We are pleased to announce the pre-publication viewing of UN-Habitat's Solid Waste Management in the World's Cities, of which SWAPP was one of the contributors for the city profiles.

Please download here (SWAPP membership required). 

Issue #18, September 2009

On this issue:
• GTZ-AHT, DED, Philippine Partners Share Experiences at Waste Safe 2009 Conference in Bangladesh
• Eastern Visayas Regional Ecology Center (REC-8) Conducts Solid Waste Management Summit 2009
• Scaling-up promotion of urine diverting dehydration toilet (UDDT): The case of the WAND Foundation experience in Misamis Oriental
• Ongoing landfill managers and decision makers from the Philippines visit Germany
For the online version, please click here.
You may also download the pdf version here.

[Original article from Down to Earth Online Magazine]

Waste-pickers worldwide gathered in Colombia to highlight how central they are to urban existence

Sometime in 2007, history was unmade and made. From being a global village, the world became an urban conglomerate: for the first time since life on earth began, more people on the planet lived in urban settlements than in rural ones. This shift in human habitation behaviour amplifies many microtrends. Informal sector recycling is one. In several larger urban settlements, many of the poor are quite likely to earn their livelihoods through waste: handling waste, waste-picking, waste-sorting, repairing discarded items, perhaps even waste trading.

A total of seven workshops was held for the three multi-level stakeholders and actors groups identified by the project team.

The first two SWM sector-specific diagnosis workshops was conducted in Manila, the third diagnosis workshop was held as a regional workshop in Davao City/Mindanao. The objectives of these workshops was to determine the current SWM activities of the stakeholders and actors involved in SWM implementation, and to identify issues and concerns regarding SWM implementation.

Based on the findings of the diagnosis workshops, a priority setting workshop is held to help the the participants identify issues and problems to be addressed in the National Solid Waste Strategy. They elaborated a priority list of strategies and initiatives for each of the elements of the waste management chain.

The validation workshop is the third level in a series of consultative workshops being facilitated for the elaboration of the National Solid Waste Management Strategy. The primary purpose of the Validation Workshop was to review and validate the proposed Strategic Elements which were elaborated from the results of the Diagnosis and Priority-Setting Workshops as a basis. The Strategic Elements comprise the main content and backbone of the National SWM Strategy.

Note: SWAPP membership is required to download the files. For non-members, please contact SWAPP through email to request copies of the documentations.