DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND SOCIAL MEDIA FOR WASTE MANAGEMENT: A NARRATIVE REVIEW OF CURRENT TRENDS, CHALLENGES, AND FUTURE PROSPECTS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35631/IJEMP.936055Keywords:
Digital Platforms, Social Media, Waste Management, Circular Economy, Smart City Infrastructure, Citizen Engagement, Narrative ReviewAbstract
Rapid urbanisation and the generation of large amounts of municipal solid waste present serious operational and ecological challenges for modern cities and require a shift toward digitally mediated circular economies. This narrative review synthesises the multidisciplinary scholarly landscape on the role of digital platforms and social media networks in promoting waste management operations, public communication, and citizen engagement. This paper analyses peer-reviewed literature indexed in the Scopus database in the period 2015-2025 to explore how emerging digital technologies and platforms, such as sensors of the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), and interactive social networks, can provide a substantial shift in waste governance from a reactive disposal model to proactive data-driven resource recovery ecosystems. Although digital solutions are increasingly adopted, existing research has focused mainly on technical features, while socio-behavioural, social, and governance dimensions remain less integrated. This review synthesises the current literature to address this gap across four key domains: innovations in smart infrastructure, technology-enabled collaboration, behavioural interventions in social media, and structural barriers to implementation. Key findings reveal that digital platforms can greatly reduce communication costs, enable local civic engagement, and improve collection logistics. However, regional digital divides, organisational siloes, data privacy issues, and overreliance on short-term self-reported performance indicators (e.g., reported participation instead of long-term operational or environmental benefits) constrain the capacity to deploy at scale across municipal systems. The review therefore further develops an integrated socio-technical framework through a critical evaluation of these tensions linking technical engineering models with socio-cognitive behavioural theories and multi-level governance frameworks. In practice, this study provides evidence-based recommendations to municipal authorities and platform developers to design digital applications that are data-transparent and user-centred. Ultimately, this paper suggests that technology itself is not the solution to waste management. Instead, digital innovation must be combined with inclusive governance, citizen engagement, integration of the informal sector and measurable long-term outcomes.
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