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Systems Approaches in Municipal Solid Waste Management (Systems…

- - - - None of the SWM systems developed in high-, medium-, and low-income countries include all aspects of sustainability; also, they do not include all the relevant stakeholders, such as government officials, the public, and industry, in the decision-making and planning process (Morrisey and Browne 2004)
- - - - SWM systems have been affected by different drivers such as public health, environment, resource degrada- tion, climate change, and public awareness (Marshall and Farahbakhsh
        
        How these drivers shape SWM systems in high-income countries is explained as follows:
        
        Environmental concerns:
        
        During the 1960s and 1970s, high-income countries recognized the need to conserve the environment and to reduce environmental pollution in their cities.
        
        From 1980 onward, high-income nations started creat- ing environmental laws and standards for leachate control, incin- eration processes, dioxin reduction, and odor control
        
        During the 1970s and 1980s, policies were formed on converting open dump sites into covered and compacted landfills.
        
        After the 1990s, governments in high-income countries started focusing on the formation of integrated solid waste management (ISWM) systems, considering not only technical solu- tions but also social, economic, cultural, and political aspects too.
        
        Climate change:
        
        Until the end of the twentieth century, solid waste was disposed of in landfill, which is a major source of methane emissions, and this has led to the formation of many laws in developed nations for the conversion of open dump sites to sanitary landfills (UN-Habitat
        
        Resource scarcity:
        
        Before industrialization, resources were scarce, and the recycling and reuse of products were practiced in small industries as well as in homes. Every material was reused and repaired rather than sending it to landfill. When the industrial- ization period came, recycling practices increased with ragpickers and street buyers, who collected and sold waste to recycling indus- tries for a living, and this practice is still continued in develop- ing nations. Resources again increased in the 1970s, when there was a hike in resource consumption due to increases in popula- tion, increases in the marketing of commodities, and changes in living standards (Marshall and Farahbakhsh 2013). The concept of waste hierarchy came into existence in the late 1970s, which again sparked the recycling and reuse of waste material. Waste hierarchy has introduced various concepts such as reusing, reducing, recy- cling, energy recovery, treatment, and finally disposal at a land- fill. The value of land as a resource was realized by governments when the size of landfills increased and there was a land shortage in small nations.
        
        Public concerns and awareness:
        
        In developed countries with increas- ing levels of living standards, people realized the need for proper SWM for the cleanliness of their surroundings and improvements in their health standards.
        
        But still, people in various developed nations have the notion of “not in my backyard,” and local govern- ments cannot plan for solid waste facilities within a city
        
        Public health concerns:
        
        In the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth cen- turies, most of the industrialized nations were deprived of basic sanitation facilities, and because of this, people suffered from wide- spread disease. During
  - - - Uncontrolled increases in population, weak institutional capacities, inadequate legislation, nonavailability of funds for infrastructure, and the poor behavioral patterns of the public toward waste management are some of the reasons behind the failure of the main technologies in SWM in various developing countries.
      - In developed nations, the focus has now been shifted from waste- and sanitation-related diseases to “diseases of affluence” such as cancer, obe- sity control, heart-related illnesses, and sustainable development (Konteh 2009),
        
        Wilson (2007) states that most developing countries are deprived of basic survival and infrastructure facilities, such that the local governments and the public are not much concerned about SWM facilities. In
        
        In the near future, whenever SWM becomes a public agenda in developing countries, it will be based on the same drivers as in developed countries, although the current context is very different from that of developed nations in the past (Wilson 2007; Coffey and Coad 2010).
        
        Rapid urbanization, economic imbalances, weak insti- tutional capacities, international influences, and varying socioeconomic and political landscapes together have produced highly complex challenges for governments in developing countries
        
        Cultural and Socioeconomic Aspects
        
        Any waste management system is highly influenced by the behavior and attitude of the local population of a region. Every
        
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        Political Landscape
        
        Politics plays a vital role in the implementation and operation of SWM schemes in any country. A major challenge for many developing countries is to create a proper balance between policy, governance, and institutions.
        
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        Urbanization
        
        Urbanization is increasing at a rapid pace all around the world: Approximately more than 50% of the population has shifted to urban areas. This
        
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        International Influences
        
        It has been observed that most SWM systems and projects in developing countries fail due to weak institutions and an absence of trained profession- als in the SWM sector. Here, international financial institutions (IFIs) play a major role in capacity building and project funding.
        
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- - - - is a need to develop a systems approach that considers all aspects—social, environmental, economic, political, and cultural—during the planning of any sustainable SWM project
- - - - To implement ISWM systems and to manage waste systematically, there is an urgent need for strong regulations in both developed as well as developing countries, including programs focused on “closing the loop”—that is, shifting policy from end-of-pipe to resource management (Wilson 2007)
- - - - Reductionist concepts break the whole of waste management into smaller parts and then deal with each part separately
    - - cause-and-effect thinking splits everything into parts and considers the relationship between parts but does not consider unmeasured variables and new relationships that may occur unexpectedly
- - - - Complex systems theory explains that every wider system consists of several subsystems and ele- ments with their own set of features or states inside a defined boundary.