The need of a more sustainable waste management
The quantity of household waste continues to increase by 2-3% each year as a result of society´s production and consumption patterns. In spite of successful recycling schemes, the waste quantities remaining after material recycling have been constant since the beginning of the 1990s.
We need to find ways to reduce the trend of increasing waste quantities. We also need to manage the produced waste in the best way possible. A more sustainable waste management means more efficient use of natural resources and decreasing environmental burdens, both in and outside of Sweden. Also, waste management must be affordable and widely accepted by the public as well as by key companies and organisations.
Policy instruments that contribute to the development of a more sustainable waste management
The purpose of Towards Sustainable Waste Management is to identify policy instruments and strategic decisions that contribute to the development of a more sustainable waste management.
The research in Towards Sustainable Waste Management is carried out in an interdisciplinary network of Swedish researchers. We survey existing informative, economic, legal and physical policy instruments. We also develop and suggest new policy instruments and aim at finding the combinations of policy instruments that are more efficient in contributing to a more sustainable waste management. We focus on waste prevention, reuse, material recycling and biological treatment.
Towards Sustainable Waste Management also includes:
- development of future scenarios illustrating how a more sustainable waste management can be designed.
- investigation of systems for source separation and collection, seeking to adapt these systems to the needs and requirements of consumers, organisations and companies.
- investigation of the processes of the recycling industry, targeting an improvement of their environmental performance.
A broad scope
Many different aspects of waste management - environmental, economic, cultural and social - are studied in Towards Sustainable Waste Management. Seeking the broadest scope possible, economists, ethnologists, environmental psychologists, systems analysts and futurologists carry out the research in close co-operation.
Ten research projects
Towards Sustainable Waste Management includes ten research projects. Each project adds important information and knowledge to the programme. In the project Future-oriented synthesis, knowledge and results from the other projects will be integrated, aiming at identifying decisions that contribute to the development of a more sustainable waste management system. In this way, the results of Towards Sustainable Waste Management will provide useful input to actual decision-making and strategy development in waste management and other related fields. Read more about the research projects
