Waste management involves regular collection, transportation as well as processing and disposal or recycling and monitoring of di¬erent types of waste materials. These services will save municipalities and businesses a considerable amount of money and prevent the environment from being harmed. To drive the waste management services, a comprehensive waste management policy, and institutional changes and monitoring system are required. This session will discuss updated policies and regulatory frameworks on resource recovery from waste, apart from addressing legislation on control of pollution and environmental protection. Policy references from various international customary rules and treaties such as “Basel Convention”, “Climate Change Convention”, “Connect 2020 Agenda”, “Kyoto Protocol”, “London Convention”, “Rio Declaration”, “SDGs”, “SAICM”, “Stockholm Convention”, “UNFCCC”, and others will be referred.

The battle to achieve smart, healthy and climate neutral city status will be increasingly won or lost in managing waste and resource recovery from waste; and therefore building future waste and resource management infrastructures are critical. However, one of the key common challenges faced by many municipalities and private project owners are ability to raise the upfront capital to finance the ambitious projects and the sourcing of future funding streams of revenue to repay the financing. This session will discuss various financing options including private equity, debt financing and green funds as alternatives to raise investment capital in waste and resource management projects. One of the highlights is the revenue mechanism model to repay the investment, including tapping on carbon credits to repay low-carbon footprint technology projects.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has had a drastic impact on the contact-intensive industries due to the rise of infection cases within the workplaces. The waste management and resource recovery from the waste industry is not being spared either. The urgency now to embrace digitalization and mechanization is more prevalent. In this session, we will discuss how technological, social, and economic e¬ects of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) are rapidly changing the world of waste and resource recovery industry. Experts and technology providers from big data, artificial intelligence (AI), automation, and the internet of things (IoT) will share their experiences from a simple-o¬-the-shelve application to a complex turn-key waste management solution for cities adoption. To address the needs of the circular economy, cutting edge technologies in collection, transportation, sorting, resource recovery and pollution free solutions will be discussed. Smart environment Apps to stimulate interaction between citizens and local government and to foster a culture where waste producers pay more for the waste they create will also be presented.