How to track the dumped waste? From data collection to advanced source identification

The global waste generation has shown a continuing growth trend, yet the waste management systems of many countries still have deficiencies in technologies, infrastructure, and regulation. Waste illegal dumping and historical stockpiles from unidentified generators have not been efficiently addressed, highlighting the critical role of traceability technologies in enabling sound waste management. While water and air pollution sources traceability technologies have formed a multi-technology integrated system, waste traceability still faces great challenges. This study analyzes the progress and innovations for water and air pollution traceability technologies, offering insights into monitoring approaches, dynamic prediction, tracing techniques, and framework development. Regarding illegally dumped waste, we suggest developing a comprehensive traceability framework comprising risk assessment, location tracking, waste characterization, responsible party identification, and precision traceability. The integration of evidence and information systems, blockchain, and multi-source data with artificial intelligence (AI) was essential to support this system. For historically stockpiled but not well-managed waste, traditional methods, such as physicochemical analysis, isotope tracing, and similarity matching have been examined and compared. A novel classification and traceability scheme based on laser-induced in-situ rapid detection technology with AI has therefore been established.