1. Waste management in developing countries must emphasize and be linked to the creation of jobs, poverty alleviation and community participation.
Too often authorities in poor Third World cities seek to imitate the technology and equipment used in developed countries. This is misguided and linked to corruption through kickbacks from purchases of transport fleet or from contractors. Often does not make economic and social sense for the poor. For example, there is often an informal sector of refuse collectors and scavengers that has developed their livelihoods from collection and sales of materials. They minimise the volume of wastes to be collected for disposal. Adoption of waste management systems from developed countries will reduce access of garbage and displace such informal refuse collectors and scavengers, who end up poorer than before the “development” plan was implemented. Further, households in many developing countries do not sort their garbage (as done in industrialised countries) and so the adopted technology will simply collect to dispose all wastes without recovery of reusables and recyclables. 2. National policies should promote efficiency in the use of resources, emphasizing waste prevention and the productive use of wastes. There is increasing evidence that community-based approaches to waste management can promote a more sustainable development. Grassroots efforts can be more successful than top-down programs created by bureaucrats or experts with little or no community participation. During most of human history, the approach to waste management in many cultures and civilizations was the recovery of materials. Only around the turn of the twentieth century the emphasis shifted from recovery to disposal. During the nineteenth century there were pioneering efforts in England to minimize wastes as a way to improve industrial competitiveness.