Sustain­able solid waste management (SWM) is a challenge to most local and national governments in developing countries. The German Technical Cooperation Agency - GIZ has recently launched a 3-year programme to develop pilot projects and guidance materials to fill specific gaps in the knowledge base on sustainable SWM. The study focusing on the delivery of waste management services (‘operator models’) has been commissioned to ERM and Wasteaware – Professor David C Wilson is global advisor and lead analyst in the project team.

Solid waste management has always suffered from a lack of consistent and reliable data to compare progress between countries. So the publication today of a seminal research paper, Comparative analysis of solid waste management in 20 cities, written by Professor David C Wilson and 4 co-authors in the peer-reviewed journal Waste Management & Research, represents a major step forward. The World Bank website is still reporting low collection coverage and a prevalence of open dumping in all developing countries: the new data analysed here shows that significant progress has been made over the last decade, with levels of both collection coverage and controlled disposal above 90% in most middle-income developing countries.