Design principles for city waste reduction: Addressing gaps in public reporting for zero waste

As cities respond to growing demands of waste management, what and how information is publicly reported is becoming more important. Despite the evolution of sophisticated reporting systems, inconsistent, incomplete, and misunderstood waste management data create gaps in public reporting and accountability. The objective of this research is to explore gaps in public disclosures of information about an active city waste management system to identify and understand barriers towards a waste reduction target. This paper presents a case study through desktop analysis of waste management reporting within a local government area in Sydney, Australia, where waste is managed between the local government (the City of Sydney) and industry stakeholders. Three key barriers to transparent, inclusive, and auditable public reporting were identified as impacting the city waste reduction target: (i) an ambiguous target, (ii) conflicting and inconsistent waste data, and (iii) incomplete disclosures. Seven design principles are derived to support the myriad of stakeholders required to achieve more impactful city waste reduction targets and contribute to the limited empirical studies of zero waste implementation. Namely, (i) Transparency in Existing Sustainability Commitments, (ii) Disclosure of Material Flows, (iii) Inclusion of Stakeholder Relationships, (iv) Identification and Disclosure of Gaps in Public Reporting, (v) Development of Detailed Target Definition and Action Plan, (vi) Development of Baseline Waste Data and Progress Reporting Timeline, and (vii) Development of Detailed Budget to Achieve Targets.