The Waste Characterization Handbook

The Waste Characterization Handbook provides a practical guide for planning and conducting municipal waste characterization studies to understand waste composition and use these data to design data driven methane mitigation strategies. It explains study planning, sampling, field procedures, and data analysis, and includes an Excel tool that helps visualize results and feed them into GMI tools such as SWEET, the AD Screening Tool, and the Landfill Gas Screening Tool for evaluating mitigation options.

by United States Environmental Protection Agency on behalf of the Global Methane Initiative

1. Introduction
The municipal solid waste sector (MSW) ¹ contributes to 11.8 percent of global anthropogenic methane emissions.² In the MSW sector, methane is generated primarily through the decomposition of organic wastes (e.g., food waste, green waste) in anaerobic (i.e., oxygen-free) environments such as dumpsites and landfills. According to the World Bank, food and green waste make up approximately 44 percent of the waste stream.³ Because total global waste generation is expected to increase by more than three times by 2050, reducing waste sector methane emissions is a key opportunity to mitigate climate change and yield energy, economic, environmental, and public health benefits.

Effective waste management plans, programs, and policies to improve waste practices and reduce the climate impacts from the sector are dependent on the availability of accurate and detailed information about the MSW stream. Developing waste management programs, policies, and projects without a clear understanding of the waste stream can lead to numerous problems, ranging from sub-optimal operations to project failure.

The Global Methane Initiative (GMI) Waste Characterization Handbook and accompanying Excel tool were developed to help decision-makers and solid waste professionals plan and conduct handsort⁴ waste characterization studies. Waste characterization is a systematic approach used to understand the composition and proportion of each material or product in the waste stream.

The handbook includes recommended activities and resources to:

Plan an appropriate study for specific site conditions.
Conduct field activities to collect the data.
Analyze the data to help make informed solid waste planning decisions.

The resulting waste characterization data can be used to:

Establish baseline waste management conditions.
Develop new waste management strategies, including reduction and diversion.
Assess and select waste processing and treatment technologies.
Understand contamination of recyclable and organic materials.
Evaluate and improve existing programs

The Global Methane Initiative (GMI) Waste Characterization Handbook is not the only guide on waste characterization and can serve as an input to existing internationally accepted processes. If a comprehensive review of a city’s MSW management performance is required (e.g., for reporting on Sustainable Development Goal 11.6.15 on waste collected and adequately discharged by cities), users may wish to consult the UN Habitat Waste Wise Cities Tool (WaCT).6 This handbook focuses on collected MSW; for information on how to study and characterize uncollected waste directly from households refer to the UN Habitat WaCT.

^{1 Landfills and other waste-related activities, such as composting or incineration.

2 US Environmental Protection Agency. Non-Co2 Greenhouse Gas Data Tool. Available online:

https://cfpub.epa.gov/ghgdata/nonco2/

3 Kaza et al., What a Waste 2.0: A Global Snapshot of Solid Waste Management to 2050. Available online:

https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/entities/publication/d3f9d45e-115f-559b-b14f-28552410e90a. In low- and middle-

income countries, food and green waste represented 50 percent or higher of the waste stream. As income rises, organic

waste percentages drop to approximately 32 percent of the waste stream.

4 Hand-sorting involves manually sorting the waste components into selected categories. Hand-sorting of waste is most

appropriate for residential, commercial, and institutional waste streams that are typically bagged.

5 United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDG): 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities. Available online:

https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/metadata/?Text=&Goal=11&Target=11.6

6 UN Habitat. 2021. Waste Wise Cities Tool. Available online: https://unhabitat.org/wwc-tool. This Handbook focuses on

collected waste characterization which corresponds with WaCT Step 6: Waste Composition at Disposal Facilities by

focusing primarily on the composition of waste at disposal facilities.

7 UN Habitat. 2021. Waste Wise Cities Tool (WaCT). Available online: https://unhabitat.org/wwc-tool}

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published: , 4|2024
Keywords: Pollution Control, Sustainability, Climate, Biomass, WEEE - Batteries, Resource management, Hazardous Waste, Sand, Glass, Inert, Metals, Paper Fiber, Plastics, Mixed Waste, Textiles, United States of America