Financial Aspects of the Solid Waste Management

The article dwells on financial aspects of the municipal solid waste management. The aim of the article is to consider common factors of solid waste financing in developed and developing countries, to determine the structure of total costs of municipal solid waste services, to consider complications that appear in relation to capital costs and operation and management costs, to compare costs of municipal solid waste technologies, to find out how do cities obtain investment funding for solid waste management projects, how local governments obtain operational and maintenance funding, as well as to make comparison of waste management user fees by income level and by region. The following important costs consideration has been made. Capital costs and operation costs are normally financed differently. Capital costs are rather not difficult to benchmark. Quite often some important operation costs are not duly calculated or even overlooked. It is difficult to determine total cost of a service, especially in low-income countries. It is challenging task for a city in a developing country to get investment funds for municipal solid waste management projects for several reasons: municipal financing is highly limited in the context of growing volumes of waste; struggling cities can’t just apply for loans because they are not considered creditworthy by international stock markets; accessibility of donor financing for municipal solid waste management is extremely low if to compare to other sectors; donor financing is often restricted to emerging economies; economic downturns limit private funding available for solid waste management.

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