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Friday, May 23, 2014

Effective waste disposal essential

By Charumini de Silva
 
Pix by J. Weerasekara
 
Effective waste disposal is an essential element to protect both human health and biodiversity in our country.  Solid and liquid waste is becoming an increasing and significant problem in urban areas and near industrial zones. When you talk about waste management the first impression that one would get is very ugly. The main reason behind the poor state of affairs with regard to our solid waste management is our attitude, United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) Director and Representative, Francoise Jacob, said in an exclusive interview with Ceylon FT.
 
“Majority of the people are not taking the responsibility for the waste that we produce.  However, when you take the big picture of waste management it plays an important role in managing a country in a cost effective and healthy manner. Like the Mother Nature, if you try ignoring, it will end as a catastrophe. Many things have changed in the world within the last 50 years or so. The population has risen up to almost seven billion with the increased consumption,” she said.
 
There are many reasons for this enormous increase in waste quantities such as population increase, urbanization and migration of population from the rural to the urban areas leading to much higher population densities, changes in lifestyles, economic activities and many more. The sophisticated lifestyles have also tempted the people to purchase new, rather than reuse an old item as a substitute. The exponential growth of population has caused for a drastic increase of waste in the world.
 
Common problem
 
Solid waste disposal is a common threat to environment in many countries since most of the solid waste generated ended up directly in open landfills or dumps. In Sri Lanka, there is approximately 6,000 tonnes of waste every day and of that, only 25% are collected. The rest 75% are just lying around the neighbourhood of us and nobody cares. In the past, solid waste disposal was not a concern because of the free availability of degraded land. However, land scarcity is now a major problem faced by the municipality and therefore finding land for Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) disposal is becoming increasingly difficult. This has resulted in the spreading of various chronic diseases.
 
“In a recent visit to East coast, Jaffna lagoon and the down South beaches, it was observed that they were full of litter, which is very unpleasant and unhealthy. Illegal dump sites in the coastlines of Chillaw, Wadduwa, Hikkaduwa and Jaffna lagoon have created a negative impression for the tourists, while affecting the migrant birds. If Sri Lanka is to promote tourism in this manner; none of the tourists would then like to visit the country. These issues need to be addressed soon as they are vital for socio economic development of the country,” Jacob noted.
 
The challenge
 
The leadership is good as the legal framework for solid waste management is quite well established in Sri Lanka. The policy framework is sound and comprehensive. Lack of funding is a factor, because the legal responsibility of solid waste management is with the local authorities and the Provincial Councils, which are not profit-making organizations. The main challenge is to implement a proper solid waste management system in the country and change their negative attitude into a positive perception. Colombo is pretty clean now from what it used to look some years ago, which is a very good move indeed.  However, we see that the progress of the cleanliness in other cities mainly outside Colombo is lesser. This is where United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) comes in to bridge these gaps and try to develop a system that will sustain and benefit the society.
 
Local authorities and all the households have to do their part in making their neighbourhood pleasant and healthy. The right infrastructure and equipment are two key elements which can be easily done, but operating and maintaining the system is the challenge.
 
Positive steps
 
The Pilisaru project of the Central Environmental Authority with the concept of reusing the resources available in the collected garbage to the maximum before final disposal. This project is well received and has a good response from the community. Segregation is very important in waste management.  So, if each household separates the wet waste from the solid waste; it is actually a very small portion that needs to go to the landfills. Countries like India make use of these waste plastic to derive energy. However, to generate energy requires heap quantities of plastic wastage and as a result of the process a byproduct of methane will be produced. Nevertheless, this process is not much financially viable as the quantities are limited in Sri Lanka.
 
“In Sri Lanka, 56% of the waste is biodegradable, which is also known as wet waste.  This is very good to make compost, which is very useful for organic farming. With Sri Lanka aiming to increase its agricultural production, this compost will help to uplift the agriculture sector. Compost is a very lucrative business, which also promotes green jobs,” she added. 
 
In Jaffna we got to know the local authorities have forbidden the usage of plastic bags and inculcate a habit to use bags made of disposable material, such as cloth and cane. Even in supermarkets nowadays, they have limited the usage of plastic bags when packaging the goods of customers at the counters. It is true that these are all uncomplicated and simple practices, which we all need to inculcate into our daily patterns. Hence, the challenge is about getting everyone on board for one good purpose to facilitate a better future.
 
She said “Apart from Colombo, we do not see a major involvement from the private sector, when it comes to waste management. However, with the awareness and identifying waste management as a viable business, couple of companies from Colombo come to Eastern Province to landfills to collect the recyclable bottles. These companies then bring them back to Colombo and ship them to an Indian company. In Sri Lanka, there are no recycling companies at present, but it is just a matter of time for the private sector to find the waste management business financially interesting.”
 
A model of integrated facilities and operations
 
The integrated solid waste management programme in Ampara is considered by many to be one of the most effective programmes in the country. The cycle of activities is managed by local authorities organized in clusters, to benefit from economies of scale. It starts from waste segregation at the household level, collection of segregated garbage in households and local businesses, where the residual wastes are transported to transfer station and finally to landfill, biodegradable waste delivered in composting facility for processing and recyclable waste to the recycling centres. The programme is funded by the European Union and implemented by 12 local authorities in Ampara with technical support from UNOPS. This Cluster Waste Management Scheme works in a manner, where participation of local authorities in Kalmunai, Sammanthurai, Nintavur and Karaitivu, manages their own collection system. The waste transfer station receives waste for disposal from the above-mentioned local authorities and is brought by tipper trucks to the landfill site at the Addalaichenai Pradhiya Sabha. The biodegradable wastes are brought separately to compost facilities and final product sold in 25kg packs via the cooperative system to the paddy farmers. Other recyclable waste is compressed into cubes and sold to local traders. Currently, on a total generation of  210 tons of waste in urban Ampara, almost 132 tons moves through the Solid Waste Management programme operated by the local authorities, with UNOPS support.
 
Most of the local Authorities pay more attention to the improvement of physical infrastructure. However, within the last few years, several funding agencies together with UNOPS have provided financial assistance to the Environment Ministry, Central Environmental Authority, Local Government and Provincial Councils for solid waste management.
 
“The next steps are required to make this kind of projects successful in the long-term. One initiative we extensively discussed was the implementation of a fee structure where households, private sector companies and tourist hotels can be charged, so that the waste disposal system managed by local authorities can be financially self-sustainable. It is essential to make people understand and it has to be managed properly in a cost effective or cost recovery manner. Based on this pilot project, the solid waste management programme can be rolled out to the rest of the country so that we can avoid the incubation of diseases that are getting rampant in the recent past,” she said.
 
Future
 
There is hope for future because the younger generation, especially the school children, are much more sensitive to the environmental impacts of this unsustainable behaviour, but we need to provide them the necessary support. UNOPS is working on heavily organizing awareness programmes on ‘Useless to Useful’ especially for the school children. It is important that the children are very enthusiastic and incredibly creative about projects of this nature. Many children said they wanted to live in a cleaner environment and protect the beautiful areas which are the blessing of this country such as beaches, lagoons and mountains. “We can see that things are moving in the right direction with the support of the government, local authorities, provincial councils and some private participation too,” Jacob noted.

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