The simplest policies to reduce the amount of waste pollution in urban areas start at reducing the sources of pollution. This starts with reducing the amount of waste to begin with. The reduction of single use products in cities will drastically reduce waste. Single use plastic grocery bags, water bottles, and carry out food containers are all targets for this. Currently there are only a few states with statewide bans on plastic grocery bags. The first two, Hawaii and California, have seen a significant decrease in the amount of plastic pollution in the cities. San Jose has had an 89% reduction of plastic bags in storm drains and an overall reduction of household plastic waste of 59%. There have been studies that show that fees for bags often promote similar levels of reusable bag use as all out single use bag bans. Considerations in this are the cost of bags, what alternatives are available such as paper, or thicker material plastics (Taylor, Villas-Boas 2015). In instances where single use items are the most practical option, policies to reduce desirability such as taxes can help. Policies often revolve around promotion of recycling. I personally believe recycling is good and absolutely should be promoted, these residential recycling programs are often ineffective. A large amount of the materials still end up in landfills and recycling is generally more expensive than creating new products. Thus, promoting recycling would require policies incentivizing the use of recycled products. It is unreasonable to think that all products would be kept out of landfills so the sustainable use of landfill land would need to be part of these policies. Turning landfills into greenspaces is an effective way to do this. A perfect example of this is Mount Trashmore Park in Virginia Beach, VA. Mount Trashmore seen as an environmental engineering marvel, took a filled landfill and turned into a 165 acre park. Green spaces such as this have shown that they can reduce pollution and lower temperatures in cities (Aram, Higueras, Solgi, Mansournia 2019).
Reference
Aram, F., Higueras García, E., Solgi, E., & Mansournia, S. (2019). Urban green space cooling effect in cities.
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Taylor, R. L., & Villas‐Boas, S. B. (2015). Bans vs. fees: Disposable Carryout bag policies and bag usage.
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