World Bank MSW report

The World Bank recently published an update to its 1999 report "What a waste", which is a review of (urban) municipal solid waste (MSW) practices across the world: http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTURBANDEVELOPMENT/0,,contentMDK:23172887~pagePK:210058~piPK:210062~theSitePK:337178,00.html

At first glance, the version of the waste hierarchy used in the report differs slightly from that enshrined in EU legislation in that incineration with energy generation is included in the disposal category, thereby failing to recognise the environmental benefits of energy recovery in a modern efw facility, and anaerobic digestion is for some reason paired with compost in the recovery category just below recycling.

The definition of MSW used in the report seems to be wider than that commonly used in the UK/Europe (it includes some elements of construction and demolition waste). At first glance it was unclear to me whether these elements are included only if collected by municipalities, or more widely if they are of similar composition to municipal collected waste.

It is always difficult to know how accurate the data are in these types of reports and a lot of work has clearly gone into collating all the information. A quick review of the UK data shows that it is a few years out of date. Unless they have used a different definition of MSW, they seem to have taken 2005 figures. (I didn't immediately spot any reference to whether this is meant to be a 2005 snapshot; as far as I can tell, it is meant to be 'current'.) In the report therefore it suggests that circa 35m tonnes of MSW is/was produced of which 64% was landfilled with only 26% recycled + composted. The picture has of course changed dramatically in the past seven years.

It would be interesting to know how they arrived at their estimate of UK MSW generation in 2025 being over 40m tonnes. I think most in the industry would suspect that this is very optimistic (or pessimistic, depending on your viewpoint).