“Since my first WFD application in Lebanon in 2021, I have applied the WFD in another 6 cities across the Mediterranean in diverse environments (urban, rural, touristic and agricultural areas), mainly for baselining and capacity building purposes. Applying the WFD is a multifaceted experience which includes interviews with a wide range of stakeholders, from informal waste pickers to mayors, to the data collection process and following of collection service vehicles. It is an exercise that gives you a reliable insight on a city’s SWM operations and performance.”

“The WFD is a great tool to assess the level of waste leakages into the environment and can be used to set up baselines for projects, evaluate scenarios during project design phases and as a monitoring tool where the progress against the baseline can be tracked over time. I have seen results produced for projects in diverse cities and MSW systems: from megacities with relatively low collection and recovery rates such as Karachi in Pakistan and Lagos in Nigeria, to small cities with relatively high collection and low recovery.”

“Transforming a SWM system in a city like Haridwar, India, that experiences a massive annual tourist influx every year due to its national and cultural importance, is a challenge requiring a complex solution. We wanted to provide a methodology to local officials that can be easily, regularly and inexpensively applied in the city to track progress. Therefore, we selected the WFD which is easy to handle and allows an estimation of waste flows and leakage streams without a large input data basis. The WFD supported us in demonstrating the significance of plastic leakage by illustrating leakage quantities to officials. It helped urban local bodies to plan waste management infrastructure to increase the amount of recyclables entering the formal system, allowing waste management infrastructure to be more economical.”

“The WFD tool has been critical in achieving the highest standards of quantitative outputs, particularly in assignments that focus on plastic pollution and marine litter. Quantifying the amount of plastic waste ending up in water bodies was paramount but would have been complicated or even impossible without the WFD tool. The ability to visualise the masses of plastic waste causing water pollution helped decision-makers in these locations to make informed data-driven decisions and strategies to minimise marine litter."

"Application of the WFD contributed to drawing conclusions and making recommendations to improve the solid waste management system in two Egyptian governorates. The WFD methodology allowed the municipal officials to identify and evaluate collection, transportation, treatment, and disposal processes, in addition to understanding where plastic leaks occur and how they can be reduced.”

“The implementation of the WFD in Porto Seguro was a great opportunity to learn more about the tool while allowing a more refined analysis, especially in relation to the identification of plastic leakage into the environment. Through data collection and analysis, we were able to identify these leaks from discards on the beach, in rivers, wastelands, and landfills. The study alerted us to the amount of plastic that is destined to the disposal site (controlled landfill) and leakage into the environment, which causes great environmental impact to both marine and terrestrial life.”

“In a country of continental dimensions like Brazil, the availability of tools such as the WFD – affordable and easy to understand and apply by local decision-makers – is very important. The conclusions of the WFD application in six municipalities of the Brazilian coast allowed us to identify the most cost-effective measures according to each location’s conditions to improve solid waste management systems and, consequently, reduce plastic leakage into the environment.”