Abstract
The vast amounts of waste produced, the current dominant waste operations and the many waste streams present a harmful and unsus-tainable environmental problem. Law and policy have a critical role in supporting a shift to sustainable waste management, with motivations including the need to protect health, to protect the environment and to promote resource efficiency. The issue's articles cover a broad terrain of waste law issues, taking more conventional waste law topics and extending them into their wider regulatory and social contexts. The articles look not only at regulatory approaches to tackle pollution emanating from waste but also those promoting sustainable resource management to prevent the 'wasting' of waste. Common threads include the needs to focus beyond end-of-life and consider whole life-cycle approaches, to engage with other disciplines and to incorporate social dimensions. Overall, the range of papers in this special issue underscores the complexity governing sprawling waste issues. 1 | THE RESOURCE AND WASTE CRISES Waste is unavoidable and natural to ecosystems. 1 However, the scale of the global waste crisis extends far beyond nature's carrying capacity. The vast amounts of waste produced, the current dominant waste operations and the many waste streams present a harmful and unsus-tainable environmental problem. The World Bank estimates that more than two billion tonnes of solid household waste is generated each year, with this expected to almost double by 2050. 2 Despite polluting and other negative environmental, social and economic impacts, 3 landfilling still remains one of the dominant waste management operations. It accounts for 37% of all materials disposed of, with open dumping accounting for 31% of waste. 4 These numbers vary drastically depending on country, region and context. For example, open dumping makes up 93% of waste in low-income countries, and only 2% in high-income countries. 5 Other waste management operations that are sometimes prioritised in laws and policies above landfill in so-called 'waste hiearchies' also cause harm to the environment and health. 6 Incineration and recycling, both of which have been identified as solving issues such as reducing demand on land and promoting the reuse and recovery of resources, can cause air pollution from waste incineration residues and increase cancer risks for residents near plastic recycling workshops. 7 There is no easy waste management hierarchy. 8