Goal #11 – Sustainable Cities and Communities

Waste management is a major issue for cities and communities around the world. Cities generate huge amounts of waste that is often poorly collected and treated because of a lack of waste management infrastructure in developing countries.

• In low-income countries, over 90% of waste is often disposed of in unregulated dumps or openly burned, which causes serious health and environmental impacts.[1]

• Some of this waste finds its way into the terrestrial and marine ecosystems, damaging flora, fauna and threatening biodiversity. It is estimated that 82% of plastic waste in the oceans comes from Asia and that 90% comes from 10 rivers (8 of which are in Asia).[2]

• The plastics industry must accept the challenge of enabling and facilitating waste management systems to recover valuable materials for recycling or for reuse as a source of energy, preventing leakage to the environment. In the developed world, littering and the poor disposal of plastics is largely ‘personal’ but in the developing world littering is largely ‘structural’ because of the lack of waste management infrastructure.

Alliance to End Plastic Waste Aims to Tackle Waste Management in Developing Countries

Launched in January 2019 with 27 founding members, the Alliance now includes 42 companies around the world that make, use, sell, process, collect and recycle plastics.[3] This includes chemical and plastic manufacturers, consumer goods companies, retailers, converters and waste management companies. Member companies have committed over $1.0 billion with the goal of investing $1.5 billion over the next five years to help end plastic waste in the environment through a comprehensive, integrated strategy focusing on:

• Infrastructure development to collect and manage waste and increase recycling, especially in developing countries;
• Innovation to advance and scale new technologies that minimize waste, make recycling and recovering plastics easier and create value from all post-use plastics;
• Education and engagement of governments at all levels, businesses and communities to mobilize action; and,
• Clean up of concentrated areas of plastic waste already in the environment, particularly major rivers that that carry vast amounts of land-based plastic waste to the ocean, to keep waste from reaching the ocean in the first place.

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[1] https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/urbandevelopment/brief/solid-waste-management

[2] https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution

[3] https://endplasticwaste.org/