Funding Options for Sustainable Solid Waste Management Systems

The U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Clean Cities, Blue Ocean program—the Agency’s global flagship program under the Save our Seas Initiative—supports local governments in their solid waste management planning process to guide strategic, long-term plans that meet current and future waste management operations. Central to the planning process is the ability of municipalities to evaluate their funding needs and identify revenue-generating options to adequately fund their solid waste and recycling systems.

Many national governments allocate insufficient funding for local governments to operate and manage their waste systems, leaving municipalities to operate potentially substandard systems that are unable to sustain circular economies or plan for future growth. To build efficient, sustainable systems that can grow along with population needs, local governments must know how to identify and access funding options that can provide stable sources of revenue to cover their current daily operations and enable future improvements.

When existing revenues are not adequate to sustain a local government’s solid waste management system or they constrain its ability to improve the existing system, cities can explore other funding options.

USAID’s Clean Cities, Blue Ocean program provides tailored guidance to local governments to guide them through an integrated solid waste management planning process, including identifying options to increase revenues to fund their solid waste and recycling systems. The program’s tools and hands-on technical assistance are customized to local circumstances and opportunities to support cities so they can achieve their short- and long-term waste management funding goals.