WASTEMANAGEMENTINSOUTHASIA! COMPARATIVE ...web.mit.edu/~kkung/Public/waste_sasia.pdf · Waste’Management’in’South’Asia:’Comparative’Systems’Studies’andRecommendations’for’Market’Entry’

WASTE MANAGEMENT IN SOUTH ASIA

COMPARATIVE SYSTEMS STUDIES AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR MARKET ENTRY

Prepared by Kevin Kung, Nasir Uddin, and Ryan Integlia

August 2013

Waste Management in South Asia: Comparative Systems Studies and Recommendations for Market Entry

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. INTRODUCTION …………………………………………………………………………..…….. 3

2. DELHI ……………………………………………………………………………………………..…. 3 2.1 Definitions 2.2 The informal recycling chain 2.3 The formal chain 2.4 Railway waste

3. BANGALORE ………………………………………………………………………………..……… 6 3.1 The informal recycling chain 3.2 The formal chain

4. MUZAFFARNAGAR …………………………………………………………….………………… 9 4.1 Industrial waste 4.2 Household waste

5. DHAKA ……………………………………………………………………………..……………….. 10

6. ORGANIC WASTE TECHNOLOGIES ………………………………………………..……. 11 6.1 Composting 6.2 Biodigestion

7. RECOMMENDATIONS ………………………………………………………..……………….. 13

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS …………………………………………………………………………… 15 WORKS CITED ……………………………………………………………………………………….... 15


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1. INTRODUCTION This report is drawn from the experiences and interactions in South Asia that serve to address the current municipal waste management system in place in addition to the cumulative efforts of the Grambangla Unnayan Committee (GUC) and em[POWER] for the specific case of Bangladesh. The authors visited different cities and in each city, met organizations involved in waste management formally and/or informally. In the case of Dhaka, Bangladesh, the organization em[POWER], together with the Grambangla Unnayan Committee (GUC), generously hosted the authors to learn more about their work in the nearby landfill. This report (1) captures the insights learned through the visit, and (2) makes practical recommendations based on em[POWER]’s and the GUC’s current interest in valorizing unmanaged organic waste along with the (parallel) conciliatory influences of the inorganic waste as part of its larger strategy of integrating community infrastructure and renewable resource processing for economic and environmental impact sustainability. In this report, we first provide an overview of the waste management systems in place in different cities—Delhi, Bangalore, Muzaffarnagar, and Dhaka—and then make observations on the specific organic waste management technologies undertaken by em[POWER] and the GUC, in this case composting and biodigestion specifically. Finally, this report concludes with some recommendations for future plans. All information assembled in this report is considered public knowledge. In some cases, where the privacy of specific organizations or groups may be jeopardized, their identities have been explicitly removed accordingly from this report in order to protect them. 2. DELHI To understand the waste management system in Delhi as well as other cities in South Asia, it will be beneficial to define some terminologies. 2.1 Definitions Kabari-‐wallahs: These are itinerant buyers of recyclable materials from the households or individual waste scavengers or collectors. The households would lay aside valuable paper, bottles, etc. to these people who will amass and sell the recyclables into the informal recycling chain often storing the materials in or near their home, which becomes separate from the waste stream and players below. D2D collectors: These people collect waste door-‐to-‐door, being responsible for about 100-‐150 houses. To be allowed to collect, they often have to pay money to the so-‐called safai karamcharis (the local municipal cleanliness workers). Unlike the kabari-‐wallahs, these people are not part of the informal recycling chain, though they may still opt to


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segregate some part of the collected recyclable, which can then be resold into the informal recycling chain. Pheri-‐wallahs: These people roam the street to pick waste in order to sell the valuable recyclables that have not entered into the informal recycling chain and sometimes sell their recyclables to the Dalal (Middlemen). Dalals: These are the middlemen buyers of the waste from scavengers whom have collected waste at various points in the waste stream which can include the dump itself. In some cases they are the waste transporters, but this is less common unless the scavenger is directly in the dump itself or at a community bin (Dhalaos). As these people are often more elusive than the other types of waste handlers, we were unable to interact with them extensively. In the future, more work needs to be done to better understand their role in the waste value chain. Dhalaos: These are community bins where the waste segregate. In places such as Muzaffarnagar and Mombasa, this is also known as the secondary collection points. The Dhalaos belong to the formal dumpsite route, though some materials can still be picked out by people like the pheri-‐wallahs to be sold into the informal recycling chain. 2.2 The informal recycling chain Waste in the informal recycling chain goes to the small junk dealers, followed by the large junk dealers. Sometimes if the D2D collectors or the kabari-‐wallahs have sufficient size of recyclable materials, they can also sell directly to the large junk dealers, which will offer them a better price in bulk. Eventually, after a supply chain that is about 10-‐12 levels deep, the recyclables end up in the reprocessing units. Essentially, the informal recycling market is highly volatile: for example, the price of crushed plastic can vary anywhere between 35-‐50 Rp/kg. For many waste-‐pickers without a safe storage place, this becomes a problem as their income can become vulnerable to the large market fluctuations. In all, this system employs about 1% of Delhi’s population. 2.3. The formal chain Waste that does not end up in the informal recycling chain eventually ends up in the dumpsite. Delhi produces about 9,000 tons/day of waste, and about 2,500 tons/day go to the largest dumpsite, Ghazipur.


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Fig. 2.1. View of the Ghazipur dumpsite. Various waste-‐pickers live in close proximity of the Ghazipur dumpsite, and they make a living picking and amassing scraps from the dumpsite.

Fig. 2.2. Waste-‐picking communities surrounding the Ghazipur dumpsite. There is a new waste-‐to-‐energy plant that will be set up in Ghazipur which will make a large fraction of the waste inaccessible to the waste-‐pickers. As a result, there are also efforts in training the waste-‐pickers (currently at a small scale) with new jobs. We visited one place, for example, where some women waste-‐pickers are making handicrafts, such as cards from the flower waste collected from the nearby market. While these activities are income-‐generating in nature, at this scale, they are hardly waste management solutions. 2.4 Railway waste As a specific case of illustration of Delhi’s waste management system, we visited a railway station. There, a group handled the recyclable waste collected from the trains.


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In a shed, plastic waste (such as bottles) is segregated by types, and there is a machine to shred such waste into pellets to increase its market value.

Fig. 2.3. Plastic waste from liquid bottles that undergoes shredding to increase valuation at a railway station waste management group. According to this group, the proceeds from the sales of the shredded plastic is sufficient to support minimal wage of the workers. Every day, the center processes about 9,000 plastic bottles. The biggest challenges that they face currently are: Styrofoam, as well as multi-‐layer packaging. 3. BANGALORE Bangalore generates about 3500 tons/day of municipal waste (Pabbisetty, 2013), and formally it is handled by Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP). Essentially, there exists two different systems of waste management: formal and informal. 3.1 The informal recycling chain In the informal recycling chain, there are scrap dealers (kabari-‐wallahs) who buy the high-‐value recyclable waste from the households (such as paper, certain plastics, metal, etc.). Such waste is then aggregated in a specialized neighborhood called Jolimahala, a primarily Muslim community. At aggregation sites such as Jolly Mohalla, such wastes (such as plastic) undergo further finer segregation – for example, the bottle caps come off the bottles, and the different parts are sold to different people. After the aggregation step, there are people who start to reprocess the recycled materials. We were able to visit one at the intersection of Mysore Flyover and the Outer Ring Road, and describe the specific case that pertains to this recycling effort.


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In this factory, large plastic gunny bags are collected, then they are shredded and washed, before being dried at the roof top.

Fig. 3.1. Processing of plastic gunny bags in Bangalore. Afterwards, the shredded plastic is molten into pellets and can then be processed into different products. For example, the pellets can be molten into flat sheets which can then be cut up into strong wires for packaging needs. This happens at the factory. Alternatively, the pellets can be sold to a nearby store with an injection molding machine. Depending on the molding, various plastic-‐based products can be produced.

Fig. 3.2. Different technologies to process pelleted and molten plastic in Bangalore. This is just one example of how a single type of waste can be collected, aggregated, and reprocessed into other useful products. While some of such factories exist within Bangalore, sometimes the waste, when properly pelleted/packaged, can also be transported to faraway places such as Mumbai to be reprocessed. At any rate, some of the existing facilities in Bangalore are facing relocation as plastic molding can produce noise, fluid runoff and fumes which may not be agreeable to the developing neighborhoods around the facility.


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3.2 The formal chain In the formal system, the government has divided the city into 198 wards, each of whose waste management is assigned to a contractor. Essentially, the contractor gets to collect the waste from the neighborhood and bring the waste to the dumpsite. Such contractor is covered by the government threefold: payment for collecting the waste (often from the household taxes), coverage for transportation costs, as well as payment per load of garbage delivered to the dumpsite. The last provision is quite controversial, as it incentivizes the contractor to channel as much waste as possible to the dumpsite, even if some of such waste still has recycling value. This incentive system seems at odds with those of the informal sector and the waste-‐pickers, who aim to gain value from recycling such waste. Therefore, there are considerations by the city government to change this rule. Already, Bangalore has already experienced a dumpsite crisis last November when those living near a semi-‐rural dumpsite protested and boycotted garbage trucks from dumping more waste there. As a result, garbage plied the streets of Bangalore for a long time, thereby perhaps providing more impetus for a change of regulations in favor of more efficient waste diversion for recycling. So far, very little household-‐level or community-‐level segregation has taken place. Some organizations, therefore, are working with the government to create such a framework. It is said that rules are being passed that will require the contractors to undertake segregation of waste at the community level. However, so far, little has been done or enforced. However, one organization is working with the government in a pilot 24 wards where it provides the auditing to ensure that contractors are properly separating the waste. If this pilot is run successfully, there are hopes that the same monitoring can then be extended to the other wards in Bangalore. In addition, in order to make household waste management more manageable, there is also a push towards localized waste storage. Such facilities are believed to allow waste-‐pickers to sort and store recyclable waste, so that instead of being at the mercy of fluctuating market prices, the waste-‐pickers can afford to wait for better prices before selling the recyclable material, though at this point much more research needs to be done in order to validate and quantify these claims above. As an example, we visited one of the waste sorting stations in Bangalore. Here, women are employed to sort through bags of plastic bottles and other recyclable materials to be resold. According to the latest figures, the proceeds earned from the sorted waste are likely not enough to sustain the livelihoods of all women being employed, and as such, the storage and sorting operation that we visited seems to be still operating on a grant-‐based model, emphasizing its role in creating livelihoods for those women working at the site. In addition to the segregation of plastic waste, this operation also collects some organic waste. The center then undertakes a pilot biodigestion (using a floating drum biodigester) as well as a small scale composting project.


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However, such practices are not at all widespread currently in Bangalore, at least without proper waste segregation at the household level, even though the principle of waste segregation has been passed in the law for about 10 years in India. To this end, a few isolated projects seem to be the current pioneers of these practices. The only other large-‐scale (semi-‐active) biodigester that I visited in the Bangalore is under construction in the city market area. 4. MUZAFFARNAGAR Muzaffarnagar is an industrial town about 2 hours north of Delhi. Due to the nature of the industries in the surrounding area, it is useful to talk about two streams of waste to consider: industrial and household. 4.1 Industrial waste Regarding industrial waste, there is already a significant amount of interconnected reuse/recycling amongst the different industries. For example, the sugar bagasse from the sugar mills can be used in the boiler, but the fibrous waste may also be pulped in the nearby paper mills. There are some ongoing projects which focus on the detailed mapping and quantification of such industrial wastes, which currently are not yet well understood. Of course, there are also industrial wastes (such as the black liquor from paper mills) which are a headache for all stakeholders, and currently solutions are being sought to treat these more effectively.. While not strictly industrial waste, there are also restaurants/markets which output about 4-‐5 tons/day of organic waste, with minimal amount of segregation required. 4.2 Household waste The larger Muzaffarnagar region is the home of about 3 million people. Therefore, household waste is also of significant concern to the city. As is the case with Bangalore, there exists really two sub-‐streams of waste management for the households: informal recycling chain and formal dumpsite route. The informal recycling system also makes use of people such as kabari-‐wallahs, who go around purchasing the recyclable scraps (such as paper, metal) which the households set aside. There are indeed quite a few scrap-‐dealing shops around the Muzaffarnagar area. Because of the relative small size of the city, the author surmises that the scrap-‐dealers in Muzaffarnagar probably only serves as aggregators; the reprocessing of Muzaffarnagar’s waste is probably done elsewhere, such as Delhi. The formal waste system (i.e. waste destined to go to the dumpsite) is what the households perceive no value and throw out. Here, an interesting model is at play: the


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municipal council has partnered with a private company to handle this particular waste stream in a centralized manner. Essentially, the households are provided bins by the company. Then the household waste gets centralized, unsorted, to one of the 45 secondary collection centers in the neighborhood. The company then collects from the secondary collection centers and has a site that mechanically sorts the waste by sizes. Part of the waste becomes refuse-‐derived fuel (RDF) which is briquetted and sold to industries. Part of the waste becomes windrow compost which is also packaged and distributed. Note that no waste-‐pickers are involved in this centralized process, unlikely many other cities such as Delhi (i.e. the company has privatized the municipal waste stream at the dumpsite scale). Now, the households are supposed to pay a monthly waste management fee to the city council, and this amount is transferred to the company. However, in reality, enforcing everyone to pay has been a challenge so far. While the company handles the majority of the household waste in Muzaffarnagar, though it is believed that there are also private sweepers who still manage a minority of the municipal waste. Beyond municipal and industrial waste, there is also the consideration of other types of more unusual waste streams, such as electronics and biomedical waste, which require careful handling. What makes this complicated is that sometimes such waste are intermingled with the municipal or industrial waste stream, which could prove to be a hazard for the waste handlers. However, due to the lack of time and resources, such types of wastes and their impact on “regular” waste streams were not investigated in detail. 5. DHAKA According with our interactions with representatives of Grambangla Unnayan Committee and em[POWER] in Dhaka, the waste management system of Dhaka closely resembles that of Delhi. Therefore, in our brief description of it, it behooves to think about the waste management along the same line of the existence of an informal recycling chain as well as a formal chain destined for dumpsites. The similar players in terms of informal recycling exists in Dhaka as in many major Indian cities. These kabari-‐wallahs and pheri-‐wallahs (local terminology may differ) are responsible for separating the valuable recyclable materials from the main, unsorted waste stream destined for the dumpsite at different points of the value chain (at the household level and at the secondary transformation center, for example). In general, each waste collection van is responsible for about 200 households, and the waste is then transferred to the so-‐called secondary transformation center, from which the waste then proceeds to one of the two major dumpsites outside of Dhaka. The waste collection van usually takes the form of a rickshaw. These waste drivers are sometimes affiliated with a union and employers tend to have agreements with larger entities such


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as landlords for trash removal. Because of the long distance from the city to the dumpsite, and because of the poor traffic, each truck can take up to three hours per load, and this is identified as one of the major inefficiencies of the system in getting the waste out of the city.

Fig. 5.1; Waste Collection Can or Rickshaw. Courtesy of em[POWER] Energy Group Like in India and Kenya, some politics are involved with the informal recycling. The collection vans and the waste pickers often have to pay taxes to people who claim control over the waste, for example. In order to sustain this waste collection operation, each household is responsible for paying monthly towards waste collection. This can range from 20 taka per month in a poor neighborhood to about 50 taka per month (Grambangla Unnayan Committee, 2013). The Matuail landfill is one of the largest in Dhaka. Formerly, it was an unregulated dumpsite, but in 2007, from the joint effort of Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and the Dhaka City Corporation (DCC), the dumpsite was transformed into the Matuail Sanitary Landfill. About 1200 tons/day of waste from Dhaka enters into Matuail, consisting of about 350 truck-‐trips daily (WastePortal, 2013). After the truck is weighed, it unloads the waste to the instructed location, and is then cleaned before exiting the landfill. Access to the landfill is occasionally restricted. For example, during the author’s visit to the Matuail Landfill, access was denied because several human body parts have been located there earlier (Daily Star, 2013). The landfill is home or serves as a means of support for up to 10,000 people, many of whom make their living by picking through the waste (em[POWER], 2013). em[POWER] and its local partner Grambangla Unnayan Committee have implemented a training and research program amongst the local waste pickers. Currently, the first phase of the the site is constructed that will serve as the sorting facility as well recyclable storage and composting. The process for developing the next phase of the effort has begun and potentially includes expanded storage, a biodigester and other facilities.


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The author is aware of a proposed project on the Matuail Landfill to turn waste into energy (i.e. incineration and/or briquetting). While the details of this project are not available, it is said that the project is still under the approval process. If installed, it may have a significant impact on the waste pickers living at Matuail in terms of waste accessibility. 6. ORGANIC WASTE TECHNOLOGIES In this section, we describe some attempts in India to implement technologies that treat organic waste, since it is almost universally agreed that extracting value from the organic fraction of the municipal waste (which accounts for 50-‐80% of the total waste by mass) remains a major challenge. The two technologies of particular interest are: composting and biodigestion, and here we describe their uses and statuses in India so that they may provide a perspective for the Bangladesh project as well as future directions. 6.1. Composting There are a few composting projects in India, though we were not able to encounter one that conclusively proves profitability. There are two key challenges associated with composting: transportation, certification, and marketability. Firstly, most composting projects have been concentrated in urban areas where there is a large amount of highly variable organic waste. This can take place at a community level, or at a larger municipal level (up to about 50 tons/day). However, within the immediate urban environment, there is no immediate market for compost, as only minor farming activities occur within the urban area. Rural farmers may make use of compost if the transportation is set up to deliver such compost. Long-‐distance transportation is often costly, though there are cases where such is being done through the channels of existing fertilizer distributors. The second challenge is the proper certification of the compost. Typically, commercial fertilizers need to have rigorous testing of chemical contents to ensure efficacy. With a highly variable organic feedstock in most municipal waste streams, the reliable certification of compost becomes very challenging. However, we do not perceive this as an insurmountable barrier, as existing projects both in India and Kenya have managed to obtain the proper certification to go to market. Finally, one major challenge with composting is that fertilizer is a highly subsidized material in India, and the common market price is about 2 Rp/kg. Given the labor-‐intensive and transportation-‐intensive process of compost production, it is not clear whether or not compost can adequately compete with this subsidized price, even though it is not expected that the government will maintain this subsidy for the long term. Perhaps one potential solution is for composting projects to seek similar government subsidies. According to our findings with Grambangla Unnayan Committee, in Bangladesh, there is one composting project that proposes to transform market waste into compost. However, one challenge with this project is that the certification of the compost has taken a long time to achieve, possibly as a result of the intervention of some strong


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stakeholders. Currently, the government subsidizes fertilizer production in terms of gas consumption (as Bangladesh has a gas reserve), so that the market price is estimated to be about 12-‐20 taka/kg, which is considerably higher than the Indian counterparts (NFPCSP, 2011). 6.2 Biodigestion Like composting, there are quite a few biodigestion projects at various scales throughout India, though it has been rare for us to see a project that is profitable. While biodigestion is not a new technology, traditionally it has been used for relatively homogeneous feedstock such as cow dung. With municipal organic waste, biodigestion often posits a challenge because many biodigester designs are extremely sensitive to fluctuations in the input, and may encounter system failure if the feedstock composition or amount varies day to day. To this end, many biodigesters that operate on organic waste have adopted the so-‐called biphasic process, where an aerobic pre-‐digestion phase is implemented before actual anaerobic digestion. The second major challenge is the post-‐processing of the gas: unless there is an easy way to pipe the gas to a bulk user (in which case reliability of the gas output may be a concern), bottling or electricity generation both require significant capital investment as well as operational costs. It is not clear whether, after all such complications have been accounted for, such biodigestion operations are still profitable (in many cases they are patently not). One city in India, in particular, where there is a relatively widespread adoption of biodigester is in Pune, which is probably one of the most progressive cities in India in terms of waste management. Most of these biodigesters are invested by the government but managed (in terms of operation) via a public-‐private partnership structure, providing, for example, lighting to some street lights. Therefore, in our view, while biodigestion is technically feasible, the make-‐or-‐break point relates to its execution. 7. RECOMMENDATIONS Based on our observations above, we make some recommendations specifically with regard to the Dhaka project that we visited. 7.1 Dhaka operation As we are most well-‐versed with technologies that treat organic waste, our recommendations will focus on the two technologies currently under consideration: composting and biodigestion. We also briefly consider the potential for pyrolysis. We think that composting is a promising approach, given that organic waste is currently not extensively used in the Matuail neighborhood. Any attempts to reuse such organic waste not only creates income generation for the local community, but also has a positive impact on the environment in preventing such organic waste from being set on fire or being left to decompose.


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Our first concern with having a composting facility installed is the scale. Our understanding is that composting will begin with the neighboring households after organic waste segregation takes place, and gradually the process will scale up. While the land area being shown to the author may be sufficient for a small-‐scale composting, it is unclear whether or not there is room to expand if the project gains traction and continues. This is particularly challenging given that most low-‐cost composting techniques require a residence time of 15-‐45 days, so that much land space is needed for composting to proceed. Our second concern relates to the marketability of the compost. In India, we have seen some composting projects falter because there is no immediate market in the vicinity of the compost production. In the case of Bangladesh, it is conceivable that in the initial stage, the produced compost can be used to encourage local urban farming, but it is not advisable to proceed to a larger scale before a clear customer segment and pathway to market are identified and planned. In terms of biodigestion, we also think that this is a promising technology, provided that the right pathway to market can be identified. In addition to the benefits of producing fertilizer (in terms of digestate effluent), biodigestion can also produce energy that can be immediately consumed in the local community, thereby achieving some energetic justification as well. Like composting, one major question we have about biodigestion is the scale, as biodigesters also require some non-‐trivial volumes, and depending on the scale, the current land may prove too small to build. While it may be possible to locate larger land further away to accommodate such biodigester, this is traded off in terms of increased transportation cost of wet organic waste (which should be avoided at all costs, if possible). While biodigestion can provide gas which can be easily used in the local vicinity, this only applies to the small scale production. At a larger scale, the question remains about what to do with the gas economically (e.g. piping, packaging, or generating electricity) beyond the local vicinity. It is encouraged for any entrant to look at similar community-‐based biodigester models in India, in particular in the city of Pune. In terms of pyrolysis, there are two types of feedstock that the author observed that may be potentially amenable. The first type is dry leaves/branches, which are rather ubiquitous over Dhaka. The second type, which is already being collected at the Matuail community, is coconut husks. Presumably such coconut husks are being collected because coir can be extracted. However, currently it is not clear what happens to the post-‐processed coconut shells. If nothing is being done with such shells, then pyrolysis could potentially prove viable. However, the question remains whether or not there is a justifiable market for char products in Dhaka, and without a more in-‐depth study, the author is unable to conclude. 7.2 Comparison with India


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In many aspects, the waste management status in major Indian cities mirror that of Dhaka. However, because of the great regional differences in India, this diversity makes an all-‐encompassing market entry difficult to manage, and it may be challenging to apply the same model to the different states, so it is recommended that any entrant select a particular locale and state to work. In the limited time, the author was able to visit and document the waste management status of three Indian cities: Delhi, Bangalore, and Muzaffarnagar. Of the three cities, the author believes that the major cities such as Delhi and Bangalore have a waste management profile that is highly similar to Dhaka. In terms of the particular dumpsite-‐based waste pickers in Dhaka, for example, there exists comparable populations in the dumpsites of these Indian cities, performing similar tasks in waste recycling given the similar waste feed-‐in system that is in operation in India. However, because Delhi and Bangalore are the biggest cities in India, this also makes entry into these cities particularly challenging, compared to other smaller, regional cities. Muzaffarnagar, in contrast, represents another type of waste management where the centralized and privatized waste management means that dumpsite-‐based waste pickers do not really have a place within such a context, and therefore may be less interesting from the specific viewpoint of engaging and empowering waste-‐pickers. While selecting a site in India, any entrant should note that increasingly, many Indian cities are moving towards privatization of waste, installing waste-‐to-‐energy projects at large dumpsites/landfills so that such waste becomes no longer accessible to the local waste pickers. However, this is barely new, as we also observe similar trend in Dhaka, as judged by the attempted entry of the proposed waste-‐to-‐energy project in Matuail. Finally, in many Indian cities, there already exists organizations which carry out similar work as em[POWER] in Dhaka. For example, in terms of the sorting station that em[POWER] seeks to set up in Matuail, we have seen a similar model in Delhi and Bangalore, as documented in Sections 3 and 4 above. We recommend that any entrant also study such existing models, and consider where in the Indian market it can make the most significant contribution in collaboration with the existing organizations. 7.3 Future Directions There are many aspects of waste management in South Asia that would be considered integral parts of the value chain that we have not been able to study or quantify in detail. We list some of these directions that would be worthwhile for future investigators to address:

• The role of the waste transporters: Due to the itinerant nature of these waste transporters, we were unable to interact with them to a significant extent. However, we acknowledge that they play a significant role in the waste value chain.


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• Other waste streams: In addition to plastic and metal, there are many other rarer waste streams, such as electronic waste or biomedical waste. Each of these streams is a subject of study by itself, but in this report, we only aim to describe the waste streams which are most frequently encountered by the waste handling stakeholders.

• Changes in waste collection practices: In many cities, there are trends towards a more formal and comprehensive waste collection system. This can take the form of waste privatization, and/or in some cases, the integration of the informal waste handlers into the former sectors. In interacting with many waste handlers, such issues are important ones, though this report lacks the temporal span to capture and describe the potential effects/impacts that such changes may have on the waste community.

WORKS CITED Daily Star. 24 August 2013. Human body parts found in landfill. Accessed 30 Aug. 2013. < http://www.thedailystar.net/beta2/news/16-‐human-‐body-‐parts-‐found-‐in-‐landfill/>. em[POWER] Energy Group. Accessed 30 Aug. 2013. <http://empowerenergygroup.org/projects/project-‐bangladesh/>. Grambangla Unnayan Committee. Personal communication. 2013. National Food Policy Capacity Strenghthening Programme. 2011. Accessed 30 Aug. 2013. <http://www.nfpcsp.org/agridrupal/news/price-‐urea-‐fertilizer-‐increased>. Pabbisetty, S. 2013. Decentralized solid waste management. CHF International. WastePortal. Construction and operation of a sanitary landfill: experience of Dhaka City Corporation. Accessed 30 Aug. 2013. < http://wasteportal.net/en/waste-‐elements/disposal/construction-‐and-‐operation-‐sanitary-‐landfill-‐experience-‐dhaka-‐city-‐corporati>.

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WASTEMANAGEMENTINSOUTHASIA! COMPARATIVE ...web.mit.edu/~kkung/Public/waste_sasia.pdf · Waste’Management’in’South’Asia:’Comparative’Systems’Studies’andRecommendations’for’Market’Entry’