The broader benefits of waste system investments in the global south

Investing in waste management infrastructure in the global south nets a more cost-efficient sustainability return when compared with advancing technology improvements in the global north. Efforts to reduce ocean plastic and to mitigate the climate change footprint of discarded municipal waste should include strategies to bring basic collection and disposal practices to those regions where they are lacking.

Messages for policy

• While valuable outcomes may be achieved through treaties, unless resources are directed for essential waste infrastructure upgrades in the global south, little progress will be made in reducing emissions.

• When investing in improving waste management in the global south, investors should first target basic waste collection and disposal practices before working to implement advanced treatment solutions.

• Given the interconnectivity of the informal waste sector, adopting new technologies and shifting approaches should carefully weigh the impacts on those who rely on existing systems for their livelihoods.

• Past infrastructure, policy directives should prioritize waste prevention and recovery, as they reduce the root causes of greenhouse gas and plastic emissions more than complex waste technology.

based on Anshassi, M. & Townsend, T. G. Improving waste systems in the global south to tackle international environmental impacts. Nat. Sustain. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-025-01607-8 (2025).

The policy problem

The global community continues to explore strategies and policies to reduce the massive volume of discarded plastic entering the world’s ocean environment (Fig. 1a). Coupled with the contribution of inadequately managed waste to climate change, solutions are being sought to more efficiently and sustainably deal with society’s waste. The approach frequently adopted in the global north is to continually promote more advanced technologies that minimize disposal and enhance resource recovery. Such improvements, regardless of how laudable, may do little to reduce the dominant transnational waste problems if the challenges faced by the global south are not likewise addressed.

Fig. 1: The waste management footprints of global waste levels and the impacts to GHG emissions and plastic marine debris when improving levels.

a, A snapshot of the level breakdown for the total global population, waste generated, waste collected and waste management (for example, open dump landfill, municipal solid waste incinerator (MSWI) and recycling) and mismanagement, GHG emissions and plastic marine debris. b, The GHG emission footprint associated with waste management in detail for each level. c, The impacts of improving from one level to the next, more advanced level; the column width is weighted by that level’s contribution to total annual waste generation. Figure adapted from Anshassi, M. & Townsend, T. G. Nat. Sustain. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-025-01607-8 (2025), Springer Nature Limited.

The findings

This study relates the advances achieved by improving a nation’s waste management infrastructure to the associated reduction in plastics entering the marine environment and the decrease of atmospheric greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Here we show that investment in the global south’s waste infrastructure will net a four-magnitude reduction in marine plastic discharges per US dollar (~23,000–28,000 times), and an 8–16 times greater decrease of GHG emissions per US dollar, when compared with state-of-the-art technology advancements in the global north (Fig. 1b). The implementation of basic waste collection in the global south, in concert with a transition from open dumps and burning to something as simple as controlled landfills, does more to address the intercontinental challenge of municipal waste than additional upgrades to already advanced systems.

The study

In this study, we first estimated waste flows and disposition for 239 nations using a range of compiled data sets and country records, placing each nation into one of four tiers based on how their waste is currently managed (Fig. 1a,d). For each tier, we then integrated existing studies on marine plastic discharges and used established life-cycle assessment models for waste management-based GHG modelling (Fig. 1c) to estimate the improvement in both metrics if a country were to upgrade from a more basic tier to the next more advanced tier. Finally, we assessed the return on investment of such improvements by normalizing the benefits achieved to the costs required to reach such benefit.