CiCoSA Action Toolkit 

The CiCoSA Action Toolkit includes a CiCoSA Handbook and a CiCoSA Implementation Guide with a focus on Kenya and Namibia. 

The CiCoSA Handbook examines benefits and risks of circular economy approaches to a sustainable building and construction sector from the waste management perspective, providing practical case studies that could be scaled up in the region as part of a sustainable urbanization strategy. 

The CiCoSA Implementation Guide serves as a roadmap to navigate challenges on circular construction. It is specifically tailored to policymakers in Sub-Saharan Africa, considering the region's unique social, economic, and environmental context. It outlines the various stages of a circular construction life cycle, from product manufacture and design to construction, operation, and ultimately, building deconstruction. Recommendations emphasize the crucial role of empowering local communities and fostering collaboration across sectors.

UN-Habitat (2019): Awareness toolkit: my waste our wealth

This advocacy toolkit has been developed to guide city authorities in sensitizing their communities to waste management issues and in promoting sustainable day-to-day practices that can support the authority in improving waste management in the long term. This advocacy toolkit and guide aims at fostering behavioural change at the community level to achieve sustainable resource and municipal solid waste management in cities.

The toolkit comprises of:

1. A guide to sensitize children, youth and community members, My waste, our wealth
2. A comic book: My waste, our wealth
3. 5Rs posters: My waste, our wealth

A comic book: My waste, our wealth

This comic book for children and adults shows us how to contribute with our daily actions to sustainable solid waste management and a circular economy through the 5Rs! Download the comic and take action now: saving the world starts from you!

5Rs posters: My waste, our wealth

These posters showcase examples of the 5Rs application: rethink, refuse, reduce, reuse, and recycle, at home at school, and at our workplaces! Print them out and hang them! Be responsible for your waste: it was once waste, it is now our wealth!

CITY ACTION PLAN on Plastic – Template

Are you preparing a plastic waste action plan for your city, and you don’t know where to start? Check out this "City Action Plan on Plastic" template, co-developed by WWF and WWC teams, to guide you developing an interventions’ plan to tackle plastic waste in the short term. Do you want to share your experience on the formulation and implementation of the plastic action plan? Do it here!”

UN-Habitat (2020): Waste Wise Cities Tool

Based on SDG indicator 11.6.1 parameters, the tool consists of 7 steps that guide cities to collect data on municipal solid waste generated, collected, and managed in controlled facilities. The tool provides a household survey guide for total MSW generation, a questionnaire to identify the MSW recovery chain and criteria to check the environmental control level of waste management facilities in the city. .

UN-Habitat (2020): Strategy Guidance: Solid Waste Management Response to COVID-19

Although several guidelines exist about the treatment of waste from healthcare facilities, there is a lack of guidance on how to adapt regular municipal waste management services to a pandemic situation. The present guidelines seek to address this and support decision makers in developing a solid waste management response strategy to the COVID-19 situation.

UN-Habitat (2008): Solid Waste Management Technical Guideline For Municipalities Of Nepal

The Solid Waste Management Technical Guideline For Municipalities Of Nepal will be helpful for the municipal staff and other stakeholders in dealing with solid waste management activities.

Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (2013):Reducing the Food Wastage Footprint

The aim of the Toolkit is to showcase concrete examples of good practices for food loss and waste reduction, while pointing to information sources, guidelines and pledges favoring food wastage reduction.

UN Environment/ International Solid Waste Association: Training Resource Pack for Hazardous waste in developing countries

The Purpose of this Training Resource Pack is to supplement these manuals and guidelines with aids and explanatory notes that bring the message across in a structured, convincing and exciting way. This will assist teachers and trainers in various institutions to present an overview of the many issues and challenges faced by those in government, industry and civil society who are responsible for hazardous waste management.

Clean Climate and Air Coalition (2018): Solid Waste Emission Estimation tool

The Solid Waste Emissions Estimation Tool (SWEET) is an Excel-based tool that quantifies emissions of methane, black carbon, and other pollutants from sources in the municipal solid waste sector. The tool provides emissions and emissions reduction estimates at the project-, source-, and municipality-level. Cities can use this information for multiple purposes, including establishing a baseline scenario, comparing a baseline scenario to as many as four alternative scenarios, analyzing specific projects for potential emissions reductions, estimating the contribution of activities in the waste sector to overall city emissions reduction goals, and tracking progress over time, among other things.

SWEET was developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency with support from Abt Associates and SCS Engineers on behalf of the Climate and Clean Air Coalition Municipal Solid Waste Initiative.

• Version 1 of the tool was released in October 2017.
• Version 2.0 was released in February 2018. 
• Version 3.0 was released in May 2019.  The main new feature of SWEET v3.0 is that users have the option to adjust their open burning rate in the future for a given alternative scenario. SWEET v2.1 assumed a constant burning rate throughout the entire lifetime of the analysis. Now, in SWEET v3.0,  a user can model an example alternative scenario with an open burning rate of X% in 2020, and Y% in 2030. They are allowed one adjustment to the open burning rate per scenario. Alternatively, users can test the impact of targeting different sources of open burning pollution.

Global Alliance of Waste Picker (2016): Gender and Waste Recycling: A Toolkit for Teachers, Researchers and Practitioners

As part of the Waste and Gender Project, this toolkit was developed for a broad audience interested in understanding the connections between gender inequalities in the waste sector. There are three books, available in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, along with pullout exercises from workshops conducted with women waste pickers on gender and waste.

While academic studies increasingly focus on waste picking and solid waste management, including the threats and risks faced by informal recyclers, there is still a gap when it comes to understanding the gender dynamics and sexual division of labour involved in waste picking activities. The Gender and Waste Project, undertaken in 2012-2015, sought to fill this gap by working closely with women waste pickers in Minas Gerais, Brazil, in a horizontal and participatory process. The aim of the exploratory research-action project was to understand women’s concerns regarding gender inequality in their workplaces, homes, and within the national movement of waste pickers.

Preceded by a popular toolkit, which seeks to engage waste workers by introducing key gender inequality issues, this Toolkit includes identification of conceptual issues related to gender and waste, a framework for groups interested in holding workshops, and additional resources.