Every year, there are events in our sector that inform, and events that energise. For me, the ISWA World Congress does both.
Waste management can be a strangely isolated field. Many of us are working in very different contexts – cities, islands, rural areas, under-resourced settings, high-income settings, public systems, private systems, formal and informal – but we are often wrestling with the same questions. How do we improve services? How do we finance better systems? How do we work with reality rather than theory? How do we protect health, reduce environmental harm, and build something that lasts?
That is why ISWA matters.
When the sector comes together in one place, something important happens. We get out of our own bubbles. We hear what others are trying. We learn what is working, what is failing, and why. We get a better sense of where the field is moving – and where it still needs to be challenged. We reconnect with old colleagues, meet new ones, and often come away with ideas, collaborations and perspectives that stay with us for years.
I have had many important moments in my own career at ISWA congresses. Some have come from formal sessions. Others have come from chance conversations in corridors, over coffee, or after a panel when somebody says the one thing that makes a problem click into place. That is one of the real values of Congress – not just the presentations, but the exchange. The human side of learning. The reminder that none of us is doing this work alone.
ISWA is one of the few places where the full breadth of the sector is visible in one room. You can move from discussions on policy and finance to practical questions of collection, organics, plastics, behaviour change, data, inclusion, climate, governance and infrastructure. You can hear from people working at city level, national level and in towns and villages. You can compare notes across continents. And if you pay attention, you nearly always leave having learned something you will actually use.
At ISWA 2025, I introduced the concept for the Global Waste Lab Academy. The problem is too big and too urgent to continue with business as usual. We need a fundamentally different approach – one that democratises waste management knowledge, and platforms the wisdom of experts who rarely get heard: practitioners working in places that face similar challenges, sharing what actually works with each other. The Academy comes from a simple belief: that people working in waste and resource management, especially in under-resourced settings, need access to practical, grounded learning that respects their reality and builds from it. ISWA felt like the right place to start that conversation, because it is one of the few forums where the global sector genuinely meets.
This year feels especially significant – because ISWA 2026 is coming to London, my home city. There is something very special about seeing a global congress arrive in a place that has shaped so much of your own story. London is not only an iconic host city. It is a fitting place for the sector to come together, debate ideas, share evidence, and strengthen relationships across countries and disciplines. I cannot wait to welcome people here.
A word too on how well CIWM have shaped this year’s programme. The themes – human rights, political commitment, waste planning, economics, circular economy – are not arbitrary. They reflect, to a significant degree, the findings and priorities of the UNEP Global Waste Management Outlook 2024, which set out with unusual clarity what the sector needs to focus on if we are serious about change. As lead author of that report, I find it genuinely encouraging to see its conclusions translated into a congress agenda. It means the conversations in that room in November should be the right ones. And the speaker lineup promises real diversity of voice and perspective – which, frankly, is what makes a congress worth attending.
And this is the moment to book. ISWA 2026 takes place in London from 9–11 November, hosted by CIWM, and Early Bird tickets are available until 24 April 2026. Around 1,200 delegates from more than 50 countries are expected.
So if you have been meaning to register, do it now.
Come for the learning. Come for the conversations. Come to see where the sector is heading – and to help shape that direction. Come because waste management is too important to build in isolation.
And come because some of the most valuable moments in this field happen when we are all in the room together.
I’ll be sharing more soon about how Global Waste Lab will be contributing to the ISWA 2026 year – including a webinar series I’m very excited about. Watch this space.
