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Sustainable Waste Management

The notion of sustainable waste management is highly contested. Its interpretation can differ sharply between government officials; environmental activists; community activists; poor, working-class, and middle-class individuals; politicians; and corporations. Meanwhile, segments of the population may be completely unfamiliar with the term. On one hand, sustainable waste management may be defined with an emphasis on economic constraints and efficiency, irrespective of the social and ensuing environmental or ecological consequences. On the other hand, these issues may be taken into consideration, involving substantially different decision-making processes and funding approaches. Generally, people subscribe to this latter approach in which the health and socioeconomic well-being of the affected communities, as well as the choosing of processes and practices that are environmentally sound (that avoid the transfer of pollutants from the solid state to the water or the air environs of these communities) is of paramount importance.

First Global Declarations of Sustainable Development

Sustainable waste management is embedded in the broader policy of sustainable development. The notion of sustainable development became internationally renowned as a result of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), held in Rio de Janeiro, which came to be known as the Earth Summit. The UNCED defined sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” In addition, the precautionary principle, which first arose in Europe during the 1980s, became part of environmental thought and acquired prominence as a result of the Earth Summit. The precautionary principle, in its more modern form—known as the 1998 Wingspread Statement—asserts that “when an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.”

The 1992 Rio declarations on sustainable development make no direct claims regarding waste management. They are mostly concerned with the sustainable economic development of nations—the industrial, production, and distribution stages of the process. However, both the United Nations (UN) definition of sustainable development and the precautionary principle become inconsistent if these same principles are not applied to the disposal stage of the life span of the products and by-products generated by the production and distribution processes. Thus, solid waste management is an integral part of sustainable development if applied with due consideration to the protection of the health of humans and of the environment, the conservation of resources (whether land or reusable/recyclable materials), and the avoidance of creating a burden for future generations.

Landfills

The treatment of solid waste (also known as garbage, trash, rubbish, or refuse) has undergone a similar path in both advanced and developing countries. Historically, solid waste was initially discarded by communities in open land spaces (hereby the term landfill) or dumps and frequently set on fire to recover some space to resume the open disposal of the waste on the primitive landfill. However, in developed countries like the United States, new environmental laws and regulations put an end to such practices in the 1970s. This started the era of scientific solid waste management. As the developing countries advance, their solid waste management practices follow a similar path.

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