Regional Waste Management System Improvement Strategy Based on Sustainable Development Principles

Abstract

The paper reviews the main indicators for decision-making process in the field of waste management at the local level. Development of sustainable integrated waste management system requires comprehensive consideration and assessment of many factors. Nevertheless, a small number of indicators are usually used for assessing the development scenarios of the waste management system. The purpose of the study is to identify the most important aspects of the waste management system and to formulate general principles for ensuring the sustainability of solid waste management systems performance and development at the regional level. Analysis of previous studies shows the variety of approaches to classify indicators of sustainable development in the field of solid waste management. Large number of factors, a small number of observations and unknown dynamic relationships between variables are shown to be reasons for complex problems in solid waste management decision-making. An expert assessment was made to investigate the officials’ and practitioners’ vision on waste management systems performance and strategies development. The set of economic, social, environmental, and technical indicators was selected and assessed by the group of experts. The analysis shows that mainly economic indicators are considered by local authorities and other stakeholders involved in regional waste management strategies development and implementation while social and environmental aspects are out of sight. At the same time financing of waste management system is not systematic and consistent and the amount of funding is extremely insufficient. The main principles for sustainable performance and development of the waste management system were formulated in the paper as the following: principle of national development strategies integration, principle of application of an effective monitoring and forecasting system, principle of differentiation of the development strategies at the regional level, principle of considering the stakeholders’ interests.