The Wasteaware benchmark indicators are a tool to assess the performance of the municipal solid waste management and recycling system in a city, municipality or group of municipalities (here collectively referred to as ‘a city’) in a standardised manner. The primary purposes are:
- to allow a city to judge its own performance regarding delivery of solid waste management services;
- to provide information for decision-making on priorities for the limited funds available for service improvements;
- identify local strengths that can be built on and weak points to be addressed; and
- to monitor changes over time.
In addition, using a standardised indicator set allows benchmarking against the performance of similar cities, within a country or in different countries, on a consistent basis. The Wasteaware indicators have been design ed specifically to be applicable to cities in all countries, irrespective of income level.
A User Manual published in Waste Management journal provides the background and presents the Wasteaware indicators. This User Manual is a reference document that provides step-by-step guidance on how to complete the indicator set, a process which is then facilitated by an automated excel Indicator Form - which has been developed into the functionality of this website.
Any indicator set depends will rely heavily on the subjective professional judgment of the user or assessor in each city. The targeted user of the Wasteaware Indicators will ideally be a local solid waste management professional who is familiar with the local situation, covering both the formal solid waste and (where applicable) informal recycling parts of the overall system. Where such a user is found, then our experience is that filling in the Wasteaware Toolkit user form is not so onerous - it can take anywhere between a few hours and a few days.
The detailed pages of the Wasteaware Toolkit contain guidance on how to complete each individual indicator and criterion. This information is provided to ensure that the indicators are applied consistently, irrespective of user or location.