Chapter 1. Waste valorisation: a paradigm shift for countries in the global South
typically have a high organic content, landfilling this waste largely boils down to burying… water, even though this organic material could be used to replenish increasingly impoverished soils.
Hierarchy of waste treatment methods The European directives on waste management have gradually established a hierarchy of treatment techniques,1 which now serves as a global benchmark.2 It is now recommended to manage waste in the following order of priority: i) Prevention: reducing waste even before it has been generated ii) Preparing for re-use: whereby the object is not destroyed but re-used either directly or after repair iii) Recycling and composting: recovering materials by diverting the object from its original use and destroying it (energy consumption) iv) Energy recovery (incineration, anaerobic processing): disposal of the contaminant but also recovering the energy it contains and v) Disposal: the final solution aimed at concealing waste (in the best possible conditions). Theoretically, only final waste (non-recoverable) should be landfilled. Materials and energy recovery along with disposal are viewed as treatment methods aimed at eliminating the nuisance, if possible by obtaining an environmental and economic benefit from this process. Prevention and re-use allow for intervention even upstream of the waste management stage. These different treatment techniques foreground two logics: a) prevention (ex-ante) or disposal (ex-post) of waste, i.e., the nuisances disappear; and b) the recovery of waste as a resource. As economist G. Bertolini points out, disposal (i.e., disposal) of waste differs from the logic of recovery: one is linked to the market economy (private good: the valorisation of the resource), while the other relates to a public service (public good: the reduction of a nuisance) (Bertolini, 1992). Neither do they involve the same economy of scale.
II.
Investigating solid waste recovery in global South cities
In light of the available literature, it becomes clear that waste recovery activities fluctuate between commercial activities linked to the value of certain materials and citizens’ growing expectations that municipalities extend their basic service. Public awareness increasingly supports extending the basic service, which relies on landfill as its main final sink option, to include recycling and recovery. Today, in most global South cities, the informal sector ensures the bulk of waste materials recovery. Yet, more often than not, this recovery is operated separately from the municipal service: when recovery is carried out by informal actors, the authorities turn a blind eye, but these informal activities can even lead to clashes or conflicts with agents working for the municipal service. Yet, the informal recovery of waste materials also a priori alleviates the burden for the municipal authorities. In this case, would it not be possible to consider practices involving their
1 2
The Waste Framework Directive 2008/98/EC of 19 November 2008; Article 4. Cf. for example: C40 2016 p.5, UNEP & ISWA 2015 p.31.
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