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<Municipal Solid Waste Management> Asia 2.2 Topic a: Waste reduction East Asia/Pacific MSW generation in the region has been increasing at a rate of 3 to 7% per year as a result of population growth, changing consumption patterns, and the expansion of trade and industry in urban centers. MSWM operations absorb large portions of municipal operating budgets, of which as much as 60% are for collection and transfer of the wastes for disposal. There is much discussion now of sustainable development through an integrated approach to waste management, including minimization of the production of wastes and maximizing waste recycling and reuse. Throughout the region, cities have been practicing source separation and recycling formally and informally. Common recyclables include ferrous and nonferrous metals, construction debris, scrap tires, paper/cardboard, plastics, textiles, glass, wood/timber, animal bones and feathers, waste oil and grease, and cinders. In the economically more advanced urban centers of Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, and New Zealand a high degree of waste reduction, separation at source, and recycling is being brought about through public education, new practices (e.g., curbside collection), and volume-based collection fees. Korea is implementing a volume-based fee system, which was extended to all towns in 1995. Waste generators must put out their wastes in bags bought from the municipality and must separate recyclables. Local governments are responsible for collecting the source-separated materials. These initiatives have resulted in a 20-30% decrease in wastes that require disposal. Promoting the American concept of the "garage sale" as a means of waste reduction, some Japanese cities are now actively encouraging exchanges and gifts of unwanted clothes or daily necessities within neighborhoods. Osaka published an "Osaka Recycling Monthly" to encourage exchanges, particularly of furniture and electrical goods. The Hong Kong Productivity Council is promoting waste education in several ways. There are sophisticated waste trading businesses, some dealing internationally (for instance, used clothes export companies in Yokohama, Japan). These cities have specialized companies to collect recyclables for processing, sale, and export for reuse and recycling. For example, 38% of the total MSW generated in Singapore is recycled by commercial companies. Although in this city-state waste materials recycled are largely from industry and commerce, commercially viable wastes such as papers, cardboard, textiles, plastics, and glass are collected from households. In Singapore, the Ministry of the Environment encourages private enterprises to set up recycling plants on land set aside at a closed dumping ground. There is little or no direct financial support from the government. In the middle- and low-income cities of the East Asia/Pacific region, informal source separation and recycling of materials have always been practiced. This means that people have made work and enterprises from gathering, trading, and reprocessing materials. Materials separated or picked out from mixed wastes include ferrous and nonferrous metals, papers/cardboard, glass, plastics, clothing, leathers, animal bones/feathers, books and household goods (which are repaired and sold in second-hand markets). The main recyclables are purchased by street peddlers. They sell to small and larger dealers and wholesalers, which may be registered businesses or not, according to the size of the business and the type of local economy. In Bangkok, Jakarta, and Hong Kong there are some very large industries dealing entirely recyclables such as papers, ferrous metals, plastics, and glass. In the Pacific islands, repair and reuse are important and recycling industries are small-scale. In the People's Republic of China and Vietnam, waste recovery and recycling has been organized at the city level and supported by national ministries. In China, especially, the major cities have large recovery companies which collect recyclables from offices, institutions, and factories. There are also neighborhood redemption centers where people can sell bottles, paper, and clothes. State policies govern the trading of materials and prices and these companies are often inefficient. Since the new economic policy, they have preferred to deal mainly in profitable materials, such as metals, and not in most household recyclables. Other materials are now collected and traded by private entrepreneurs who may either sell to the government companies or directly to factories. The neighborhood redemption centers have declined and as a result, more recyclables are put out as waste by residents. There are new attempts to deal with household recyclables, such as the source separation being organized in residential complexes in Shanghai. In Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, a greater part of waste recovery and recycling is in the hands of family businesses. In Hanoi, there are close connections to particular rural villages from which most of the waste traders come. A notable feature of this sector in Ho Chi Minh City is that 50% of the operators are women; women are also prominent in Hanoi. This may be the result of the traditional trading culture and the opportunities that women gained in both government service in solid waste management and informal waste trading during the war period, when most men were in military service. Several cities in Southeast and East Asia have experimented in a small way with source separation. Bangkok, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Shah Alam (Malaysia), and Shanghai have all tried it in selected neighborhoods but none has persisted, as too many problems were encountered. A municipality of Kuala Lumpur is currently trying with a higher level of funding. Recently, support for community organizations to promote source separation has been funded under UNEP's Asia-Pacific 2000. The quantity of one material, plastic, has surpassed the recovery capacity of even the high-recycling cities. When plastics first started increasing in packaging in China, any piece of plastic was prized by waste buyers and pickers. Now, the larger cities of China are beginning to experience the proliferation of plastic waste that is so problematic in Hong Kong, Indonesia, the Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand. Even in Yangon, where non-organic wastes are minimal, increasing numbers of small plastic bags are found in open drains. Waste picking and cooperatives Some materials are picked out from mixed wastes, often at garbage dumps. The number of pickers is increasing as more recyclables reach dump sites. At one point, at Manila's Smoky Mountain dump, over 10,000 families lived in shacks built on or adjacent to old dump land. Occasionally cities in developing countries attempt to ban pickers from dump sites to discourage dependence on waste recovery as a livelihood, but it has proved impossible to enforce such regulations. The Manila dump in question has been closed and while some of the waste pickers have moved to housing units, others now live at other dump sites. Waste pickers, who used to be relatively few twenty years ago in China, are on the increase. The influx of rural migrants to the cities has contributed to this trend. Most of the pickers are members of poor families with little or no formal schooling; they are often illegal immigrants from rural areas or even foreign countries. The incomes of these pickers range from as low as US$0.40 to around US$3.00 a day. Some cities in Indonesia have introduced licensing of waste pickers at dump sites in an attempt to control the practice. Licensing has met with mixed success, in some cases being welcomed at first but then encounteringresistance. Organizations working with pickers argue for better recognition of the usefulness of waste recovery to developing societies, and for humane treatment of pickers, who are usually regarded as illegals, thieves, and vagrants. In 1989, the president of Indonesia made a statement pleading for recognition of the valuable role of waste pickers, and since then there have been many programs in the main cities of Java, some of them with international aid funds, to assist pickers in various ways. They aim to overcome the social prejudice that restricts pickers' ability to improve their status, acquire new skills, take alternative work, or simply move up the ladder to become buyers, dealers, or processors. The attempts to assist and improve the informal sector of waste recovery and recycling often take the form of promoting cooperatives. One such waste pickers' cooperative operated at Bangkok's On Nooch dump in the 1980s until the dump was closed. A recent proposal from the Philippines comes from a group of community organizations, in collaboration with the Vincentian Missionaries, who are working with picker communities around the Payatas dump in Quezon City. They aim to establish a materials recovery center that will sort and process recyclables, in conjunction with source separation programs in surrounding neighborhoods. Another form of cooperative organization in Manila is that of waste dealers (known there as junk dealers). The Metro Manila Women Balikatan Movement has assisted dealers to improve the purchase of source- separated household materials and to make connections with recycling factories. From a small start in the San Juan area, the program now covers several cities in Metro Manila, and about 200,000 households are contributing materials. There is ongoing discussion of whether informal private activities should be linked in some way to official solid waste management: for instance, whether municipalities should encourage source separation without carrying out collection of recyclables, and whether waste pickers should be permitted to pick at transfer stations. In summary, formal and informal source separation and recycling of most non-organic manufactured materials are significant in the region. The practice is essentially market-driven; industries have been interested in using recycled materials only when the cost of doing so is less than the cost of using virgin materials. As will be discussed below, however, there are not good markets for organic wastes. South and West Asia The low-income countries of South and West Asia illustrate the operation of a hierarchy of waste minimization based on frugal habits, resource scarcity, and poorly paid workers. Repair industries are important in waste reduction in such countries; second-hand markets thrive, some being very large, such as those in Bombay, Calcutta, and New Delhi. There are complex networks that serve the recovery and recycling of synthetic materials, inert wastes, and organics. Every useful sort of household, shop, or institutional waste is reused or traded. Materials include clothes and rags, small goods, bottles, plastics of all kinds (especially milk pouches), metals, toys, and cinders from coal fires. Food wastes are sold to poultry and pig farmers, and such wastes from large hotels are auctioned in big cities like New Delhi. Construction wastes are reused and the residues are taken as fill for road repairs. In nearly every country of the region, the private informal sector (comprised of waste pickers, buyers, traders, and recyclers) is significant in recovery and recycling. Clean, saleable components are separated in homes, offices, institutions, and shops; they are sold to itinerant waste buyers and nearby dealers. Waste components are picked out on streets and at transfer points by street pickers and finally at disposal sites. The materials are largely recycled in small informal industries, but even large industries participate in waste exchange and the purchase of used materials as feedstock. Some typical examples of the informal recycling industries are those which recycle broken glass into bottles, waste plastics to toys and shoes, and waste paper to paper board. The activities are mainly driven by the scarcity and expense of raw materials. In societies with significant levels of absolute poverty, poor people depend upon wastes for fuel, clothing, building materials, and even some food; recovery and recycling provide many income-earning opportunities for uneducated people. The large numbers of children working at waste picking and sorting is a matter of concern. NGOs in these poorer countries have assisted waste pickers in forming cooperatives to obtain source-separated wastes. The best known example is the work of the Self Employed Women's Association in India. Cooperative organization in waste management, however, is not developed to the extent that it is in the Andean countries of Latin America. In the northern part of the region, which is characterized by lower-middle-income economies, informal waste picking is not as thorough as in the Indian subcontinent, but the characteristics of traditional economies are not entirely lost. The Palestinian settlements in Gaza and the West Bank have been sites of intensive repair, reuse, and recycling since their inception. Waste separation at the household level with trade to itinerant buyers still takes place. There are also small-scale recycling industries for plastic, paper, and glass in the region, whereas scrap metal is recycled locally or transported to re-rolling mills of other countries. In Israel, the informal sector has declined and the high quantity of recyclables reaching waste streams has necessitated government sponsorship of recovery and recycling. Recycling has been emphasized since 1993 (under the Collection of Wastes for Recycling law) to reduce waste quantities at landfills. A number of recycling centers (drop-off centers) are running successfully in Israel, where people can leave textiles, paper, and cardboard, and in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem there is curbside pickup of papers in boxes supplied by the authorities. The Ministry of Environment has set a target of a 25% reduction of waste quantities by weight by 2000. These goals are supported by a number of feasibility studies, research, pilot projects, and incentives to commercial recycling. In the central part of the region, recycling and source separation are similarly promoted as government policy. There are some experiments with source separation of household waste, householders being encouraged to bring recyclables to drop-off depots. For example, in Dubai, drop-off centers accept paper, cardboard, aluminum, and PVC bottles. Large-scale recycling industries for paper and glass have received incentives. In Saudi Arabia, an industry has been supported to convert waste paper into egg trays. Another company in Sharjah, UAE processes plastic into rubbish sacks. Central governments endorse recycling industries in principle, but financial support (such as tax rebates) varies from country to country. A waste transfer station at Petah Tikvah, in Israel, also serves as drop-off center, receiving paper, packaging, and plastics. In the poorer countries, where there are numerous waste pickers, it is common to find the same result achieved informally, with the pickers working over mixed wastes. The quantities and quality of recyclables are, of course, lower. Animals play a significant role in the reduction of organic wastes in many places, especially smaller cities and towns. Cattle, pigs, goats, dogs, cats, poultry, and crows feed regularly from garbage piles and open vats; animals kept in squatter areas, such as goats, sheep, and pigs, are fed household vegetable wastes. It has been calculated that up to 50% of domestic and restaurant organics are fed to animals. There is likely to be resistance to schemes for "wet-dry" separation and composting in areas where household organics are needed as animal feed. If the population of animals declines as such cities modernize, the organic fraction of MSW will increase. Throughout the region, discussions are beginning on source reduction of certain materials. India, for instance, has put plastic waste on a restricted list and the Department of Chemicals and Petrochemicals is considering ways of reducing plastic wastes; Bangladesh is discussing limits on plastic packaging. The many activities of repair, recovery and recycling in South and West Asia mean that the wastes finally disposed of by most municipalities have high percentages of organics, dirt, and in some places, ashes. If compost could be produced and sold in these areas, landfill space requirements would be reduced. International waste trading Recyclables are extensively traded, even internationally, particularly in the subcontinent. For instance, almost all the recyclables of Nepal are exported to India, this trade being controlled by Indians. Surplus materials from Calcutta are exported to Bangladesh. The most lucrative cross-border trade is that from Afghanistan to Pakistan, in used war materiel. India imports large quantities of waste paper from western countries. There are proposals to expand importing, and such trade is eagerly sought by some western countries. Environmentalists are concerned that this trade may allow the importation of hazardous wastes (in violation of the Basel Convention), and social advocates fear that people who earn a living picking or trading local wastes would lose out, since the demand for these materials might decline.
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