (Al-Dailami et al., 2022). In South Africa (Nyika et al., 2020), Kenya (Nyika & Dinka, 2023) and India (Pujara et al., 2023), open dumping of solid waste especially in urban and suburban areas was a public health concern through the generation of toxic leachate. In cities of developing countries, only about 65% of generated solid waste is collected even though 20-50% of municipal budgetary allocations are slotted for SWM whereby, 80-95% of this total is spent on its collection and transportation (Abubakar et al., 2022). In low-income developing countries, solid waste collection rates go even as low as 10% contributing to grave environmental and public health risks (Abubakar et al., 2022).
With this precognition, there is a need for regulatory authorities and stakeholders of different regions of the world to combine forces in adopting strategies and technologies geared to efficient, effective, and sustainable SWM. Ng and Yang (2023) made similar suggestions and emphasized on incorporating waste valorisation in SWM plans and moving economies from linear-based to circular-based models. This chapter attempts to explore such options and links them to sustainable development and in particular, the role of the solutions to SWM in realizing specific sustainable development goals (SDGs). The aim of this chapter is therefore to examine the global solid waste production trends, the current options to SWM and their effects and finally, the link between better management and SDGs.