Pushkar L. Shrestha

Background
Kathmandu city alone generates more than 300 tons of solid waste everyday. Recent Clean Kathmandu Valley (CKV) study shows that in Kathmandu valley, around 70% of household waste consists of bio-degradable organic waste. These waste mostly generated from kitchen, can be taken care simply by composting at household level. About 20% of waste consists of recyclable waste such as paper, plastics etc. which can be easily sold as scrapes. Therefore in reality only 10% of our solid waste needs to be scientifically land filled. One of the simple techniques of managing waste is composting. It not only partially solves Katmandu's solid waste problem but will also help in increasing the life span of expensive land fills.

Solid Waste management in developing countries has become a concern which neither the government nor the general public can ignore as just one of the challenges of Urban Environment Management. It has, in terms of scarce resources, been the most demanding yet most unacknowledged urban service. Nepal and the capital city/valley is no exception.
Except for few scattered initiatives of recycling and reuse of solid waste, it is in essence managed (mismanaged) by dumping or throwing away on the riverbanks or open spaces. The land filling done by municipalities are neither scientific nor do they follow environmental regulations. Besides, the collection system is equally inefficient and way below the desired satisfactory level of the people. On the other hand a huge amount of resources is poured in collecting and disposing these wastes.

Many clubs, CBOs and private operators collect waste from households and dump the same on either riverbanks or just leave it at street corners to be cleared by the municipal trucks. Dumping of solid waste on riverbanks has long-term effects on soil and ground water. In most of the places, these marginal lands along the riverbanks are occupied by urban poor. Thus, the most underprivileged section of the society is the most affected-specially women and children, as they become the first victims of this mismanagement. Therefore, reducing and recycling waste at the "source" is undoubtedly the ideal solution to manage the solid waste. The "source" here being the household it self.

"Our Waste Our Responsibility" is the slogan Centre for Integrated Urban Development (CIUD) been campaigning for past two years now. Along with that, CIUD has been also conducting organic waste composting training and distributing compost bins1 to interested people.

To take a small step in supporting Kathmandu's urban poor communities in solid waste management, CIUD along with Water Aid Nepal2 started a pilot program called Organic Waste Composting at Household Level in urban poor communities which started during March of 2004. This program was initially scheduled for 6 months but was extended by 6 months till the end of March 2005.

The program was initially implemented in two squatter settlements namely Khadipakha and Balaju in Kathmandu and two slum areas namely Nau Don & Chakrabahil in Lalitpur. Later in the program, Thecho (traditional farmer’s settlement which is lies about five kilometers out of Ring road on the way to Chapa Gao) was also added. The main objective of this pilot program was to reduce the negative effects of unmanaged solid waste on poor and vulnerable section of the society through organic waste composting at household level and generate additional income in the process.

Before implementation of the program a composting team was formed which included compost trainers, community mobilizers, and compost monitors. To begin the program, several meetings were held with the community people and as public awareness program, street drama was shown in the communities and composting brochures were distributed to the viewers. Following the promotional activities, community mobilizers visited every household in the community and encouraged the community people to attend composting training. Composting monitors visited the composting households (HHs) at least twice a week to monitor the process and filled out an evaluation form for each household (HH) to find out if they are following the composting procedure; for example, size of waste inside the bin, C:N ratio, moisture level, aeration, use of Effective Microorganisms etc. Compost monitors visited composting HHs till the harvesting of compost, to ensure the proper follow up of compost training and composting procedures.

Compost Bin & Accessories
Compost bin adopted by CIUD is a 100 liter PVC container. The bin is divided into two parts by an iron grill; upper part is a bio reactor while bottom part is harvesting chamber. The holes around the bin are for aeration. The accessories include a small fork, a small shovel, strainer & a bottle of Effective Microorganisms (EM). EM helps in expediting the composting process.

The details regarding individual piloted composting communities are explained in Table 1. The analysis below compares the adaptability trend of household level bin type composting amongst compost trained HHs. Figure 2 gives details about household level bin type composting adaptability in Urban Poor households (HH) vs. the Medium Income households (HH).

               Table 1

Table 1 elaborates on piloted composting communities and on compost trained vs. the actual composting HHs. The analysis below compares the adaptability trend of household level bin type composting amongst compost trained HHs. Out of the total of 210 HHs trained in Balaju, Khadipakha, Chakrabahil and Nau Don about 38% were composted their waste in August 04. Apart from a few dropouts in Balaju and Khadipakha, these HHs continued with the composting system when monitored in February 05. The composting program was started in Thecho only in November 04 and out of the trained HHs, around 31% followed this process in their houses. It was seen that if people started with composting, the discontinuation rate was almost negligible.

Thecho is a farmers’ community and most of the inhabitants are practicing pit/ pile type of composting. Most of the compost trained HHs continued with presently practiced pile/pit type composting which is usually done in their backyard/farmland. However, in future this community might consider bin type of composting with increased pace of urbanization and decreased availability of farmland. Those who adopted bin type of composting felt the significance of this system as it provided designated place for composting which is not littered by stray animals or swept away by wind. Thus bin type of composting is helping to keep the neighborhood clean and most importantly 100 compost trained HHs have started to use their kitchen waste in pit/pile type of composting where as before the training the kitchen waste was thrown along the road side, streets etc.
Figure 2

Figure 2 shows comparison between compost trained urban poor HHs vs. the middle income HHs and their adaptability trend of household organic waste composting after receiving compost training. It shows that out of 360 urban poor compost trained HHs 35% are practicing composting, whereas out of 200 middle income3 compost trained HHs, 93% are practicing composting. Reasons for adoption of composting by a smaller percentage of the trained HHs in the urban poor community could be: 1) solid waste management not being a priority issue with people more concerned about earning money4 and surviving; 2) presence of domestic animals to feed the organic waste eg. in Khadipakha, Balaju, Nau Don & Thecho and thus not enough waste remaining for composting; 3) need to buy the compost bins and not provided free of cost and 4) efforts put up by the community mobilizers not being very effective On the other hand, the realization of household level solid waste management in middle income group is certainly a good thing for the Kathmandu valley. Even in the absence of community mobilizers to promote composting HHs themselves demanded for compost training & purchased the bins in their own initiative.

Challenges and Lesson Learnt
Working with communities and in addition bringing behavioral change is a very challenging task. For a successful composting at household level, it demands changes in existing practice of solid waste management at household level. For prudent and effective composting of organic waste the following needs special attention i) separating organic and inorganic waste, ii) cutting the waste into small pieces before putting it in the bin (smaller the size of waste, faster it will degrade), iii) maintaining C:N5 ratio of the waste in the bin to around 25:1 for proper degradation of pre compost material, iv) maintaining moisture level of pre compost material around 40-60%, v) stirring the waste at least twice a week for proper aeration, vi) adding activator such as EM6 for faster and proper degradation. If one follows all these process properly, compost should be ready in about 3 months time. During the compost training, these six easy steps of composting were explained very carefully. To follow these six easy steps, it demands small behavioral change, as almost all of the trained HHs were stuffing their waste in plastic bags and throwing it in the forest, road side, and river or giving it away to the waste collector which is easier than composting and managing the waste themselves.

One of the challenging parts, at the beginning of the project was to mobilize the community people and letting them sit for the compost training. As the project progressed, the hardest part became persuading compost trained HHs to purchase7 the compost bin. Most of the trained HHs did not want to buy the compost bin as there was strong voice from the community that the bins should have been provided for free. But as past experiences have shown that when things are provided for free, people do not have the feeling of ownership therefore the price tag was put on the bin and Rs. 50 a month is not a very large sum of money as few HHs are paying about Rs. 50-100 a month to private waste collector to have their waste picked up. Community mobilizers (CM) tried to mobilize community people to participate in compost training. For example, they visited all the HHs of community and requested at least one member from each HH to attend the training program so they could know the process of keeping their house and neighborhoods clean and at the same make some extra money. CM visited every trained HHs, even after the trainings, to persuade them in composting context. CIUD also composed a composting drama and it was shown in the selected communities to educate & aware community people to participate in compost training.

Conclusion
Comparison above shows that the household organic waste composting (specially the bin type composting) is more feasible in middle income & upper middle income group rather than urban poor or poor HHs. Most of the urban poor live in very congested area and space constraint houses. Due to this very reason many urban poor HHs did not have space to put compost bin inside the house and were not comfortable with putting the bin outside their front door may be due to fear of theft/vandalism. Another reason could be that as most of the urban poor HHs resides by the riverbanks, it is easier for them to throw their waste in the river rather than composting. The amount of money one can make by selling household level composting is very nominal8 and if they couldn’t sell the compost, most of them did not have any use of it as very few of them have kitchen garden, flower pots etc. to make use of the compost. Besides, urban poor HHs did not want to spend money on compost bins. Due to these reasons, composting was not a very attractive option of managing solid waste in urban poor communities. Where as in middle income group, the cost of compost bin was not much for them and most of them have kitchen garden where they can make good use of compost.

A higher rate of acceptability of composting is found among the middle income and well to do group than the urban poor. Thus, if more of the middle income and well to do group are managing their solid waste themselves the urban poor are less vulnerable to the negative impacts of the solid waste dumped in the riverbanks where most of the urban poor are settled. Hence the outcome of this pilot program shows that if all the middle income and well to do HHs start following “Our Waste Our Responsibility” campaign and initiate in making compost out of their bio degradable organic waste then that will definitely play a big role in solving Kathmandu valley’s solid waste problem.