A Review of Organic Waste Recycling Practices in Kathmandu
by Michelle A. Huang
BACKGROUND
With the rapid increases in human population and urban habitation over the past century, urbanization has been increasingly recognized as one of the most significant social transformations of modern times (Elander and Lidskog 2000). Proceeding at an unprecedented scale, this trend is taxing the environmental integrity of both urban and nonurban areas as cities rapidly outgrow former boundaries and capacities. This is particularly intractable in the developing world where the pressures of population growth and urbanization are the highest, while the resources to deal with the resultant environmental degradation and public health hazards are the lowest (WRI 1996). Solid waste constitutes one of the most visible and pressing of these urban environmental concerns due to the high concentration, volume, and inorganic content of urban wastes. Registering a 4.82% annual growth rate between 1991 and 2001, Kathmandu is one of the fastest-growing cities of the developing world. [1] It is also one of the poorest; based on a 1995/1996 survey, the Asian Development Bank estimates that the urban poor form 12-15% of Kathmanduâ€TMs population, earning a yearly per capita income of less than US$122 (ADB 1998). Worldwide trends of environmental degradation and declining environmental health have also been especially pernicious in Kathmandu.
The idea of waste recycling has been suggested by urban ecologists as a way to simultaneously alleviate modern pollution pressures and address resource conservation concerns. While inorganic recycling of plastics, glass and metals has given rise to a whole sector of recycling plants, dealers and employees around the world, the recycling of organic waste has been much more limited despite its importance in traditional waste management. Organic materials, however, form the bulk of waste in most developing countries; organic waste recycling therefore has the potential to drastically reduce the need for solid waste disposal while simultaneously recovering agriculturally-crucial nutrients. In Kathmandu, waste composting has already been proclaimed a top priority by the municipal government and is being tried at various scales by a number of different organizations. However, these efforts have addressed only a small percentage of overall wastes; much untapped potential thus remains for organic waste recycling to greatly reduce solid waste pressures in the city. This paper draws on fieldwork conducted from May through July of 2003, during which I reviewed organic waste recycling practices in the Valley [2] in an effort to ultimately identify opportunities for expansion.
Kathmandu, Nepal: A Brief Orientation
Nepal is a small, land-locked country in Asia, covering a total of 147,181 km2 between India and China (HMG/MOPE 2001). Just east of the approximate geographical center of the country is the city of Kathmandu, the countryâ€TMs capital, commercial hub and largest metropolitan area. Located in the Kathmandu Valley, a bowl-shaped valley covering a total area of 667 km2 on a high plateau, [3] the Kathmandu municipality occupies only about 50.8 km2 and resides within the Kathmandu District, one of three administrative districts in the Valley (the other two being Lalitpur and Bhaktapur). [4] The municipality is governed at the local level by the Kathmandu Metropolitan Committee (KMC), and at the national level by a constitutional monarchy and democratic parliament, the headquarters of which are also situated in the city. The Bishnumati and Bagmati rivers, which carry much cultural and religious significance for the Hindu-influenced culture, converge in Kathmandu (Manandhar 2002).
The high rates of modern-day population growth in the Valley began with the centralization of the national government in the latter half of the 20th century, as infrastructure, institutional facilities, and trading opportunities concentrated in Kathmandu (Adhikari and Bohle 1999). The resultant population growth was matched by rapid urbanization with the growth of the tourism during the 1960s and industrialization during the late 1970s and 1980s (HMG/MOPE 1999). Urban population growth has squeezed the housing market, raising real estate prices, creating a large homeless community, and converting much of the formerly agricultural Valley with residential development.
Without adequate planning or infrastructure development, city growth has proceeded rapidly and haphazardly, resulting in poverty and pollution. Political instability has often debilitated the government, limiting the capacity to deal with social and environmental issues as attention and resources have been diverted to political crisis management, the mobilization of army and police forces, and political infighting. Governance is also typically characterized by corruption and paternalism, which further inhibits the development of urban sustainability in Kathmandu.
Organic Waste Recycling [5] in Urban Areas: Theoretical Framework
As cities swell with a greater and greater proportion of the human population, there has been an increasing awareness of, and concern over, the detrimental effects of urbanization on both urban and rural populations and environments. The field of urban ecology, by applying industrial ecology concepts to analyses of city systems, has focused on tracing nutrient flows, revealing the simultaneous depletion of nutrients in rural hinterlands, and the accumulation of pollutants due to urban concentration. This has been likened to an open loop in which nutrient cycles are not completed within city boundaries, but rather over large spans of time and distance between urban and rural areas, and even across the globe. Alternatively, a closed loop model for urban development has been advanced, in which cities are less extractive and polluting, and instead become more self-sufficient and sustainable (Nelson 1996, Smit et al. 1996).
Integral to this model is the link between organic waste recycling and urban agriculture, whereby organic wastes generated in the city, stay in the city, and are put to work as a useful agriculture input, either directly as animal feed or indirectly through composting. By converting wastes into a useful input nearer to the point of generation, nutrients are captured, pollution is avoided, and transport costs reduced. These ideas are illustrated in the figure below which diagrams on the left an open-loop, import-export-style city whereby food and other material inputs are imported and used within the city, and the resultant wastes exported out to the countryside. In contrast, the diagram on the right illustrates a more balanced, self-sufficient city system whereby organic waste recycling and urban agriculture allows for waste disposal and food generation within the city (Smit et al. 1996).
Real linkages have been made by both municipalities and private sectors that have implemented composting programs specifically to produce fertilizer for urban farms in a range of cities including Ibadan, Accra, Kumasi, Dar es Salaam, and Lomé (Dreschel 2001), Manila (Mougeot 1994), and Havana (Moskow 1999). In many Asian cities where food and human waste was traditionally composted for agricultural reuse, municipal food security programs have developed highly sophisticated systems of biological recycling, vertical planting and mixed farming to fully exploit solar energy and organic wastes, enabling a high degree of food self-sufficiency in most large Chinese cities: urban agriculture supplies up to 85% of vegetable production in six large Chinese cities and 68% of poultry production in Hong Kong. In Europe and America as well, urban agriculture has survived in the form of wartime victory gardens during World War II and todayâ€TMs resurging community gardening movement (Smit et al. 1996). While such explicit linkages between solid waste management and food security concerns remain limited in policy, practice, research, and academic literature, they constitute an area of increasing promise and significance as both waste management and food security concerns become more tenuous in an increasingly urban world.
Research Questions & Methodology
I conducted fieldwork from May through July of 2003 in order to identify current organic waste recycling practices in Kathmandu, and assess the feasibility and appropriateness of expanding such practices given economic, social, and institutional constraints. In order to answer this question, I used a case-study approach and conducted unstructured and semi-structured interviews of several key informants from the public, private or nonprofit sector involved in either traditional or alternative waste management, or urban agriculture. Informants were identified using snowball sampling, a recursive process by which a few informants initially identified through Internet or literature research are interviewed and asked to provide information needed to locate additional informants (Babbie 2001). I have not specified the names or titles of key informants in order to maintain confidentiality; please note however, that at least one member of each organization mentioned in this report was interviewed for this study. I also conducted surveys of cattle farmers, pig farmers, vegetable farmers, restaurant proprietors, nursery proprietors, and meat shop proprietors, to assess respondentsâ€TM current waste management practices, including both the generation and utilization of organic wastes. Since many of these commercial groups are concentrated in certain areas of the Valley, survey respondents were chosen by identifying neighborhoods with a reportedly high proportion of the desired operation. In areas densely populated by desired respondents, a transect was walked and all potential respondents encountered were solicited. In other areas, not densely populated by desired respondents, snowball sampling was used. Although these nonrandom, nonprobability sampling methods cannot be used to draw quantifiable conclusions about the sampled populations, they can be used to generate qualitative data on organic waste generation, potential utilization, and recycling practices. [6]
FINDINGS: Current Organic Waste Recycling Practices
Composting
Waste composting is by no means new to Kathmandu. Developed before the widespread introduction of synthetic materials, when agriculture was the main occupation in the Valley, traditional forms of waste treatment and agriculture exhibited a high degree of organic waste recycling—for instance, composting of animal flesh, dung, plant matter (especially crop waste, weeds and gathered grasses), and human waste for use as a soil amendment; or the drying of dungcakes for fuel. Significant resources of time, energy and material were typically expended for this process; special compost pens were constructed, waste inputs were carried in back-borne baskets over long distances, dungcakes were rolled and spread by hand on brick walls to dry, and human wastes were collected and sold (Tuladhar 2002).
Traditional composting practices still exist in the Valley; according to a recent government report, at least 91% of farm households surveyed still use at least some organic compost to fertilize fields (HMG/MOAC 2003). And there is still some farm-to-farm trade in dung and vegetable waste. As urbanization increases the proportion of mixed nonagricultural waste in the Valley, appropriate forms of waste management must be developed. Today, organic waste forms around 70% of mixed municipal waste in Kathmandu, [7] indicating a high potential for waste composting.
However, this theoretical potential has been difficult to realize in practice. Large-scale composting of municipal waste has and still is occurring in the Valley, although because of significant constraints regarding processing, compost quality, and marketing there are currently no large-scale operations in Kathmandu municipality. From 1984 to 1991, the government-operated Teku Compost Plant, using outdoor windrow composting [8] and mechanized screening [9] processes produced and sold compost made from Kathmanduâ€TMs mixed municipal waste. However, high broken glass content due to glass contamination of the mixed municipal waste input made the compost difficult to sell since farmers typically walk barefoot in the fields; compost was practically given away for free at a rate of [10] Rs10/ton despite operating costs of 4,000 Rs/ton. And due to the lack of an established buffer zone, people moved into the area immediately adjacent to the plant and proceeded to lodge odor complaints, forcing the plantâ€TMs closure in 1991. [11] These same processing, quality and marketing obstacles are reflected in current composting operations by the Bhaktapur Municipality. The Bhaktapur Compost Plant, also surrounded by residential housing, has operated since 1989 despite a brief closure due to public odor complaints. Currently, the plant uses an outdoor windrow composting and manual screening method. Perhaps due to the use of “effective microorganism†(EM) [12] solution, there are currently no problems with odor or local opposition. However, attempts to elicit household waste segregation have failed, resulting in high broken glass content that is almost impossible to remove. As a result, Bhaktapur compost sells at the highly subsidized rate of approximately 100 Rs/ton. Such government subsidies make economic sense when compost production is viewed as a public good which boosts agriculture and saves on tipping costs and pollution; usually however, government priorities move elsewhere and subsidies are not seen as a sustainable source of compost production support.
Community composting programs have also been organized to collect and process household waste en masse at the level of the neighborhood or community. One local NGO that has gained prominence in the field of community-based waste management is the Womenâ€TMs Environment Preservation Committee (WEPCO), an all-female group started in 1992 by a few housewives who took on the task of managing their own solid waste and achieved a level of cleanliness never before attained by the municipality. Beginning with their own neighborhood where inadequate municipal waste collection had resulted in substantial litter, they targeted housewives for door-to-door environmental awareness and waste segregation training since, in Nepal, most organic household waste is generated in kitchens run by housewives. WEPCO then organized door-to-door waste collection of segregated household waste, which was then composted, recycled or dumped as necessary. After an initial period of free garbage collection during which WEPCO proved its competence to the neighborhood, they were able to start charging a small monthly household waste collection fee (up to 50 Rs/month/household, though low-income households were exempted from this charge). Six full-time workers now use tricycle-carts to collect waste door-to-door every other day from more than 1,000 households in Lalitpur. WEPCO currently collects about 1 ton of garbage per day, out of which 2 tons of finished compost are produced each month using a manual pit-and-pile composting [13] and screening operation. Compost is sold through local vendors in 1-5 kg plastic-wrapped packages at a rate of 10 Rs/kg, mostly to local residents or offices for use with indoor plants or small-scale landscaping. Although the WEPCO model is being replicated in other neighborhoods throughout the Valley, however, its operations are not without constraints. Usually, they are not able to sell all of their compost, and compost production must be subsidized by waste collection fees, paper recycling, and occasional donations.
Processing costs are especially high since only 25% of household waste is successfully segregated at the source. The organic compost market is also limited by a low level of public awareness about organic food which limits demand for organic agriculture and thus organic compost in the Valley, especially since chemical fertilizers are readily available and often cheaper and easier to use. Furthermore, urbanization and increased crowding has meant that more people live in smaller dwellings which limits space for segregating wastes and plant cultivation. Replication of the WEPCO model has been hampered by a lack of available land and a lack of support due to NIMBY attitudes. [14]
Similar to the WEPCO model, the Jorpati Tole Improvement Committee was organized in 1997 through the efforts of one impassioned resident in the village of Jorpati, just outside Kathmandu municipal boundaries. Upset by the buildup of solid waste in his community due to landfill closures, the founder organized a neighborhood waste collection system, and in 2000 collected funding from residents, local industries and government agencies to build a low-tech, brick-walled, aerated compost chamber. [15] Through intensive waste segregation training, strict monitoring, and clever use of social pressure [16] by the committee chairman, a high degree of household waste segregation was achieved with the help of subsidized waste-segregation bins sold by the committee. Initial odor complaints from the composting chamber were addressed by applying ash to the compost and improving the aeration system with perforated pipes and walls. Income from compost sales (selling well to local shops at a wholesale price of 6 Rs/kg) and household fees of 50 Rs/month provides wages for 1 fee collector and 2 workers who collect wastes door-to-door using a 3-wheeled rickshaw. Transparent accounting and profit investment in neighborhood improvement projects such as sidewalks, shrines and parks has helped build community support for this project. However, the program is highly dependent upon the strong leadership, commitment, keen social and financial savvy, and generosity of its founder, donates his time and energy for free. This unique managerial and leadership style allows the project to achieve the high levels of financial support and waste segregation needed for a sustainable composting program—but it also makes this model hard to duplicate. Indeed, two other compost chambers have been built in the Valley based on the Jorpati model, but neither is currently operational due to a lack of funding and community support.
Solid waste managers have also tried to increase the percentage of households composting their own wastes in order to reduce transportation and energy requirements for waste collection and treatment, boost food security by making compost for household gardening, and avoid the pitfalls of inadequate source segregation when wastes are handed off to external actors. Household waste composting practices that traditionally predominated in the Valley have declined dramatically in recent times; survey data indicate that only about 15% of Kathmandu households compost their own wastes (Tuladhar 2002). Efforts to expand household composting practices have mostly taken the form of public awareness campaigns and compost bin subsidies. In 2002 KMC launched a public awareness campaign about composting, selling subsidized home compost bins along with complementary composting equipment (trowel, fork and screen), EM supplies, and an instructional booklet. Over 200 of the plastic, 50-100 liter household compost bins [17] have been sold for up to 700 Rs apiece. And while most informants seemed pleased with the lack of odor and insects, one informant claimed that “it took too much time and attention to feed, monitor, stir, and apply EM solution to the compost†especially when she could not sell the compost, and used it only occasionally for her houseplants. At the same time, another informant used the finished compost in his garden and was quite pleased with the noticeable gains in crop yield due to compost application. A few NGOs have encouraged household composting through instructional workshops and promotional material on vermicomposting and EM composting. However, composting campaigns have only reached a very small percentage of the overall Kathmandu population. Although educational campaigns such as those being launched may simply require long gestation periods before their efforts come to fruition, trends of urbanization are likely to inhibit household composting. As population pressures crowd the Valley, there is less and less space for home gardening or source separation, and therefore less incentive or capacity for household composting.
Unless this practice becomes profitable, it is unlikely that individual householdsâ€TM cost-benefit analysis will result in substantial household waste composting. This is especially true since current waste management is seen as the governmentâ€TMs responsibility; managing waste through household composting thus requires behavior and attitude modification, which is inevitably harder to achieve than the status quo.
Composting efforts have also been aimed at outdoor vegetable markets, which convene regularly in public areas all around town and generate large quantities of vegetable waste such as corn husks, carrot tops, and outer cabbage leaves that customers want to see at the market, but then typically want removed. Although vendors could theoretically bring market waste back to farmers for composting, in practice this does not happen, probably because given compost or compost material alternatives, the waste is not valuable enough to justify the required effort. Often the wastes are simply tossed on the street for street sweepers to collect, creating unsanitary conditions and an untidy appearance. To deal with this, composting has been proposed especially because of the large volume, regularity, and high organic content of the wastes. In the past KMC has set up a small, labor-intensive plant to aerobically compost wastes from the Kalimati Vegetable Market, the largest vegetable market in Kathmandu. However, due to a lack of commitment, the practice was not continued and currently all market wastes are being dumped on banks of the Bagmati along with the rest of the mixed municipal waste.
Similarly, slaughterhouse waste has been targeted for composting, with little success. Several buffalo slaughterhouses are situated along city riverbanks since rivers traditionally provided convenient water sources for slaughtering. While the hides, bones and meat are typically sold, buffalo guts and feet are left as waste. KMC attempted several times to compost these wastes at a small plant nearby, which was closed down when a new road was built there, and then at the Teku Compost Plant, which could only be used occasionally due to local oppositiontothe smell. Currently, a local NGO is composting slaughterhouse waste using a windrow method with aeration pipes inserted for extra aeration. However, the NGO is unable to even recover production costs and may soon withdraw from the business, especially since new road construction is being planned where the current composting is taking place.
Several factors for the lack of profitability were cited: lack of a market amongst farmers for the compost due to the ease, familiarity, and resulting predominance of chemical fertilizer use in the Valley; lack of awareness about and demand for organic agriculture; and failure to properly package and market the compost to urban-dwellers amongst whom there is a demand for organic compost. Some or all of these factors must be addressed before slaughterhouse waste composting becomes a viable practice in the Valley.
Animal Feed
Throughout the Valley, in both peri-urban and urban areas, it is still quite common for people to keep cattle for dairying. [18] In the urban and peri-urban areas of Kathmandu, over 50 farms with more than 10 animals, and 45 farms with 5-10 animals were registered with the national governmentâ€TMs Animal Development Department in 2000 (P. Dixit, personal communication, July 24, 2003). In addition, there are many unregistered animal farms, typically with fewer than 5 animals. In the case of cattle, 1 or 2 animals are often kept for religious purposes and to provide for domestic milk consumption. In these cases, bulls are often allowed to stray and graze on available materials (often from open trash heaps in the urban areas); since unregulated grazing may result in transferable diseases or simply poor nutrition and poor health, milk-producing cows are often not allowed to roam like this. Small-scale farmers also feed these animals kitchen and garden wastes from the farmerâ€TMs own home, or from household waste gathered from the neighborhood, in which case the waste is often paid for with milk. Other farmers, typically those with more than 5 animals, raise cattle for commercial dairy production and do not allow their cattle to stray. These farmers usually feed their cattle concentrates purchased from local dealers, as well as bran, husks, chopped straw or wheat chaff from threshers, and grasses gathered from surrounding fields during the wet monsoon months from June to September when the fodder is abundant. It is also fairly common for dairy farmers to regularly collect vegetable market wastes, especially during the pre-monsoon dry season from February to April when grass feed is less abundant. Some farmers who did not collect vegetable market wastes expressed the desire to do so, and cited the lack of a transport mechanism as their limiting factor. However, one informant stated that some farmers would not such animal feed due to the high pesticide content of typical vegetable market wastes.
Pig farms are also quite common in the Valley, typically with 10-50 pigs per farm for both domestic consumption and commercial purposes. Pig farmers usually use husks, regularly-collected vegetable market wastes, and pig feed concentrates purchased from local dealers. Because pigs can consume cooked human foods, many pig farmers also made informal arrangements with nearby restaurants to collect restaurant wastes. Reported arrangements took a variety of forms. Pig farmers would usually collect wastes from restaurants on a regular basis, as often as every day. Collected wastes consisted of dining room leftovers (food scraps left on customersâ€TM plates), and sometimes organic kitchen scraps if the restaurant workers were willing to segregate the wastes. Containers for waste collection were sometimes provided by the pig farmers (especially if the arrangement required waste segregation by the restaurant), and sometimes provided by the restaurant. Waste collection varied from as little as 3 kg every 4 days to 10 kg everyday. Farmers were reportedly traveling up to one hour by bicycle or up to half-an-hour by truck each way to collect wastes from several restaurants in an area each day. Other than stressing that regularity of waste pickup was crucial, most restaurants seemed satisfied with the relationship; some expressly mentioned the fact that waste collection by pig farmers helped keep their establishments sanitary and aesthetically appealing, which was especially appreciated in areas where municipal waste collection was unreliable or inadequate. Remuneration to restaurants ranged from nothing to pork cuts to cash payment to restaurant patronage. [19] Perhaps most significantly, in one area it was reported that competition among pig farmers for restaurant waste had increased in recent years such that some farmers now paid 1 Rs/kg for wastes they had formerly collected for free. Although this is a nominal fee, it is significant because it provides an incentive for restaurants to handle organic wastes for recycling. It also indicates increasing competition for restaurant waste, which is likely due to the spread of this practice amongst farmers. The value of the waste is further reflected by the time, physical effort and bin provision associated with waste collection.
DISCUSSION: Prospects for Organic Waste Recycling Expansion
The above review of organic waste recycling practices was undertaken to inform discussions of the prospects for expansion. In following sections I discuss several themes that emerge from this case study, evaluate current trends and future directions, and conclude with suggested priorities for action.
As demonstrated by both traditional and modern methods, composting can be an effective method of treating wastes and supporting agriculture in the Valley. However, several elements are integral to overall success at all levels of composting practice in the context of an increasingly urban environment. Proper waste segregation of organic waste is key, at least with regard to glass; while other inorganic contaminants can be fairly successfully screened out, broken glass is almost impossible to remove and causes problems for compost users. Space constraints in increasingly crowded urban areas limit the ability and inclination for waste segregation, suggesting the need for new arrangements.
In the past, waste segregation has been difficult to achieve, and has required large commitments of time and resources for waste segregation training, separate waste collection containers, monitoring and enforcement. Local support for compost facilities is also integral, which means that siting decisions, buffer zones requirements, and appropriate production processes must incorporate the time and actions required to build up trust and approval amongst the local community. The use of EM solution, which helps reduce odor, is a promising innovation in this regard since odor is the typical complaint of local opposition. Perhaps most important, compost production must be financially viable. In the absence of government subsidies or use by individual household compost producers, this means that compost must be successfully processed, packaged and marketed for the private sector. Thus far, the market has broken down into two separate areas: one for agricultural or ornamental horticulture in urban dwellings such as residences and offices, and one for agricultural farm products. Potential consumers among urban dwellers typically exhibit a higher willingness to pay than farmers (note the current average price of 10 Rs/kg in local shops versus 100 Rs/ton for farm compost), but usually require smaller amounts of nicely labeled, locally-accessible, well-packaged, well-screened compost. This dictates higher capital costs for processing, packaging and marketing, and particular financial savvy which is often lacking amongst the nonprofit organizations that typically undertake composting projects. It is important to note as well that the urban market is constrained by space limitations for plant cultivation, especially as cities get more crowded.
In the area of animal feed, existing trade in vegetable waste animal feed from farms, markets and restaurants attests to the robustness of this type of organic waste recycling. Especially promising is the fact that animal raisers are currently investing time, labor, and material resources for collection and transport, and in some cases even cash, as in the case of restaurant waste pig feed trade. However, such expansion is constrained by animal health concerns related to the quality of the animal feed, especially from high pesticide-content vegetable wastes from farms and markets.
Current Trends, Future Directions
For purposes of solid waste reduction and urban agriculture promotion, organic waste recycling has been put forth as part of the solution to open-loop import-export-style urban development. In Kathmandu, both of these ends are particularly relevant: the first, due to the high-profile solid waste crisis that has plagued the Valley for decades; and the second, due to trends of rising food insecurity, changes in the chemical fertilizer market, and concerns over declining soil fertility and the health hazards of chemical farming. Kathmanduâ€TMs solid waste issues have been the subject of local, national and international concern since the 1970s, as solid waste generation increased in sheer volume and intractability with the use, import and generation of synthetic materials. Governmental waste collection efforts have been unable to keep up with this expansion in solid waste, resulting in aesthetically displeasing and unsanitary conditions, especially during the monsoon. Perhaps even more offensive than the frequently encountered rotting trash heaps, municipal riverside dumping has been in practice since 2000 due to the absence of a sanitary landfill.
Incomplete waste collection and environmentally-threatening dumping practices have resulted in highly visible debates over the issue, which have often become mired in political struggles as politicians manipulate public sentiments for personal rather than public benefit. Foreign aid for solid waste issues has further exacerbated this politicization, as financial rewards have raised the incentives for personal gain through pork-barrel projects. Underlying causes of the solid waste morass include competing and uncoordinated spheres of authority over waste management between local and national government bodies, funding and management crises due to general political instability and inefficient governance, landfill closures due to local opposition, impractical non-containerized solid waste management through treet sweeping, and a prevailing attitude that considers waste management to be the purview of external government actors rather than the responsibility of individual waste generators (Tuladhar 1996, Tuladhar 2001). This sordid history of solid waste mismanagement has destroyed public confidence in public solid waste management. The current state of solid waste management in Kathmandu can be characterized by continuing uncertainty and volatility. Highly contested municipal riverside dumping is still underway, and new landfill siting by the national government has proceeded against the recommendations of KMC, which is responsible for actual waste collection and delivery. These long-standing issues make solid waste reduction through organic waste recycling especially important for Kathmandu.
Furthermore, rising food insecurity makes urban agriculture even more crucial for Kathmandu residents. With poverty headcount figures ranging from 12-15% (ADB 1998), much of the capitalâ€TMs population suffers from malnutrition, limited food entitlement and impoverishment. One cause of increasing food insecurity is rapid urbanization, which has reduced food cultivation in the Valley while increasing food demands, especially from rural-to-urban migration. Globalization and economic liberalization policies such as the ‘structural adjustmentâ€TM programs pursued by the government and foreign donor agencies since 1990 have also enhanced the private sector at the expense of public welfare programs. As a result, food prices and basic living costs have risen dramatically while food aid has been cut. In addition, the urban poor typically suffer disproportionately from pollution and environmental health effects, increasing the incidence of sickness among the poor which in turn reduces their wage-earning abilities and income by necessitating medical expenditures. The net result is that the poor, who by and large lack access to land and are dependent on their labor for food purchasing power, suffer from food insecurity even when food is locally available (Adhikari and Bohle 1999). As food insecurity trends upward with continuing urbanization, organic waste recycling could become increasingly crucial mechanisms to combat poverty and malnutrition amongst the urban poor.
Composting in particular may gain importance in the future if current trends of chemical fertilizer use and soil fertility conditions continue. Chemical fertilizers were introduced into Nepal in 1952 and promoted with government subsidies and extension services during the Green Revolution of the 1970s, largely displacing traditional agricultural composting. [20]
In 1997, however, the government began to deregulate and liberalize fertilizer trade in an effort to encourage market efficiency, adequate and timely supply, and competitive prices. While fertilizer supply has expanded, there has also been a vast increase of substandard fertilizers imported illegally from India. There, fertilizer production is still subsidized, making Indian fertilizers artificially cheap as compared with other brands available on the Nepalese market. [21] This price differential has created a large, illegal trade across the long, open border with India despite its substandard quality, flooding the market with questionable fertilizers. At the same time, subsidy loss has resulted in marked price increases, challenging the viability of agricultural enterprises especially for smallholder farmers (Basnyat 1999). [22] Questionable fertilizer quality combined with price hikes make organic fertilizer alternatives such as compost increasingly attractive to farmers and policymakers concerned about the future of farming in Kathmandu.
On a more fundamental level, declines in soil fertility may make chemical fertilizers not only too expensive and unreliable, but completely undesirable. Based on field observations, some farmers felt that soil fertility in Kathmandu was declining due to the long-term use of chemical fertilizers. Although a causal relationship has yet to be scientifically established, anecdotal accounts of lowered soil fertility may be the early warning signs of damage from long-term chemical farming. Because of Nepalâ€TMs heavy dependence on its agricultural sector, the development of organic alternatives to chemical farming may become crucial to the economy of the entire country. Currently, organic compost is used widely in conjunction with chemical fertilizers; while organic compost application is recommended to maintain soil structure necessary for plant growth, it is the chemical fertilizers that have been responsible for high productivity and uniformity of produce. However, some farmers report that a buildup of chemicals in their fields, along with underapplication of soil-building organic compost, is starting to erode the gains in productivity originally effected by chemical fertilizers. If these observations are borne out by widespread declines in soil fertility, agricultural practices will be severely threatened. Moreover, increasing concern about the environmental and health impacts of chemical fertilizers through eutrophication and nutrient leaching is resulting in support around the world for organic agriculture practices like composting. In Kathmandu, a few of the more expensive restaurants that cater to tourists offer organic food, and there are two small organic vendors that sell directly to local residents. In addition, one local NGO works to raise awareness about organic agriculture and its environmental and health benefits to consumers and producers.
However, these organic markets form a miniscule proportion of the overall market, and they depend primarily on sales to generally wealthier ex-patriots because most consumers are not willing to pay the price premium for organic agriculture. Amongst Nepalese residents there is very little awareness or support for organic agriculture. Should adverse environmental and health effects become apparent in the future though, this may change.
Several overall themes underlie the experiences described in this case study, and are highlighted here in order to inform a strategy for action. First of all, while household wastes form a large proportion of Kathmanduâ€TMs waste, commercial processes of waste generation, recycling, and utilization are easier to target due to greater scales of operation, the uniformity and regularity of processes, and greater ease of implementing corporate decisions (as opposed to government or community-based initiatives). Successful waste recycling practices tend to use low-tech, manual processes that take advantage of the abundant, cheap labor available in Nepal, rather than relying on complex processes based on imported parts and foreign technology. In addition, due to the classic inefficiencies of public administration and the typical under-provision of public goods, public solid waste management must borrow techniques from the private sector, perhaps rendering itself more like a private good. Note that community-based composting programs achieved success when they undertook responsibility for waste management rather than relying on the government to clean up their wastes. Perhaps the most significant lesson here lays in the private sector experience of restaurant waste pig feed trade. Rather than being a top-down program imposed for the sake of a public good (solid waste management), the pig feed trade arose as private individuals (pig farmers) carved out selfish strategies to address their private needs; fortunately, this also happened benefit the public (by reducing solid waste generation). Because of ‘tragedy of the commonsâ€TM effects, open-access goods are usually sacrificed at the expense of private incentives (Tietenberg 2003: 71); however, if public goods can be piggy-backed on privately-prudent strategies like this, they have a much greater chance of being attained. This is especially true in Kathmandu where political instability, competing political agendas and actors, funding disruptions, and lack of commitment have repeatedly compromised the integrity of publicly-managed, top-down programs. It is important to be aware that intervening in the current trade of restaurant wastes for pig feed runs the risk of compromising current efforts—for instance, an overexpansion of demand for restaurant wastes could raise prices, rendering commercial pig feed more desirable in the short term and resulting in an overall decline in waste recycling. However, careful consideration of economic principles can hopefully mitigate these sorts of effects.
CONCLUSION: Priorities for Action
Priorities for action must be based on a comprehensive strategy of organic waste recycling. Such a strategy might begin by elaborating on existing models such as the restaurant waste pig feed trade and the cow dung compost trade. Capitalizing on the robustness of private, commercial enterprises, efforts could focus on networking amongst potential waste generators and waste users in order to encourage trade and provide technical assistance for waste recycling processes. To overcome the hurdle of bulky, hard-to-transport organic materials, transport networks using common 3-wheeled rickshaws and employing streetkids or ratpickers could also be created. Potential waste trading partners include vegetable farms that produce vegetable waste and use compost, animal farms that produce animal waste and use feed, plant nurseries that produce plant waste and use compost, fish and meat markets that produce compostable meat waste, and restaurants that produce compostable and edible food waste. Surveys of potential partners should be conducted at the outset to accurately assess participantsâ€TM needs and capacities, and to identify the appropriate recycling technology. Perhaps as institutional capacities develop, technology development begin with animal feed which requires the least processing, then move to composting processes. And since financial feasibility is paramount to the sustainability of all of these activities, a necessary fundraising efforts may consider foreign donors and public funds for the initial startup, but ultimately development of private sector involvement is the most stable and sustainable goal.
As urbanization and development proceed in an increasingly crowded world, new techniques must be developed to deal with new forms of use and waste generation patterns. Careful consideration of organic waste recycling practices like those discussed in this paper can shed light on current obstacles to solid waste reduction, and highlight potential solutions for the future.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This study was made possible by generous grants from the Jubitz Family Endowment for Research Internships Committee and the Luce Summer Internship Fund Committee through the Collaborative Industrial Ecology in Asia Project. I must also thank the Leopold Schepp Foundation and the American Association of University Women for the graduate study funding that has enabled me to pursue research opportunities such as this. I am also indebted to Mr. Pradeepmani Dixit and Mr. Ram Bhandari of the Agro-Farm Forester’s Association of Nepal, who served respectively as my in-country advisor and research assistant/translator during my time in Nepal. Numerous advisors at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies have helped me to formulate and refine this project-special thanks go out to Sheila Olmstead, Anne Rademacher and Aban Khabraji, who have been particularly integral to this effort. I am always grateful to my friends and family who have borne me through this life and supported my efforts to be a worthy person. And finally, I would like to thank all of my Nepalese informants who taught me so much about myself and the world; I dedicate this paper to you.
- Michelle Huang, Yale University, USA
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Footnotes
[1] Average annual urban growth rate for the developing world was 3.5% in 1991, and less than 1% for the developed world (WRI 1996). When looking at the annual population growth from 1975-2001 for countries as a whole, (1.9% for developing countries and 1.6% for the world), Kathmanduâ€TMs growth rate appears even more astronomical (UNDP 2003).
[2] In this paper, I use “Valley†to refer to the entire Kathmandu Valley area.
[3] The minimum valley altitude is 1372 meters (GEM/Nepal 2002).
[4] Unless otherwise specified, “Kathmandu†is used to refer to the general area of Kathmandu Valley, including all three districts.
[5] In order to limit the scope of discussion, “organic waste recycling†here is limited to food and agricultural waste composting or feeding, and excludes paper and fiber recycling.
[6] Post-positivist theories of social science research dictate that a researcherâ€TMs personal background has a large effect on the quality of the data generated (Babbie 2001). Therefore it is important to note that the fieldwork for this study was conducted during my first trip to Nepal, and that I did not know the national Nepali language. However, English is quickly becoming the common business language there, especially in the capital; today, English is taught in most schools in Kathmandu, and many official documents are produced in English. Most of my informants were proficient in English allowing me to converse with them directly, and I conducted all of my interviews with the help of a Nepalese resident whom I had hired as my research assistant and translator. I also benefited from the guidance of a local non-governmental organization (NGO), the Agro-Farm Forestersâ€TM Association of Nepal (AFFAN), one of the few organizations that work to aid and expand urban agriculture in Kathmandu. And with my beginnerâ€TMs Nepali and Asian features I was able to fool some Nepalese into mistaking me for a Nepali. Nonetheless, I was very much of an outsider to the local culture, and this presented the typical obstacles of culture gaps and language barriers, as well as the advantage of a fresh perspective for cross-cultural comparison.
[7] Three recent studies found organic content levels of 67% (RESTUC 2000 cited in Tuladhar 2001: 9), 69.84% (KMC/KVMP 2000 cited in Manandhar 2002: 2) and 70.87% (KMC 2001 cited in Tuladhar 2002: 3). Although these studies were carried out by different organizations using various sampling methods and sampling pools, they give an overall indication of compostability.
[8] Windrow composting is carried out by laying waste out for natural decomposition in piles approximately 2 meters high, 2 meters wide, and typically 20 meters long. The waste can be sorted at the beginning of this process before piling, or during row reformations—in the case of both Bhaktapur and Kathmandu, inorganic materials are sorted out of the mixed municipal waste by hand. Every 7 to 15 days these piles are manually or mechanically moved and re-piled into new rows in an adjacent area, encouraging more uniform aerobic decomposition. Depending on heat, moisture and aeration conditions, full decomposition can be accomplished in 2 to 6 months.
[9] After wastes are fully decomposed, the compost must be manually or mechanically sieved to ensure uniform texture and to remove any remaining inorganic contaminants. The finished compost is then ready for field application or product packaging.
[10] The rupee-USD conversion rate averaged 73 rupees (Rs) to the dollar, over the duration of fieldwork.
[11] Today, very small-scale composting is carried out only occasionally at the site for education and awareness-building purposes.
[12] “Effective microorganism†(EM) solution, a commercially-available blend of selected microorganisms including lactic acid bacteria, yeast, photosynthetic bacteria and actinomycetes, is also applied as an innoculant to encourage fermentation rather than putrefaction, which ultimately speeds decomposition and helps to eliminate odors.
[13] Pit-and-pile composting is similar to windrow composting, except that waste is piled in a walled pit, in this case made out of concrete. Wastes are turned from one pit to another adjacent pit once a month, and degradation is complete in 3 months. Depending on waste quality, WEPCO employees sometimes add purchased inputs of sawdust, slaughterhouse buffalo dung, lime, oil byproducts, rice dust, hay, or EM solution. They also have tried vermicomposting in which worms degrade the waste, producing a high-quality compost of worm castings and egg sacs. Vermicomposting, however, is much more difficult and thus costly to implement since wastes must be finely chopped and temperature and moisture conditions closely monitored to keep worm populations healthy.
[14] NIMBY: Not in my backyard.
[15] The compost chamber consists of a brick building about 11m wide, 7 m deep, and 10 m high, with perforated walls and internal plastic, perforated pipes to allow for aeration. A removable hatch about 1 m2 big sits in the concrete ceiling for the addition of organic wastes. About 3 m from the base of the structure, iron rods anchored in the sides form a horizontal grid of half-meter-wide boxes that holds a loose layer of hay and a chamberful of organic waste above that, until operators pull the finished compost down through the hay. No turning is required, as the organic wastes simply decompose as they sit in the chamber and the chamber is emptied once a month. Decomposed compost is screened, packaged in plastic bags, labeled, and taken to the market for sale.
[16] The chairman was able to convince his neighbors to pay for waste collection and contribute funds for the compost chamber sight unseen. In addition, they achieved household waste separation through environmental awareness and waste segregation trainings, financial rewards and fines, and public social pressure for misbehavers.
[17] These bins are designed to aerobically compost household wastes from a 5-7 person family in 2.5-3.5 months.
[18] Note that, in accordance with Hindu beliefs, cattle slaughtering is prohibited in Nepal.
[19] In one reciprocal relationship, the pig farmer had worked in the tourism industry and would recommend former clients to the restaurant from which he collected wastes.
[20] In a recent fertilizer use study, 89% of Nepalese farmers surveyed used synthetic fertilizers. Several farmers cited ease of transport, ease of use, and habit as factors promoting the use of chemical fertilizers over organic fertilizers; chemical fertilizers that come in bags of uniform quality and quantity can be easily sprinkled around fields by men, women and children, whereas the equivalent amount of bulky, heavy, and often wet organic fertilizer whose quality is unknown until the crop comes up, is typically harder to transport, apply and manage (HMG/MOAC 2003).
[21] Since Nepal imports all of its synthetic fertilizers, most other brands are much more expensive due to import costs (HMG/Fertilizer Unit 1999).
[22] Although these phenomena have only been documented at the national level, data from informant interviews corroborate the findings for Kathmandu Valley
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