New Study Finds City Zero Waste Pledges Are Ineffective
A significant contributor to climate change are the gases emitted by decomposed solid waste created in cities around the world. This waste makes up an estimated 5 percent of overall greenhouse gas emissions, which is nearly equivalent to the emissions of all 27 European countries combined. In response to this problem, cities around the world have made public commitments, often called Zero Waste pledges, to reduce the amount of physical waste directed towards landfills in recent decades.
However, these pledges do not appear to lead to tangible and effective diversion of waste—which can be done through composting, recycling, or reuse—according to new research published in Cities by Professor of Government Mary Alice Haddad and co-author Ashpreet Kaur of Punjab University in India. Haddad and Kaur studied 86 U.S. cities that had publicly available data and signed the international Cities Race to Zero pledge, a city-focused partner of the United Nations’ Race to Zero campaign. Although all signatories had committed to reducing their waste, a majority of reporting cities diverted less than half of their municipal solid waste, and only 8 percent of cities reported diverting over 75 percent of their waste.
“Depressingly, the results suggested that actually a lot of the Zero Waste pledges were aspirational—that [cities] weren't actually doing the work,” Haddad said.
Why Zero Waste pledges don’t work
Haddad explained that while climate pledges can create headlines for a local politician or university, pledges are generally not enforced by a regulatory body that requires annual or consistent reporting. Other types of sustainability development, like energy reduction efforts, have established ways for municipalities to report their progress publicly in a centralized location. This does not exist for Zero Waste pledges, so reporting rests on the shoulders of individual cities and towns and is largely voluntary.
Haddad said that city leaders are happy to make the initial pledge but do not have to keep it. “You make the pledge, but there isn't a reporting back system, which then makes it very difficult to hold the city accountable, and it makes it difficult for the city to celebrate that it's doing a good job,” she said.
There’s also no consequence for local politicians because Zero Waste pledges are not seen as a make-it-or-break-it issue for voters, she said. “I know of no person who will not vote for somebody because they failed in their Zero Waste pledge,” Haddad said.
Factors affecting solid waste diversion
In a previous study, Haddad found that two significant factors helped cities make ambitious climate pledges: proximity to a university and whether a city had a paid employee dedicated to environmental or energy management. Haddad expected similar results in the Zero Waste research, but she was surprised to find neither variable had any impact on the effectiveness of Zero Waste pledges.
“We expected to find that if the cities had a staff person that was related to Zero Waste, or an active Zero Waste community, and if they had a university, that would improve the waste diversion rates,” Haddad said.
Haddad found that there were just two variables that had significant impact on whether a city diverted more waste: distance from the ocean and whether the city is located in California, according to their paper. A city’s per capita income also had an effect on waste diversion rates, but it was very small—a $1,000 increase in per capita income raised a city’s waste diversion rate by only 0.3 percent.
Of the top 20 cities with the highest waste diversion rates, 18 were on or near a coastline and 10 were in California, including two of the top three cities. Nine of the 10 cities with the worst diversion rates were inland. Cities adjacent to the ocean diverted around 12 percent more waste than those that were close but not adjacent to the ocean.
California has long been a leader in environmental policy. Cities in California had waste diversion rates that were 15 percent higher on average than cities in other states. Haddad said the state has a comprehensive regulatory framework supporting climate action, an active climate community, and infrastructure for recycling and waste diversion. It is also the only state with a universal compost collection mandate.
She said 40 to 60 percent of municipal solid waste nationally is from food scraps, so communities that compost have a leg up on meeting their Zero Waste goals. Converting to a “pay as you throw” model, where citizens pay in accordance with their volume of discarded waste, is another policy that can lead to better waste diversion rates, she said.
Haddad said that more research should be conducted on the ways proximity to the ocean can affect municipal waste management. She also said that cities and universities need to do a better job of turning their Zero Waste pledges into measurable action.
