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Delterra's Work with Cities

How cities can achieve their circular economy goals

We are in the midst of a chronic waste crisis.

Despite renewed commitments by businesses and policymakers to support the transition to a circular economy, we are polluting our world at a rate higher than ever before. The circular economy demands recycled material, yet many cities struggle with overflowing landfills, informal dumping and burning of waste, and are unable to recover the valuable resources from their waste streams.

Why is it that some cities’ efforts to improve waste management barely make a dent in waste flows, while others make steady, ultimately transformative progress towards their zero-waste, low-emission vision? What makes the difference?

Delterra’s experience has shown that to be successful at scale, cities need to take an integrated, holistic approach to designing their waste management systems.

Examples of our work in collaboration with cities across the Global South

From Bali to Buenos Aires, we've worked with cities and neighborhoods to transform their waste systems into circular economies.

Denpasar

After scaling our pilot into multiple villages, our work in Denpasar has impacted ~100k people to date and achieved an 80% participation rate. Our collaboration with government entities resulted in a 60% increase in annual public funding allocated to waste management.

Olavarría

Supported by Alliance To End Plastic Waste and Amcor, Delterra worked with the city of Olavarría to transform the city’s waste management model. We reached ~75k residents with our behavioral change program, ad achieved a separation rate of 50% for recyclables and 30% for compostables.

Guaxupé

During our first project in Brazil, we developed an in-depth recycling program from scratch. We leveraged high-impact citizen engagement strategies, drawing from proven methodologies in Argentina. Guaxapé saw a 120% increase in weekly recycling participation and a 3.5x increase in volume of weekly recyclables recovered.

Buenos Aires

Among other projects in Buenos Aires, we worked with local recycler D&D and with the Alliance To End Plastic Waste to create a subsidy, paid to waste cooperatives to make collection and sorting economically viable. The project diverted and recyled 6,500+ tons of previously landfill-destined flexible LDP in 18 months.

Why cities?

Our theory of change for fixing recycling: Our overall goal is for every community to have green, inclusive, and economic recycling systems, to help achieve a world free of waste. How do we get there? Our strategy and programs are designed around a logical sequence that we’re testing:

Prove the model at a single unit of scale

Achieve critical mass of adoption to achieve supply

Use economies of scale to unlock new demand

Institutionalize new system in governments and companies

Replicate in new countries and regions

We explored different units of scale in the early years of our ground work. Our current hypothesis is that the right unit of scale differs by country or region, even if the solution is largely the same, since different entities hold decision-making power regarding waste.

For example: in Argentina, we believe it is the municipality, and in Bali, we believe it is the regency. Ultimately, these equate to city-level work from which we base our single unit of scale.

Report

The Six Dimensions of Circular Waste Management

To support cities in making smart investments to divert their waste into the circular economy, Delterra has defined six interdependent dimensions of a holistic integrated waste management system. This framework is intended to break down the ambiguity of the circular economy transition for the waste management and recycling space, as these are two of the circular economy domains over which a city has the greatest control.

Reports

Circular Cities Report Series

Delterra is a 501(c)(3) public charity.

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