Solid Waste Management in the World's Cities

Of the many common threads that bind cities
across the world, waste handling, is possibly one
of the strongest. Regardless of the context,
waste, directly and indirectly, is one of biggest
challenges of the urban world. It’s also a city’s
calling card. If a city is dirty, the local administration
is written off as ineffective. If not,
governance is presumed in the public eye to be
effective.
This Third Global Report acknowledges
escalating challenges without boundaries. Yet, it
is not prescriptive – that would go against its
fundamental premise in highlighting the value of
local innovation and knowledge. What it seeks to
do instead is to follow another one of the beliefs
that it lays out: to build capacity through
networking. The contributors have dug out vast
amounts of knowledge and experience, and
distilled it in this volume. Most readers might
never travel to all of the 22 diverse cities upon
which this Global Report is based. Yet, they will
have access to real experiences of people working
on the ground. Indeed, this is an entirely new
kind of networking: that of ideas. Perhaps reading
about what one city has been able to do will
light up an idea in another.