Building Sustainability in an Urbanised World through Strategic Waste Management

Having developed its industrial base and achieved high economic growth for the past few decades, today, Asia is highly urbanised and industralised. This has had a major impact on the environment - heaps of waste generated; growing even faster than the rate of urbanisation.

Based on estimates, the world cities generated 1.3 billion tonnes of waste annually with Asia accountable for 1 million tonnes per day. With current urbanisation and population growth rate, the global waste generation is estimated to rise to 2.2 billion tonnes by 2025. A World Bank study showed that urban areas in Asia spent USD25 million per year on solid-waste management, and this figure will increase to USD47 million per year. Despite the huge expenditures, urban areas in most Asia pacific are still grappling with the challenge of preventing environmental degradation due to non-systematic waste management.

Apart from the contamination of water resources and severe air pollution, the health hazard is another key issue to be addressed. Waste management has become an important issue in the Asia-Pacific region for building sustainable and livable cities, and it needs to be resolved through an integrated systems that are efficient, sustainable, and socially supported, and policy-based approach.

The hosting of the Global Waste Management Conference 2017 is designed to

	Define negative impacts of waste on health and environment as well as working on waste disposal through economically feasible methods;
	Integrate efforts to develop an international / regional strategy for recycling and waste management that considers policies, legislatures and implementation mechanism.
	Promote investments in the field of recycling and waste management.
	Review of local and international experiences in the field of recycling and waste management;
	Review the modern methods, technologies and solutions for good management of industrial, medical and municipality waste