Management of solid wastes is a corollary of triumphing civilisation. But how does one recycle or reuse increasing solid wastes in radically expanding cities ?
THERE is a world-wide philosophy of solid waste management
based on the principles of waste minimisation and recovery or
recycling. These values are creating a basis for joint ventures
that will bring together representatives of government, communities, private firms, institutes and international agencies,
to address the crises of increasing refuse in the context of
inadequate infrastructure.
Municipal solid waste management is gaining momentum. The initiative is taken by community-based organisations and large NGOS, and their general interest can be labelled
as 'community-based environmental management'.
Government departments, private sector firms and international agencies are providing funds, expertise and support for
education and dissemination of knowledge.
Understanding of the practices and policies for recovery
and recycling in Asian cities is moving into a new phase.
@pecific research and local projects in these cities now encompass attempts to understand city-wide patterns of recovery
and recycling, surveys of household and community attitudes
and behaviours and projects for the welfare and advancement
of waste-pickers.
The second, is applied research designed to improve interventions in environmental management or social welfare.
This may provide the background information for the projects
to be undertaken. Also included in applied research is the
work on designing particular techniques for recycling which
require social analysis.
A lot of work has been done in Bangalore, Bandung,
Jakarta, Hanoi, Karachi, Pune, Hyderabad and Surabaya.
There is now an overview of the networks for recovery, trading, and recycling of materials. Pilot surveys of households,
waste workers and entrepreneurs have been done. Specific
studies of categories of "actors" such as waste pickers or
itinerant waste buyers are complete. The thrust areas distinguished
are as follows:
• Do householders, shopkeepers and office employees practice source separation ofwastes for trading?
• Do they practice reuse or back-yard composting?
• What materials are set aside and in what quantities?
• To whom do they sell?
• How satisfied are they with opportunities for trading
wastes or what problems do they encounter?
• How willing would they be to work in organised rec
or recycling schemes or in assisting the transformation of
waste pickers into becoming collectors of clean material?
The results of the pilot research work suggest that
household separation is active in Asian cities, but is threaned
by general urban and societal changes like rising income
that decrease the incentives for the sale of certain material
and the squeezing out of neighbourhood waste-buying shops.
Even international trade developments such as the import of
high quality waste materials for recycling is a major impeding
factor.
The current projects for waste recycle take place alongside
the 'traditional' behaviours of separation and trading. Some of
the projects to encourage separation are geared to capturing
household organic wastes in a pure state for composting
vermicomposting, with the aim of reducing the burden of
lection and disposal for the municipality. Some have evolved
from work with street children and very poor families who
have resorted to waste picking.
The new initiatives enhance 'informal' systems aad in
some they run parallel to or aim to replace them. For instance
NGOS may ask schools to separate materials and to sell them to
designated buyers, thus attempting to bypass the existing
practices of cleaners and caretakers controlling the sale of the
materials.
The initiatives concerned with the workers in waste recycle
systems mainly aim to improve the status, earnings and work
ing conditions of traditional workers like waste pickers. There
are a surprising number of different types of social organisa
tions involved in some way with waste separation or waste
picking in cities of India, Indonesia and the Philippines.
if it is difficult to obtain information about research work on
the many local initiatives related to the recovery and recycling
of urban wastes, to come across failed projects in order to
examine them is more tough. The failures simply disappear
and lessons which could be learnt are rarely passed on to persons contemplating similar interventions.
It is important to note that there is no systematic evaluation of any of the research or the projects. Both research and
projects suffer from lack of continuity, as do so many community based projects. The researchers or development planners
who conceive of the project and see it through the initial phases may move on to other work. The local institutions Or NGos
cannot continue the project work or are diverted by more
urgent calls. In addition, there are usually no clear and established routes by which the results can influence municipal policies and attitudes for solid waste management.
Waste-picking is a practice which greatly attributes to resource
recovery in poor countries. The pilot research on waste recovery in Asian cities suggests that more materials, of better quality, are brought to recycling through source separation (the
left-over resources do not become discarded wastes but are
kept separate for sale) than through waste picking (recovery
that is accomplished by people picking out the materials from
mixed municipal wastes). Yet, much more attention has been
given to the activity of waste picking.
Persons interested in the welfare of pickers have sometimes argued that pickers should be 'integrated' into solid
waste management systems. The artument for integration of
pickers is interpreted as entailing the institutionalisation of
picking through the registration of waste pickers with the city
authorities to guarantee them access to wastes.
Casual, manual recovery of materials from mixed municipal garbage cannot be made truly healthy and socially acceptable. The provision of gloves and boots and access to sanitary
facilities will nc+eliminate health risks unless all the equipment and infrastructure is kept in good order. Thus, provision of these facilities would need to be backed up with a great
deal of education and monitoring. People who are seen to
pick out wastes from contaminated accumulations have
always been socially stigmatised. it is unlikely that the public
will readily accept pickers as doing ecologically and economically valuable work, even if there are persuasive campaigns.
In cities with large numbers of poor people, to prevent
waste picking can be a daunting task. Under these circumstances, it should be recognised that picking from open piles
on city streets is preferable (in terms of health risks) to either
picking from containers or to dump picking.
There is sometimes a misunderstanding about projects to
assist waste pickers. The projects that have shown real potential to substantially improve the health and the earnings of
waste pickers are not those that institutionalise picking.
Rather, in such projects, pickers are assisted in getting access
to clean wastes (for instance, from offices), or to work at transfer stalions or compost plants where they can use tools and
have accesss to washing facilities. The principle of picking
11 close to source" is followed, when pickers are organised to
collect wastes "at the door" and they immediately sort the
materials into organics and inorganics.
Waste picking is a phenomenon that arises from the
conjunction of absolute poverty with free or almost free
resources. For every picker who is assisted to move into the
higher ranks in waste recycle, there are likely to be other new
rural arrivals who wish to take up the picking work. This
phenomenon has long been observed in projects for street
children in developing countries. Picking is likely to decline
only in societies where better work for unskilled people is
readily available.
Social agencies both governmental and NGOS should continue to assist waste pickers in every possible way. In solid
waste management planning, however, the attention currently
being given to waste picking is likely to shift to understanding
on how to promote source separation.
It is thus very important to be clear about waste pickers as
stakeholders in waste recycling, where the intention is to
recommend that picking be institutionalised or where the
ultimate goal is to reduce picking as a vehicle of resource
recovery and enhance source separation. If the pickers' work is
transformed to the handling of clean wastes, they should not
then be referred to as 'pickers'.
Since there are now many initiatives to address the work
of pickers, it is important that the survey on attitudes
include questions on whether the public and the municipal
officials are ready to accept new roles for former waste pickers.
Opposition to pickers as a category of workers based on the
assumption that they tend to be thieves and undesirables may
even prompt community efforts in source separation.
The emergence of a world-wide philosophy of solid waste
management based on the four R's of reduce, reuse, recover,
and recycle, is providing an impetus to community groups
and NGOS in cities of developing countries, in their efforts to
encourage source separation and recycling or to help in the
Organisation of former waste pickers.
We are a voice to you; you have been a support to us. Together we build journalism that is independent, credible and fearless. You can further help us by making a donation. This will mean a lot for our ability to bring you news, perspectives and analysis from the ground so that we can make change together.
.png)
Comments are moderated and will be published only after the site moderator’s approval. Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name. Selected comments may also be used in the ‘Letters’ section of the Down To Earth print edition.