Department Sanitation, Water and Solid Waste for Development
Solid Waste Management
Providing sustainable solid waste services and infrastructure is particularly challenging in low- and middle-income countries. Deficient services lead to severe health risks and environmental pollution.
Our research embraces the concept of a circular economy based on the principles: a) design out waste and pollution, b) keep products and materials in use, c) regenerate natural systems.
One research focus is on biowaste recycling, as in low- and middle-income countries often more than 50% of the total solid waste is organic and this resource is seldom valorized. Our vision for biowaste management is synthesized here:
Biowaste Management: the key to sustainable municipal solid waste management. Policy Brief No. 4 (2017).
Research themes & projects:
Enhancing Waste Segregation Behavior – research aiming to improve systematic behavior change campaigns based on the RANAS approach developed at Eawag.
Solid Waste Management in Emergency and Humanitarian Contexts – development of resources and technical support for humanitarian contexts for the management of solid waste.
Black Soldier Fly Biowaste Processing – research on how black soldier fly larvae can rapidly reduce organic waste and convert it into protein-rich biomass for animal feed and nutrient-rich residue, offering waste treatment and income opportunities.
SWIFT-Sustainable Waste-based Insect Farming Technologies in Uganda and Malawi– transdisciplinary R&D project that promotes sustainable waste management by enabling smallholders and SMEs to adopt black soldier fly insect farming to convert biowaste into animal feed, fertilizer, and livelihoods.
Biomass Utilisation by Insects for Green Solutions in Africa (BUGS-Africa) – aims to mainstream Black Solider Fly biowaste conversion as one approach to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve food security, and create livelihoods in Côte d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, and Uganda.
Amplifying Waste Recovery Solutions – Towards a Circular Society (AWARE) – an applied research project that develops and validates methods focusing on plastics management and behaviour change for source segregation in the Phu Yen province in Vietnam.
Cost assessment and modelling of waste collection services – cost assessment and modelling tool focusing on collection services in cities.
Zero Waste Schools and Communities – applied research project which develops and validates methods to foster integrated strategies and technologies leading to a “zero-waste” approach at school level.
SDG monitoring of solid waste collected and managed in controlled facilities – research project that develops a systematic approach to measuring the SDG indicator 11.6.1 “Proportion of municipal solid waste collected and managed in controlled facilities”
Waste Flow Diagram (WFD) - research project that develops and validates a rapid and observation-based assessment to quantify and map plastic leakage from solid waste management systems.
Carbonization of Urban Biowaste – research on slow pyrolysis and hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) to explore the potential of using organic waste to generate a char product.
SOWATT - Selecting an Organic Waste Treatment Technology – project that provides decision support to help structure and assist in the process of comparing and selecting the most promising biowaste treatment options.
Anaerobic digestion of organic solid waste – project that studies how organic waste can be biologically converted without oxygen into biogas for energy and nutrient-rich digestate fertilizer.
Decentralised composting – project that investigates simple, low-cost community-level composting systems to manage organic waste locally, recover resources, and improve urban solid waste management.
