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<Municipal Solid Waste Management> Asia 2.2 Topic b: Collection and transfer East Asia/Pacific Collection and transfer usually dominate solid waste management costs in cities of the region. MSW collection and transfer in the East Asia/Pacific region is, in general, still the responsibility of the public sector, although there is a trend toward contracting out some services. Various collection and container systems are used. There is both door-to-door collection and indirect collection, with containers/communal bins placed near markets, in apartment complexes, and in other appropriate locations and hauled to transfer stations and disposal sites by vehicles. In cities of industrialized countries such as Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, and Singapore, collection and transfer services are capital-intensive and mechanized. Container sizes are standardized, as are collection vehicles and large on-site containers, which may also be fitted with compactors. There are regulations governing source separation and separate collection of recyclables. Collection is extended to all areas. Large trade and industrial establishments are responsible for the collection and disposal of their solid wastes. Private collection firms are contracted by small and medium enterprises. Collection rates are good, at about 90%. In all medium and large cities of the region there are administrative structures for MSW collection and transfer services. The frequency of collection ranges from once or twice a week to daily collection. Collection crews are directly employed with fixed working hours, holidays, and other benefits. In developing countries, collection and transfer are labor-intensive, although all large cities maintain a fleet for motorized collection. In multi-story buildings, dust chutes are used for transfer to bin centers or collection vehicles. Manually or mechanically loaded compactors are often used in markets and commercial establishments. Where the solid waste authority accepts responsibility for collecting from congested areas, hand carts are used and communal bins are placed at appropriate locations for deposit and storage. Most vehicles and on-site large storage containers are not fitted with compactors, as the density of the wastes is normally high. While large, stationary containers save municipal labor and transport costs, they create a temporary disposal problem: the bins are too high for children to reach, so much waste is dumped around the containers; the messier the site becomes, the fewer people attempt to approach the containers. Often, collection crews are not responsible for picking up waste that is not in the containers (this being the work of street sweepers) so the container site may remain messy and obstructed even after a new container is placed there. In the poorer countries of the region, collection rates can be lower than 50%. However, Bangkok, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Seoul, and Shanghai, for example, all collect more than 80% of the waste generated. There are, of course, disparities in collection service between rich and poor areas. Pre-collection organized in a decentralized way is in some cases very useful in raising collection rates. For instance, as part of the formal system of waste collection, the kampungs ("villages") of Indonesian cities have responsibility for primary collection, the wastes of the area being deposited at a transfer or temporary storage point for collection by the city service. Indonesia now has a good system of MSW collection. Still, in some countries, collection service is not extended to the poor, especially those in illegal settlements. The reasons given by the authorities are that these residents are unable to pay for the service, or that the settlements are situated in places that collection vehicles cannot go. (Even in Vietnam, where the authority is willing to provide service to all residents, up to 30% of some places may not be served due to inaccessibility). Another reason in some cities is that waste collection crews often supplement their wages by waste trading; there are fewer recyclables in poor areas and therefore collection crews are not as motivated to serve them. In the large cities of China, equipment (vehicles, bins) is mostly supplied from national manufacturing plants, in contrast to the smaller developing countries, which have to import equipment. Hence, China has been able to design equipment more appropriate to the waste and local characteristics of its cities. Yangon, by contrast, has imported second-hand compactor vehicles from Singapore that were manufactured in Japan. The compaction machinery is not used, however, as the MSW is not suitable for compaction. Where equipment is imported, up to 50% of the vehicles may be out of operation at any one time because parts are not available for repairs. Some Chinese cities (e.g., Shanghai and Beijing) have quite well structured systems for collection, transport, treatment, and reuse of MSW. However, a weak link in collection and transportation in Chinese cities is the lack of good transfer stations. In large cities where the disposal sites are located far from cities, transfer stations are used to put wastes collected from several points into larger vehicles. Transfer stations often serve as processing centers where recyclables are separated for recycling/reuse. The stations of cities in industrialized countries are usually mechanized, with adequate operation and maintenance programs. Most developing countries have insufficient and inadequately designed transfer stations. In any case, they would tend to use less mechanized equipment, because the denser wastes characteristic of the poorer of these countries cannot be compacted very much. Increasingly, collection services are being privatized. In the region as a whole roughly 20% of collection service is now contracted out to private waste collection companies. This practice is gaining momentum, especially in countries such as Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. In Singapore, as elsewhere, the main motivation for privatization is cost saving; the cost of collection and disposal of refuse has tripled during the last decade to more than US$700 million. In 1994, a private limited company was created by the Ministry of the Environment, with an authorized capital fund of US$250 million, to take over the collection unit of the Ministry of the Environment starting in 1996. Privatization of transfer stations in the region has occurred to a much smaller extent. Financial constraints and the lack of education and training severely limit collection and transfer services in the cities and towns of poorer developing nations. Shortages of collection vehicles, inadequate transfer points, traffic congestion, and lack of public compliance are factors affecting collection efficiency, resulting in low waste collection rates. In some cities, heaps of refuse are routinely left uncollected; there are illegal deposits on open land, drains and canals. The lack of coordination and overlapping of responsibility among government agencies and different levels of local government also contribute to the problem. Such deficiencies have contributed to serious degradation of the environment, have led to deteriorating urban health conditions, and have hurt the quality of life. The role of women in MSWM needs recognition. Housewives manage the garbage in the households, pay for the collection service, and very often separate recyclables and sell or barter them to itinerant waste collectors. Both the informal collection by itinerant buyers in cities of developing countries and specialized collection and recycling industries in cities of industrialized countries play a significant role in reducing wastes for collection. Research and development of alternatives to conventional MSWM systems are needed in some countries, as western-style technology and organization is not well suited to the economy and society. To date, there have been two main areas of discussion: appropriate equipment and organization for collection from congested areas, and how to retain the useful aspects of informal waste recovery and trading while reducing the problematic ones. South and West Asia While there is considerable variation in collection and transport systems in South and West Asia (not only from country to country, but within sections of one urban area) there are common issues. The most important issue in collection for most countries of the region is the irregularity or lack of municipal service for squatter settlements or congested low-income areas. Another general problem in all but the richer countries is the unnecessary handling of wastes (time consuming procedures that carry high health risks for workers), which is partly a result of simple equipment and partly due to the lack or paucity of designed transfer points. Collection rates vary from 20%-90% of municipal wastes. The frequency of scheduled collection is partly governed by climate, and by the system in use. In the Indian subcontinent, temperatures are high and the system is often "open" (i.e., the street containers and transfer points are not covered and waste is exposed). In such circumstances daily or twice-daily collection is required. In those parts of the central and northern areas where there is curbside or door-to-door collection, collection may be less frequent, although regular. Irregular and inadequate collection is usually a function of the legal and economic status of the neighborhood. Many illegal settlements are not entitled to waste services. A contributing factor is that municipal collection crews have less incentive to pick up garbage from poor neighborhoods as the wastes contain fewer recyclables that the collectors can sell. In the prestigious areas of larger cities waste is contained, streets are swept regularly (sometimes with mechanical sweepers), and transfer points are adequately maintained. Often a disproportionate amount of funds is spent on meticulous sweeping of such areas, while basic collection and street sweeping is neglected for the poorer ones. Apart from the problems of collecting waste from slum areas and squatter settlements, collection systems often break down at food markets, where large quantities of wastes contain rotten foodstuffs. With inadequate management, conditions at such markets create health risks and nuisances to vendors and shoppers. War, civil disturbance, and labor unrest periodically or chronically affect the frequency and quality of municipal service in a number of the countries of South and West Asia. The most serious disruption has been in Afghanistan, where the managerial and physical infrastructure for MSWM has been devastated. Strikes by municipal unions have been serious at times in India; the desire to avoid strikes has led managers to agree to union demands regarding the size of collection crews, pay, and duty scales. The disruption of city services by disturbances has been chronic in Bangladesh for a few years. In most cities and towns of the subcontinent, the municipality is not responsible for collecting refuse from houses and small shops; rather, people are required to deposit their wastes in communal containers (stationary or haul types), from which it is collected by municipal crews. House and shopkeepers frequently make private arrangements, usually with the municipal sweepers, to have their garbage taken to the containers or transfer points. The small monthly fees are a welcome supplement to the low wages of these workers, but this activity is not supervised and may be poorly performed. Citizens' groups are organizing in several cities to hire regular collectors to ensure that household wastes are taken to collection points (e.g., Civic Exnora street-beautifying groups in places like Madras and Baroda). A collection point may be a container, a concrete vat, a road side, or an open area. The type of vehicles used varies from city to city, and within one urban area, according to the type of container system and the funds available for purchasing or hiring vehicles. For example, in large cities, open flatbed trucks, covered trucks, and some compactors are in use, whereas in smaller cities tractor-trailers and animal carts are common. Collection and transfer in the low-income and northern middle-income economies is still labor-intensive, although in certain large cities there is a trend towards hydraulically lifted or haulable containers to reduce handling. There are a few experiments with curbside and house-to-house collection in elite areas. In areas of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, the authority supplies containers to households; these containers are lifted hydraulically and emptied into compactor trucks. In the larger cities of countries like Jordan and Syria, waste is generally disposed of in plastic bags and collected from houses, except in very congested areas. With the exception of Israel and the oil-rich cities, the working conditions for municipal sweepers and collection crews leave much to be desired and affect the efficiency of service and the health risks of workers and the public. Workers lack appropriate protective clothing, equipment, and washing facilities, and they are inadequately supervised. Because of the infectious and hazardous substances in waste streams, the lack of protection and washing facilities greatly increases the risks for workers, as has been shown in the rare studies of workers' health. Managed, purpose-built transfer stations are found in some large cities, such as New Delhi and Bombay. In most cities and towns, MSW is transported to disposal areas after collection from the street transfer points. With the spatial spread of urban settlement, solid waste managers express the need for more transfer stations, and the large cities are all now planning these. Building transfer stations in cities is often constrained by unavailability of suitable land, lack of funds, and public objections to the proposed facilities.
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