Dear Shephanie,
Sorry for our delayed response, our answer to your querries are given below:
• What is your strategy to organize local communities given that your model is based on a large number of slum dwellers participating?
First of all we would like to clarify that Waste Concern (WC) is working with both the slum dwellers as well as with low-income, middle income and high income people of urban area. At present barrel type composting is being replicated in 14 cities of Bangladesh and community based composting system is being replicated in 20 towns of Bangladesh by municipalities, privates sectors and NGOs.
‘Barrel Type Composting System’ For the slums and squatter settlements, WC is promoting ‘Barrel Type Composting System’ where about 5-6 households residing in a slum are grouped together and supplied with one compost barrel. Compost barrels are introduced in the slums with the active participation of the slum dwellers. Waste Concern provides hands-on training on the use of compost barrels to the users and also assists in marketing compost to private sectors. In the year 1999 with the support from LIFE-UNDP program WC started the Barrel type composting in two slums of Dhaka city. Almost one third of Dhaka population resides in slums and squatter settlements and they are suffering from environmental problems due to unmanaged waste inside their community. Initially slum dwellers were very much skeptical about the barrel to be installed inside their community. WC invited target slum dwellers to visit WC’s nieghboring composting facilities where the barrel type composting system was demonstrated. Once they were convinced about the technology and attracted to the idea of having a cleaner neighborhood and extra income opportunity from composting their own waste, WC carries out a baseline survey on waste generation and socio- economic survey on the community. WC field workers carries out dialogue with the slum dwellers about the concept and use of barrel type composting units and provides hands-on training..
One Barrel Type Composting Units are provided free of cost to a group of 5-6 users in a slum and compost produced from each barrels are sold to Waste Concern, which is subsequently sold to private sector. Cost of one barrel is US $ 25-30 which can be recovered within 2 years by selling compost at price of US $ 40 per ton.
As a result, barrel type composting system has become popular to the slum dwellers because slums are becoming cleaner and enjoying a new source of income from their own waste and has ownership of these units. Moreover, the long-term benefit of the project is the improvement of the environmental condition of the slums and decrees in the disease occurrence rate.
At present Department of Public Health Engineering (DPHE) under the Ministry of Local Government of Bangladesh with the support from UNICEF is replicating the barrel type composting model in 14 cities and municipalities of Bangladesh.
Waste Concern is working in close partnership with the municipalities and communities to promote barrel type composting. These barrels are provided free of cost to these slum dwellers by municipalities. Waste Concern is providing technical support and donors are providing financial support to purchase these units. Each municipalities has community staffs who works closely with Waste Concern staffs and carrying out the monitoring and evaluation of these units. At present Waste Concern is convincing local governments to use their own resource/ fund to install barrel-type compost units by replacing the ineffective conventional fixed waste bins.
Community Based Composting The prime goal of this project is promote the principal of 4R's (Reduce, Re-use, Recycle and Recovery of waste) in the urban areas of Bangladesh. Realizing the lessons learnt from the pilot project of Mirpur, Waste Concern is implementing their community-based program in additional four communities of Dhaka through partnership development with the government agencies, civil society bodies and NGO's and private sector, creating job opportunities for the neglected urban poor, especially women.
The additional four projects in Dhaka have been implemented using public- private-community partnership approach. Under this project, Government makes land available free of charge for waste management, Waste Concern collects, separates and turns solid waste into organic compost, community members pay a nominal fee for garbage collection and oversee the activities in their neighborhoods, while private businesses market the organic compost.
At present 20 towns and municipalities are replicating the model with the technical assistance from WC. Municipalities are providing land for composting plants and established these composting plants with the financial support from donors and contracting out these plants to local NGOs/ Private sectors to run the project. Waste Concern is providing technical support for the establishment and operation and maintenance of these projects. Communities are participating in the program and paying service fees for the house to house collection of waste. Waste Concern is also introducing private compost marketing companies to market compost from these new facilities.
Waste Concern is directly running 4 (four) community based projects and taking care of 2 (two) slums having barrel type composting projects in Dhaka and the rest of the replications in 20 towns are being carried out by private sectors, NGOs and local municipalities with the technical assistance from Waste Concern. Apart from Bangladesh Waste Concern is providing technical assistance to Qui Nhon City in Vietnam in replicating the model in Vietnam.
• Do you engage local authorities or community associations?
Initially we started our initiatives with our own resources for demonstration. Later after demonstration of the model Government along with donors came forward to replicate this model. At present both the ‘barrel type compost system’ and ‘community based composting plants’ are replicated in partnership with local authorities and community people or associations (if exists). It community associations do not exists in a project area, WC organizes local volunteers (women, youth, retired people) into watchdog group named as Green Force or Eco-friends. Both the local authorities and community associations are active partners of the project.
• * Are slum dwellers willing to pay for this service?
Under the ‘Barrel Type Composting’ project slum dwellers are segregating waste into organic and inorganic fraction and using the compost barrel as per instruction from Waste Concern. In return Waste Concern is purchasing compost from them. Instead of littering waste in the roads and drains, slum dwellers are properly using the compost barrel and producing compost. Slum dwellers have owner ship of the compost barrels and they, instead of paying any kind of service fees, selling their compost to Waste Concern. Later Waste Concern sells these compost product to private fertilizer marking company.
Main feature of this model is that instead of paying for the service they are earning money from the sales proceed of compost. Under the ‘Community Based Composting plant’ located in low-middle and high income areas, communities are paying service for the house-to-house collection of waste to waste collectors Almost 30% of the revenue comes from this house-to- house waste collection fees in compost plant and the rest 70% comes from the sale of compost product. Communities are paying an amount of US $ 0.20-0.30 per month for this waste collection service.
• Are you facing the issue that they may expect free services/ subsidies from the government? For Barrel Type Composting case slum dwellers are earning some money out of waste and they expects free service/ subsides to purchase new barrel type compost units from the government,in case of community based composting model communities are already paying conservancy tax to the local authorities to collect waste from the communal waste bins not from each households. Initially few communities took their own initiatives of house-to-house collection with service fee to get rid of uncollected waste in their neighborhoods.
• * What motivated the fertilizer company to buy the waste in the first place? Was it purely commercial or as part of their corporate social reponsibility agenda?
Initially the fertilizer company was reluctant to market organic fertilizer/compost in the market. First of all this product was unknown to them and were not sure about its demand among the farmers. Waste Concern successfully motivated owner/chairman of the marketing company by simply sending him vegetable grown on organic fertilizer which had good taste and smell. WC and the private marketing company started with 200 tons/ year contract which was also very insignificant for the private market company to market compared to their large market of seeds, pesticides and chemical fertilizer. Waste Concern produce bulk compost (screened from 8 mm sieve) and later this product is grinded and packed in 20-40 kg bags. Later private sector started to enrich compost with chemical nutrients based on soil and crop type. After receiving huge demand compost and enriched compost from the farmers the private marketing company requested Waste Concern to supply more than 40,000 tons of compost every year. The late owner of the private marketing company called Alpha Agro Ltd. was a man of vision and philanthropist. He took the opportunity of both making profit and also contribute towards sustainable environment and agriculture by marketing a environment friendly product.
• * How easy or difficult has it proven to be to get the initial investment to set up a new composting plant? What kind of investors do you attract?
There was a common perception that waste is a problem it needs to be solved centrally by the government with sophisticated hi-tech technology. In 1994, the co-founders of Waste Concern tried to convince government to go for community based decentralized approach to combat the huge amount of waste in affordable and sustainable way. They also tried to popularize the concept of Waste is not waste it is a resource. It was very difficult to convince initially.
Later in 1995 Waste Concern with its own resources and partial financial support from a young businessman and a small piece of land from Lions club started a pilot demonstration community based composting project. After successful demonstration of the project in 1998, the Ministry of Environment and Forest of the Government of Bangladesh with the support from UNDP started to replicate this model in 4 (four) communities of Dhaka. Later in 2002, Department of Public Health and Engineering of the Ministry of Local Government with the support from UNICEF is replicating both the model of community based and barrel type in 14 cities and towns of Bangladesh. The demonstration and economic viability of these model attracted other NGOs and private sectors to replicate the model in other cities with own resource, grant support from external agencies and soft loans from Bank.
Recently, Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of Kyoto Protocol created a new window for foreign direct investment (FDI) in Bangladesh. Waste Concern is initiating two projects in Dhaka using CDM. One is Land Fill Gas extraction project in the existing dumpsite of Dhaka city using US $ 3.5 million and the other is 700-tons capacity composting plant at the fringe of Dhaka city using US $ 6.5 million. Certified Emission Reduction (CER) from the sale of per ton methane reduction attracted the foreign investor in waste sector. Close to 1.5 million tons of CO2eq can be sold from the aforementioned two waste based CDM projects initiated by WWR and Waste Concern in Dhaka and per ton price of CO2eq is more than US $ 5 in the market.
• * You already replicated the model in 20 cities. It is very impressive! What are the key conditions for replication?
The key condition to replication of the model is to bring all the partners (municipalities, communities and private sector) in a close benefit loop. Some of the key conditions are shown below: • Municipality should provide land free of cost for the project. • Allow private sector/ NGOs to operate the compost plant. • Allow house-to-house waste collection in urban areas by the local authorities. • Allow nominal fee for collection of waste from households. Private sector /NGOs should have proper capacity building training as per Waste Concern’s instruction to produce good quality compost. Community the source of waste should participate in the house-to-house waste collection program pay a fee for waste collection service. In barrel type composting case slum dwellers should be motivated and trained to take part in the program.
With best regards,
Maqsood Sinha and Iftekhar Enayetullah
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