Coastal City and Zero Waste Masterplan: Exploring a Strategy of Resilience and Inclusion

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic has once again caused citizens around the world to attach importance to the urgency of the waste management crisis and the need for environmental action in general, and this should act as a wake-up call for taking the boundary between human consumption of non-sustainable activities and the capacity of the natural environment seriously. Governments in the Netherlands and Japan designed and implemented policies to facilitate the transition to a circular economy and to promote sustainable waste management. This paper reviews waste management policies and practices in the two countries, explores a circular economy strategy based on coastal cities, using examples of different zero waste cities to examine how coastal cities have adapted to the zero waste masterplan.