Income-Driven Transitions in Integrated Solid Waste Management: A Comparative Analysis of Treatment Strategies, Governance, and Recycling Systems in Global Cities

Abstract

Rapid urbanization and economic development has increasingly exerted stress on urban solid waste management systems around the globe and clearly showed significant differences between treatment policies and institutional capacities between income levels. This paper analyzes income-based shifts in integrated solid waste management (ISWM) in 367 cities in the world with the cross-sectional design of quantitative research. Upon validation and normalization of treatments, 214 cities were assigned 5 typologies of strategies, that included Dump-Dependent, Landfill-Oriented, Mixed/Transition, Thermal-Dominant and Diversion-Oriented systems. Data were used to examine the differences in structure between waste generation, governance capacity, recycling performance, and system maturity using descriptive statistics, analysis of variance, ordinary least squares regression, multinomial logistic regression, and ordered logistic modeling. Findings indicate considerable differences in the distribution of strategies between low and high income groups and the low income cities tend to be dump dependent and the high income cities have higher propensity to implement engineered and recovery based systems. The scale of waste creation was considerably different between different strategy types, whereas the governance structure was varied, but not significantly related to the recycling performance. The logistic regression test was used to order and the results showed that the level of national income is a strong predictor of ISWM maturity. The results suggest that ISWM systems develop in accordance with the structural directions that are income-based, which implies the significance of combining institutional fortification, financial funding, and technological modernization to improve sustainable urban waste management.