Citizen involvement in reducing end-of-life product waste in Mexico City

Abstract

Citizen involvement initiatives are being implemented to facilitate the collection of end-of-life returns and to assist local governments in reducing waste generation and diverting waste from landfills. Three initiatives in Mexico City have been significant for many years in diverting recyclables, e-waste, and batteries from landfills: the comprehensive deposit return system (CDRE), e-waste donation and recycling (EWDR), and deposit batteries for diversion (DBD). Previous studies have generally described Mexico City's solid waste management practices and influencing factors, but they have not explored the relevance of the initiatives for waste diversion. Motivated by this, this study evaluated the impact of the citizen involvement initiatives from 2007 to 2021 using official Mexico City government data for 189 campaigns. An overview of the initiatives was presented, followed by assessing their yield by waste type and region, trend detection of waste diversion data using linear regression and the non-parametric Mann-Kendall tests, carbon emission reductions, and determining the challenges and future actions. The findings indicated that: (1) the annual average waste diversion potential reached up to 263.63 t, reducing carbon emissions by approximately 304.02 t CO2-eq; (2) the waste diversion has progressively grown by 65 %, with a significant upward trend; (3) recyclable electrical and electronic waste were the most abundant fraction, accounting for 63 % of the total, and packaging waste was the least; and (4) the contribution of the EWDR collection initiative in waste diversion was higher than CDRE and DBD. Finally, we noticed that despite their success, the total quantity of resources collected represents only a small portion of citywide recycling, necessitating large-scale local campaign deployments for improved waste diversion. These findings can assist waste management stakeholders in evaluating the contribution of current citizen involvement initiatives and guide them in developing better strategies for leveraging the potential of these initiatives to benefit the circular economy and sustainable waste management.