Circular Economy : Make the role of waste management visible
There is a question I keep returning to in conversations with colleagues across our sector: why does waste management remain so persistently underestimated? Not in terms of its challenges, which are already well documented, but in terms of its contribution. Effective waste management is foundational to public health, to climate action, to the circular economy, and to the communities that depend on all three. And yet it seems to be treated, in far too many policy discussions, as an afterthought.
This year has so far offered ISWA several opportunities to make this case directly, and we have taken them. In June, ISWA participated in the Global Zero Waste Forum in Istanbul, alongside representatives from more than 150 countries and 500 institutional stakeholders. Events like this matter and not only for the commitments they may generate. They matter because they bring into sharp focus a tension that our sector knows well: interventions upstream tend to succeed or fail downstream. A zero-waste vision without investment or due care in waste collection infrastructure, treatment capacity, and professional expertise is not a policy. It is a wish. ISWA's role in these conversations is to keep that connection visible, to insist that the link between waste prevention and waste management is not a footnote, but the thread that holds the whole agenda together.
Closer to home, 2026 has also been a remarkable year for ISWA's capacity-building work. Besides our annual ISWA-SWIS Winter School that took place at the University of Texas in Arlington and attracted 40 participants from all about 20 countries, our two European Study Tours “Collection, Sorting and Recycling in Northern Italy” and “Waste-to-Energy in Vienna” were fully booked, drawing 50 participants from Zimbabwe, Brazil, Japan, India, Argentina, Sierra Leone, the United States, and across Europe. This success speaks directly to why ISWA exists: to promote and develop professional and sustainable waste management worldwide, and to support the transition to a circular economy through the exchange of knowledge, experience, and best practices. Every participant who visits a functioning facility, who asks difficult questions and compares notes with a colleague from a different continent, takes something back that no policy document can fully provide. It is a reminder that capacity is not built through regulation alone. It is built through professionals who understand the full complexity of the systems they are responsible for.
As we now look toward the ISWA World Congress in London this November, we do so with the conviction that this is the moment to go further. The sector is at a genuine inflection point: plastic treaty negotiations, the EU Circular Economy Act, new EPR frameworks, and accelerating waste generation in regions with the least infrastructure. The agenda is urgent, and the stakes are high.
We look forward to welcoming you to London in November to continue this conversation.
