Welcome to this video on the Waste Flow Diagram tool, a rapid and observation-based assessment tool to estimate plastic leakage. After watching this video, you will understand how the Waste Flow Diagram tool simply visualizes solid waste management systems, how this is associated with plastics pollution, and how it helps you quantify plastic leakage. We will also explain what input data is needed to run the Waste Flow Diagram and how this links to Sustainable Development Goal 11.6.1. We're all aware of the plastic pollution problem, particularly in areas with poor waste management. This emerging global concern has already led to many international meetings, initiatives, commitments and actions, including the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 14.1, with the objective to reduce plastic marine pollution, particularly from land-based sources. Many efforts are underway to try to reduce plastic pollution, such as beach cleanups, bans on certain types of single-use plastics, such as lightweight plastic bags, and development of reuse and recycling options. Whilst these efforts have good intentions, they possibly do not sufficiently solve the problem. What you really need is to identify the sources of plastic pollution and intervene before it is released and becomes uncontrolled in the environment. Uncollected waste, together with waste that leaks from unsound practices during the municipal solid waste management stages of collection, sorting, transportation, and disposal are some of the main sources of plastic pollution, specifically in low and middle income settings. To understand how to intervene in an effective manner, we need system assessment tools describing waste and resources management and associated plastic leakage at municipal, town, or city level. The Waste Flow Diagram was designed exactly for this purpose, aiming at a rapid approximate fast assessment. I will now hand over to Imanol Zabaleta to guide you to the Waste Flow Diagram tool. Welcome to this video on the Waste Flow Diagram tool. The tool guides the user through a rapid and observation-based assessment to quantify plastic leakages into the environment and ultimately into water systems of a specific location, be that a town, city, or metropolitan area. Then the results are visualized in a standardized way to show municipal solid waste and plastic mass flows, including the plastic pollution into the environment. The outcomes of the Waste Flow Diagram assessment serve to make informed decisions on what improvements to do where, as well as to evaluate the impacts on reducing waste and plastic pollution. Using the same approach in different case studies can also act as benchmark, enabling comparison between them. In order to run the Waste Flow Diagram, users must have a good understanding of the municipal solid waste management system of the case study. A municipal solid waste management system is composed of different stages, namely the generators, a collection system, a sorting stage, a transport network and lastly, disposal facilities. In every one of these stages, plastic can leak into the environment. In order to quantify this generated plastic leakage, the tool requires the following information. Ideally, this information should be as up-to-date and reliable as possible. However, if you do not have this information or you do not trust the one you have, we recommend you to follow the methodology of the SDG Indicator 11.6.1, which measures total municipal solid waste collected and managed in controlled facilities with regards to the total waste generated by cities. An interesting feature of the Waste Flow Diagram tool is that it is harmonized so that it can directly use and visualize data of SDG Indicator 11.6.1. Once the information of the municipal solid waste management system is compiled, the next step is to quantify the plastic waste leaking out of each stage of a municipal solid waste management system. For each stage, the Waste Flow Diagram considers a set of aspects related to infrastructure and practices that influence the potential leakage of plastic from that stage. These aspects are referred to as leakage influencers. Let's choose one of these stages, for example, transportation. The three leakage influencers of transportation are the degree to which the load of waste exceeds the capacity of the trucks, the level of waste containment in bags, and the level of coverage of the trucks. Every stage of the municipal solid waste management system has several leakage influencers, and each leakage influencer can have different levels of leakage potential, low, medium, high, or very high. For each leakage potential level, the manual provides a general description and a leakage factor as the ones shown in this table. The leakage factors are expert-guessed factors that represent the percentage of plastics at that particular stage of the municipal solid waste management system that could turn into leakage. The user must conduct observations in the case study and decide which of the descriptions fits best to the real situation. The tool then will apply the corresponding leakage factor. All these leakage influencers, they're different leakage potentials, and corresponding leakage factors are arranged in decision trees as the one shown here. There is one decision tree for each stage of the municipal solid waste management system. After determining the leakage potentials for each leakage influencer, the waste flow diagram tool combines the corresponding leakage factors using the formula at the bottom to calculate the amount of plastic leaking from that particular stage of the municipal solid waste management system. Once we have the leakages, the tool then guides the user on estimating how much of this leaked amount will ultimately end up in one of the following four fates: on land, burnt, into a drainage system, or into water bodies. Similar to how we did for the leakage influencers, the user manual includes a list of descriptions of how the environment should look like for each pollution level of each fate. Here, we see the descriptions for each pollution level for the fate, land. The user needs to choose the pollution level whose description best fits to the case study. The results are then presented in plastic flow diagrams as the one shown here, where we see the final destinations of the generated plastic. Check that in this case, 40 percent of the plastic waste generated is collected, whereas 44 percent is uncollected. Let's now assume we want to know how the diagram would look like in a different scenario, where the city invests to increase collection rates from 40 percent to 70 percent. The tool also allows measuring and visualizing the impact of such potential intervention scenarios. The whole methodology with all steps is explained in the user guide. For those worried about its complexity, some good news. The tool has been designed in such a way that it avoids complicated calculations and complex statistics. The wasteful diagram tool was developed through collaboration between giz, the University of Leeds, Eawag, and WasteAware. Thanks to the support of the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and giz. That's it. In this video, we introduced the waste flow diagram tool. The tool helps to conduct a rapid and observation based assessment to calculate the amounts of plastic leaked into the environment and their final fates. It also provides a standardized visualization of municipal solid waste and plastic flows. It relies on quantitative data of the municipal solid waste management situation for which the methodology of the SDG indicator 11.6.1 is recommended. For a much more detailed analysis of the situation, other tools are available such as the ISWA plastic pollution calculator. Eager to give it a try yourself? Go and test it in your city using the user manual. For more in-depth knowledge on the topic, we also recommend the following key literature. Thank you for watching.
