Lack of evidence-based data hinders the development of waste management strategies and constrains investment decision-making in infrastructure and service expansion, leading to insufficient or absent MSW management services.
UN-Habitat developed Waste Wise Cities Tool: Step by Step Guide to Assess City Municipal Solid Waste Management Performance through SDG 11.6.1 Indicator Monitoring. SDG indicator 11.6.1 quantifies parameters that will help cities and countries to better manage resources, mitigate and prevent environmental pollution, create business, employment and livelihood opportunities, and shift towards a circular economy.
The methodology to monitor SDG indicator 11.6.1 provides guidelines for ladders for MSW collection services and control level of waste management facilities, and aims to bring standardized definitions, nomenclature and techniques to MSW data collection.
City waste data collected with the Waste Wise Cities Tool is available here.
Waste Wise Cities Tool - Step by Step Guide to Assess a City’s MSWM Performance through SDG indicator 11.6.1 Monitoring guides readers through the steps to assess the environmental performance of a municipal solid waste management (MSWM) system (SDG 11.6.1), food waste generation (SDG 12.3.1) and resource recovery systems (SDG 12.5.1) in cities.
The Waste Wise Cities Tool (WaCT) consists of seven steps to guide cities on how to collect data on MSW generated, collected, and managed in controlled facilities. The tool provides a household survey guide for estimating total MSW generation, a questionnaire to investigate the MSW recovery chain and criteria to check the environmental control level of waste management facilities in the city. In the last step onward linkages to other SDG indicators are elaborated and an assessment using a Waste Flow Diagram (WFD) is introduced. The WFD is a separate but complementary methodology to the Waste Wise Cities Tool. It uses rapid and observation-based assessment for mapping waste flows and quantifying plastic leakage from MSW management systems.
Last updated: October 2021
The below links are Data Collection Application, an excel-based data aggregation tool for the collected data, and Data Collection Manual, a guide on how to enter collected data into Data Collection Application.
Data Collection Application: collected data through Waste Wise Cities Tool can be entered in this Data Collection Application and be uploaded and submitted online using the link below. Data Collection Manual will guide you on how to enter the collected data through the WaCT application in your city
To join, a city official or representative is asked to submit a “letter of intent” addressed to the Executive Director of UN-Habitat through the following e-mail WasteWiseCities@un.org.
Joining Waste Wise Cities does not imply any legal or financial obligations.
A sample letter can be downloaded in different languages here.
Contact : Andre Dzikus . Chief, Urban Basic Services Section United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) . WasteWiseCities@un.org
Contact : Andre Dzikus . Chief, Urban Basic Services Section United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) . WasteWiseCities@un.org
