Christine Furedy - Household Level and Community

HOUSEHOLD-LEVEL AND COMMUNITY ACTIONS FOR
SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT AND RECYCLING IN ASIAN CITIES: RECENT RESEARCH AND PROJECTS

A. INTRODUCTION: RESEARCH IMPLICATIONS OF THE EMERGING WORLD- WIDE PHILOSOPHY OF SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT

The purpose of this paper is to comment on research and initiatives that are designed to understand, and to promote, household and community co-operation with the recovery of post-consumer resources for recycling in some Asian cities.

It can now be said that there is a "world-wide philosophy" of solid waste management that is based on the principles of waste minimization and recovery/recycling (cf. Furedy 1989, 1992b; UNCRD 1994). These values are creating a basis for partnerships that will bring together representatives of government, communities, private firms, scholarly institutes and international agencies to address the crises of increasing refuse in the context of inadequate infrastructure. Effective partnerships are informed by both research and the experience from community-based initiatives.

More groups are becoming involved in promoting waste reduction and recycling for the improvement of municipal solid waste management (MSWM). The principal of these are community-based organizations (CBOs) and larger non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and their general interest can be labelled, "community-based environmental management". Government departments, private sector firms and international agencies are providing funding, research expertise, technical advice and support for education and dissemination (see Ouano & Ogawa 1993; Fernandez 1993). In some cases, the initiatives include social and organizational measures to improve the working conditions and opportunities for the workers in the various levels of waste recovery, waste trading and reuse/recycling (WRR), workers who may also be regarded as "stakeholders" in MSWM (Furedy & Shivakumar 1991). In addition, there are a few independent scholars interested in the characteristics of community-based environmental management and focusing on waste minimization or recycling.

Understanding of the practices of, and policies for, materials recovery and recycling in Asian cities is thus moving into a new phase. Specific research and local projects in Asian cities now encompass:

a) attempts to understand city-wide patterns of recovery and recycling and to make comparisons among cities;

c) projects geared to separation and maximum recycling (i.e. combining materials recovery with composting of organics);

It remains difficult, however, for scholars, planners and practitioners to obtain information about both research and project results. This UNCRD project, from its inception, has aimed to share information and discuss basic issues for the improvement of both research and environmental action.

This paper provides a brief overview of the scope of the research work pertaining to Asian cities, with a mention of community projects and a comment upon issues related to waste picking in the evolving systems of MSWM.2 The aim is to encourage standardization of research and to help clarify the discussion of policy options.

It is encouraging to see that, after small and scattered beginnings in the past two decades, some research projects now have the potential to substantially assist policy discussion and community action for WRR.

I. Independent scholarly research: the goals are to analyse aspects of recovery/recycling as part of economic, social or environmental systems. In the case of one or two cities, the work of several scholars is helping to build an overall view of the WRR and the MSWM systems of the cities (cf. Baud & Schenk 1994; Furedy 1994).

II. Applied research: designed as part of, or to improve, interventions in environmental management or social welfare. This applied research may provide the background information for the project. The surveys conducted by UNDP/World Bank Water and Sanitation Project in Javanese and Indian cities (Yayasan 1993; Thomass 1994), as well as the surveys on urban environmental indicators for the Urban Management Program of the World Bank (Leitmann 1944) are examples. Or, the research may document and evaluate a variety of projects. This, for example, is one of the aims of the project of the International Reference Centre for Waste Disposal on community-based collection schemes (Schertenleib & Meyer 1992) and the WASTE Consultants' project on options for small- scale waste recycling (Lardinois & van der Klundert 1994).

Also included in applied research is work on designing particular techniques for recycling which require social analysis to judge their appropriateness. One example is the training manual being produced by the Environmental Systems Information Centre, Bangkok, as an outcome of the UNCHS project on waste recycling and reuse in Asia (UNCHS 1994). The UNCHS is also coordinating a project on small-scale, decentralized treatment of urban solid wastes (see Furedy 1994b, Appendix I).

The research is carried out by different categories of scholars, advisors, government officials, and community activists. (This, together with the differing aims of the work, helps to account for the variety of perspectives, research techniques and even terminology used). These include: scholars (currently most are social science graduate students engaged in masters' or doctoral research); consultants working for bilateral and international agencies or receiving support from their government's international aid; action researchers in national institutes; and members of NGOs contracted under aid projects. Some of these have a long term commitment to the field of work, others are temporarily engaged in it, without having previous experience either in their own country or elsewhere. The main types of researchers and some of the project titles are given in Appendix 2.

It is beyond the scope of this paper to summarize the findings of these various research projects. Let me merely note that the cities for which the most work has been done include: Bangalore, Bandung, Jakarta, Hanoi, Karachi, Pune, Hyderabad, and Surabaya. For some of these cities, there are now:

i) overviews of the networks for recovery, trading, and recycling of materials (see Appendix 1 for Bangalore);

ii) pilot surveys of householders, waste workers, entrepreneurs and municipal officials;

iii) specific studies of categories of "actors" such as waste pickers or itinerant waste buyers (see Huysman 1994a; Digregorio 1994; Furedy 1994a).

The research into household and institutional/enterprisal behaviours relating to post-consumer wastes is as yet minimal. The pilot studies that have broached this area have asked questions such as:

-do householders (or shopkeepers, office employees, etc.) practice source separation for trading; -do they practice reuse, back-yard composting; -what materials are set aside, in what quantities; -how important are the sales to the family (or individual); -to whom do they sell or barter; -how satisfied they are with opportunities for trading wastes (what problems do they encounter); -how willing they would be to co-operate with organized recovery/recycling schemes, especially in keeping organic wastes separate for composting, or in assisting the transformation of waste pickers into the collectors of clean materials?

The main emphasis is upon estimating the importance of household practices in reducing potential wastes and in assessing the possibilities for enhancing source separation and reuse/ recycling (motivational factors).

The inclusion of questions about practices of source separation and sale in more general surveys on community environmental management or in studies of "urban indicators" by international agencies (principally the UNDP/World Bank) is particularly significant because it signals: a) the impact of research and projects for WRR upon these agencies, and b) how the world-wide philosophy of SWM is being adapted to understanding particular cities (cf. Leitmann 1994; McGranahan and Songsore 1994).

In some cases, the focus of studies has been not so much to investigate what people do with their left-over resources as to understand, for instance, the work of particular categories (e.g. women) (cf. Mehra et al. 1994) or to set women's work in the context of city SWM (Huysman 1994a).

In brief: the results of the pilot research work suggest that household separation is "alive and well" in Asian cities, but is threatened by general urban and societal changes (rising incomes that decrease the incentives for the sale of certain materials; the squeezing out of neighbourhood waste-buying shops; restrictions upon itinerant waste buyers; specific drives against waste pickers that have indirect effects upon itinerant buyers) and even international trade developments such as the import of high quality waste materials for recycling (Furedy, 1994a; Huysman, 1994b; van Beukering 1994). On the other hand, environmental awareness is increasing among educated people, and there is a growing appreciation of the value of traditional thrifty habits that ultimately contribute to recycling. There is resistance, however, in upper and middle class areas to suggestions that waste pickers be guaranteed access to recyclables in their neighbourhoods (see Thomass & Sooryamoorthy 1993; Raman 1994).

Networking facilitated by international workshops is helping the cross-fertilization of research on WRR. However, this field of work still suffers from lack of standardized terminology (which is a big handicap to both reliable analysis and to the intra-city comparability of results) and quality problems in the research itself. When results are presented without any details on the methods used in data collection, it is difficult to assess the reliability of the work. Discussions of existing research sometimes reveal important misunderstandings of the conclusions or of the particular local contexts (cf. Venkasteswaran 1994 re "integration" of pickers). Funds are not readily available for research unlinked to projects. On the whole, the results of the research are not accessible in international publications. It is difficult even for international scholars to keep abreast of the work that is being done in different cities. There are cases of scholars undertaking research in almost total ignorance of any other work in the field. 3

The current projects for WRR take place alongside the "traditional" behaviours of separation and trading referred to above. Some of the projects to encourage separation are geared to capturing household organic wastes in a pure state for composting/vermicomposting, with the aim of reducing the burden of collection and disposal for the municipality (see Huysman 1994a; Raman 1994); some are conceived as youth environmental education; some have evolved from work with street children and very poor families who have resorted to waste picking.

In some cases the new initiatives enhance "informal" systems, in some cases they run parallel to, or aim to replace, them. For instance, NGOs may ask schools to separate materials and to sell them to designated buyers, thus attempting to bypass the existing practices of cleaners and caretakers controlling the sale of the materials as a "perk" of their office (Thanomabhani 1994). Attempts to bypass well entrenched informal relationships have failed in Manila, Bandung and Shah Alam (Malaysia) in the past.

The initiatives concerned with the workers in WRR systems mainly aim to improve the status, earnings and working conditions of traditional workers (such as waste pickers). There are a surprising number of different types of social organizations involved in some way with waste separation or waste picking in cities of India, Indonesia and the Philippines, although Asian countries in general are behind the more urbanized Latin American ones in this trend (de Alencar 1994; Rodriquez 1993; Lardinois 1994). In Bangalore, a city of about 5 million people, there are three organizations working with waste-picking children, seven that have specific programs for waste pickers, three neighbourhood organizations engaged in solid waste improvements, and three environmental groups committed to work for waste separation and collection of recyclables as well as environmental education (Huysman 1994b). There is little cooperation among these groups.

The strengths and weaknesses of initiatives in three south Indian cities are clearly set out in three papers prepared for the University of Amsterdam-Karnataka State Council for Science and Technology-Bangalore Municipal Corporation workshop on "Linkages in Urban Solid Waste Management" (Bangalore, April 1994). Some comments on research and projects are contained in my paper prepared for that workshop (Furedy 1994b).

If it is difficult to obtain information about research work, it is even more difficult to keep informed about the many local initiatives that are related to the recovery and recycling of urban wastes. The most difficult type of project to examine is the failed project. The failures simply disappear and the lessons of them are rarely made explicit and passed on to persons contemplating similar interventions. I tried over a period of three years, for instance, to get the details of the failed waste recovery project of Shah Alam town in Malaysia. Eventually I was able to establish, thanks to a comment from Dr. Hisashi Ogawa of WHO/PEPAS, that the project had been shelved. But I could get no details from the persons who ran the project itself nor from Malaysian government officials. Similarly, I was unable to obtain the specific reports of the German-funded "Scavengers Development Project" in Java, in spite of actually going to the GTZ office in Jakarta. (Although this project did not fail in all respects, the lack of transparency about the results suggests that it was not judged to be completely successful). Sometimes even local researchers who have contributed to the project have difficulty obtaining subsequent information.

It is important to note that there is no systematic evaluation of any of the research or the projects. To the extent that they are published internationally, the research results are open to scrutiny, but the opinions of non-publishing individuals who may pass judgment on the work are not. Projects are evaluated by funding agencies and occasionally by independent persons (centres such as the IRCWD, and scholars); difficulties may be frankly aired by the organizations conducting projects, but there is no body responsible for evaluation and hence no repository of judgment that could assist newcomers in this area. Thus the essential self-correcting function of research and application is not developed.

Both research and projects suffer from lack of continuity, as do so many community- based projects (Khan et al. 1992). The well-educated researchers or development planners who conceive of the project and see it through the initial phases may move on to other work. The local institutions or NGOs/CBOs cannot continue the project work or are diverted by more urgent calls upon their time. It is rare for the leadership and supporting groups to remain constant and committed. (This is clearly a factor in the longevity and expansion of the successful Manila project, now known as the "Garbage Recycling Project," of the Metro Manila Women Balikatan Movement. See Furedy 1992a).

In addition, there are usually no clear and established routes by which the results can influence municipal policies for solid waste management and the attitudes of the citizenry. This is a large concern for project directors, and is a topic of discussion at national and international workshops. It is a major theme for this workshop.

In this section, I take the example of different views of the future role of waste picking in WRR to illustrate the sort of tensions that arise once specific interventions (for waste minimization, community participation or the welfare of waste workers) are devised for cities where there is a great deal of informal WRR.

The June 1994 proposal for this UNCRD research project raises the issue of waste pickers: whether they can be integrated in a way that retains the practice of picking recyclables from mixed wastes (a practice which greatly contributes to resource recovery in poor countries) but reduces the stigma of this work?

The pilot research on WRR in Asian cities suggests that more materials, of better quality, are brought to recycling through source separation (i.e. the left-over resources do not become discarded wastes but are kept separate for sale or barter) than through waste picking (i.e. recovery that is accomplished by people picking out the materials from mixed municipal wastes). Yet, much more attention has been given to the activity of waste picking. The main reason for this is that pickers have been studied primarily as examples of extremely disadvantaged urban workers, or because of the interest in street children who resort to picking.

Persons interested in the welfare of pickers have sometimes argued that pickers should be "integrated" into municipal solid waste management systems (cf. Poerbo 1992). The argument for integration of pickers is interpreted as entailing the institutionalization of picking through the registration of waste pickers with the city authorities to guarantee them access to wastes (Venkateswaran 1994).

After some years of observation and thought about this issue, I have come to the conclusion that casual, manual recovery of materials from mixed municipal garbage (i.e. street or dump picking) cannot be made truly healthy and socially acceptable. The provision of gloves and boots and access to sanitary facilities will not eliminate the most significant health risks unless all the equipment and infrastructure is kept in good order. Thus, provision of these facilities would need to be backed up with a great deal of education and monitoring. People who are seen to pick out wastes from contaminated accumulations have always been socially stigmatised. It is unlikely that the public will readily accept pickers as doing ecologically and economically valuable work, even if there are persuasive campaigns. Organized picking of materials from conveyor belts at dump sites is not economical in cities with relatively little post-consumer waste. (Picking from belts at compost plants to ensure a suitable quality of organics should be regarded as part of the process of large-scale composting, not the institutionalization of picking). Furthermore, waste picking is an "end of the pipe" approach to recovery and as such runs counter to the philosophy of waste reduction and source separation that now informs solid waste management.

And yet, in cities with large numbers of very poor people, it is unlikely that waste picking can be eliminated. Under these circumstances, it should be recognized that picking from open piles on city streets is far preferable (in terms of health risks) to either picking from containers or to dump picking. Pickers of street piles can minimize their contact with wastes by using metal picks, and they can learn not to scatter the piles (although this means they must forgo some of the recyclables and pick mainly from the top of piles). Street picking is recovery "as close to source as possible" and so is more compatible with the principle of source separation. Street picking, however, is less acceptable to the public and the municipal authorities than dump picking. (This is because dump pickers are generally "out of sight," whereas street pickers scatter refuse and are suspected of theft in good city areas). Hence, there are several apparently irresolvable conflicts among street picking, public health concerns, and efficient solid waste management.

There is sometimes a misunderstanding about projects to assist waste pickers. The projects that have shown real potential to substantially improve the health and the earnings of waste pickers are not those that institutionalize picking. Rather, in such projects, pickers are assisted in organizing to get access to clean wastes (for instance, from offices) or to work at transfer stations or compost plants where they can use tools and have access to washing facilities (Rahman 1994; Huysman 1994a; Bentley 1986; Nicolaisen et al. 1988). Or the principle of picking "close to source" is followed, for example: pickers are organized to collect wastes "at the door" and they immediately sort the materials into organics and inorganics. In the former case, the pickers are transformed and merged with the category of itinerant waste buyers, in the latter with garbage collectors. They are no longer pickers.

In cities where there are already many people competing to acquire clean wastes for trading, organizing of pickers into cooperatives 4, a humane undertaking, will almost certainly lead to some friction with those who currently control the clean wastes. Indeed, where such coops have been set up in India, conflicts have been documented (Raman 1994). This friction can be reduced if the amounts of clean wastes can be substantially increased by the waste generators practising source separation, so that there are more clean wastes available. This increased availability, however, may attract more people to the work, some of whom may be entrepreneurs and not former pickers!

Waste picking is a phenomenon that arises from the conjunction of absolute poverty with free (or almost free) resources. For every picker who is assisted to move into the higher ranks in WRR, there are likely to be other new rural arrivees or street families who wish to take up the picking work abandoned by the upwardly mobile. This phenomenon has long been long observed in projects for street children in developing countries. Picking is likely decline only in societies where better work for unskilled people is readily available and where minimal recyclables are accessible.

A compromise approach suggested in the city of Surabaya is to assist waste-picker families while encouraging them to move out of the occupation. In this case, picking is seen as a temporary employment for individuals: the phenomenon of picking persists, and is perhaps even reinforced, but its detrimental effects on individuals is reduced (Silas 1994). A particular emphasis in the Surabaya approach is to try to prevent the children of pickers from doing this work (by providing schooling).

Let me stress that I believe that social agencies (whether of government or NGOs/CBOs) should continue to assist waste pickers in every possible way. I would not want it to be thought that I do not support the initiatives that have been undertaken in many cities. In solid waste management planning, however, the attention currently being given to waste picking is likely to shift to understanding how to promote source separation.

It is thus very important to be clear, in discussions about waste pickers as stakeholders in WRR, whether the intention is to recommend that picking be institutionalized or whether the ultimate ideal is to reduce picking as a vehicle of resource recovery and enhance source separation. If pickers' work is transformed to the handling of clean wastes, they should not then be referred to as "pickers," since the distinction between picking from mixed wastes and recovery through source separation is of the utmost importance in the philosophy and practise of SWM in the developing countries.

Similarly, in research and discussions of resource recovery, it is important not to run together recovery based on picking and source separation by using the terms "separation" or "sorting" to cover both activities (cf. Muttamara et al. 1992/3, where the picking by collection crews is referred to as "separating" or "sorting" and Suwarnarat & Luanratana 1993, where it is referred to as "sorting"). "Picking" is an explicit term the use of which does not lead to the confusion of "presorting" with "sorting". "Source separation" is also a clear term.

Since there are now many initiatives to address the work of pickers it is important that the survey research on attitudes include questions on whether the public and the municipal officials are ready to accept new roles for former waste pickers. In cases where this has been done in India, substantial resistance to the suggestion that pickers be given the role of door-to-door collectors has come to light (Thomass and Sooryamoorthy 1993; Rahman 1994). Opposition to pickers as a category of workers (based on the assumption that they tend to be thieves and undesirables) may even prompt community efforts in source separation. This was the case in one Manila neighbourhood where the motivation for organizing the collection of recyclables was to keep pickers out (Gozun 1994). Recognizing the potential conflict between source separation (which reduces the recyclables in municipal refuse) and the earnings of pickers, some organizations devoted to pickers' welfare in Indonesia have opposed suggestions for more source separation (Silas 1994).

The goal of reducing picking from mixed wastes, which can only be accomplished by a combination of substantial socio-economic change (the significant reduction of poverty) and maximum source separation, is not incompatible with projects to assist individuals and families of waste pickers; such projects will be called for as long as there are waste pickers, just as there is a continuing need for assistance for street people or child workers while societies work to eliminate inhumane living and working conditions.

I believe that the institutionalization of picking for short term gains in resource recovery and working conditions would be misguided. Such routinization might divert attention from the macro- and micro-level interventions that can bring about humane and resource conserving cities. At the same time, objections to source separation on the grounds that it will divert resources from waste pickers must be countered, I think, by reference to the greater need for healthy and viable cities. As Diana Mitlan and David Satterthwaite pointed out, in the background paper for the Sustainable Cities workshops at Global Forum '94, environmental improvements often mean that some categories of workers "lose out," and sustainable development implies that ecological goals be moderated by humane concerns for the "losers" (Mitlan & Satterthwaite 1994, pp. 22-26). It is to be hoped that those who work for the welfare of waste pickers can cooperate with the environmentalists and planners who are concerned with more effective waste recovery to resolve the issues of employment, social status and public health.

The emergence of a world-wide philosophy of solid waste management (based on the "Rs" of reduce, reuse, recover, and recycle) is providing support for community groups and NGOs in cities of developing countries in their efforts to encourage source separation and recycling or to help organization of former waste pickers. However, given the social goals of many projects (including the social advancement of pickers), and the community characteristics (for example, lower levels of environmental awareness, social and linguistic diversity), community-based projects in these cities require more complex planning, co-ordination and evaluation than reduction and recycling schemes in "Northern" cities. The differing concerns of major stakeholders-- public health officials, "city beautifiers," classes of residents, social activists and environmentalists-- introduce a potential for tension and conflict, so compromises are necessary among health, aesthetic social and environmental goals.

Finding workable compromises will be assisted by basic research into existing city- wide systems of WRR and the attitudes and behaviours of the major actors. Recent research projects are laying the basis for comparable data sets which will enable, first, the comparison of cities, and, then, the adaptation of strategies from one area to another.

Action for sound principles in solid waste management depends, in the long run, on the environmental consciousness associated with "sustainable development." Community-based environmental management will be strengthened if the local stakeholders can evoke and reinforce both the emerging world-wide principles of waste management and the broader commitment to sustainable development articulated in Agenda 21.

1. My research has received the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Netherlands Ministry of Development Cooperation, through the University of Amsterdam, Department of Social Geography. I wish to thank, in particular, the participants in the workshop on "Linkages in Solid Waste Management" (Bangalore, April 1994).

2. I will not discuss what is referred to as COPRICOL --community co-operation for primary collection of solid wastes, that is, schemes by which households carry garbage to transfer points for collection or organize or employ persons to collect wastes and take them to these transfer points for municipal collection. (See Schertenleib and Meyer 1992; Yayasan 1993.)

3. For instance, the recent research project on the role of women collectors and traders of waste materials in Ho Chi Minh City was undertaken without reference to any of the studies of WRR in Asia. This occurred because the guidance of the research rested with the International Centre for Research on Women which, being interested in the project as analysis of women's work, did not enquire into the research on solid waste management. See Mehra et al. 1994.

4. Pickers have been organized to become the collectors of wastes from door to door (sometimes of separated wastes, sometimes not) in several Latin American countries. Colombia has 70 such cooperatives (de Alencar 1994). A number are being organized in India. Some projects include processing and even recycling among the skills that former pickers are able to learn as a result.

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Thomass, E. J. & R. Sooryamoorthy. 1993. Survey Report on Solid Waste Management in Thiruvananthapuram City. Thiruvananthapuram: Loyola College of Social Sciences. Prepared for United Nations Development Programme.

United Nations Centre for Human Settlements. (In press 1994). Promotion of Solid Waste Recycling and Reuse in Developing Countries of Asia. Training Manual. Bangkok: ENSIC.

United Nations Centre for Regional Development. (1994). "Proposal for seminar/workshop on recycling in Asia." Unpublished. Nagoya: UNCRD.

van Beukering, P. (1994). "The recycling sector in Bangalore: an economic analysis of different types of formal and informal entrepreneurs recovering urban solid waste." In Isa Baud & Hans Schenk (eds). Solid Waste Management: Modes, Assessments, Appraisals and Linkages in Bangalore, pp. 105-145. New Delhi: Manohar.

Venkateswaran, Sandhya. 1994. The Wealth of Waste: Waste Pickers, Solid Wastes and Urban Development. New Delhi: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.

Yayasan Dian Desa. (1993). Community Involvement in Primary Collection of Solid waste in Four Indonesian Cities. Yogyakarta: UNDP/World Bank Water and Sanitation Program, Regional Water and Sanitation Group for East Asia and the Pacific.

To date there has been no comprehensive study of the total waste economy for any city. An idea of the economic actors and the quantities involved is emerging from several studies of recycling in Bangalore, India.

Bangalore is India's sixth largest city. The Greater Bangalore urban area has about 5 million people, the municipality about 4.1 million. A city with diverse large and small industries, governmental and educational institutions, surrounded by intensive farming, Bangalore is able to finally recover and recycle the majority of the solid wastes that it generates.

The Bangalore recovery and trading network consists of perhaps 25,000 waste pickers (predominantly women and children), 3,000-4,000 itinerant waste buyers (IWBs) of newspapers, plastics, glass, metals, clothes and other materials, approximately 800 small dealers, 50 medium dealers and 50 wholesalers. There are two glass and four paper recycling plants, eight aluminium recyclers, 350-500 plastic factories using waste materials, and an uncounted number of small miscellaneous recycling enterprises (Huysman 1994a, van Beukering 1993). Additional actors in the network are householders, household servants, municipal street sweeping and garbage collection workers [(these two last numbering about 7600) (Huysman 1994a)], shop cleaners and office caretakers, piggery and poultry workers who collect food wastes from hotels and institutions, and farmers who remove compost from the garbage dumps or persuade garbage truck drivers to deliver waste directly to their farms. At a rough guess, 40,000 - 50,000 people at least earn their living by waste recovery and recycling in Bangalore, or about 1.6% - 2.0% of the working population.

Street pickers work freely in Bangalore. There are between 20,000 and 30,000 working full and part-time. There are relatively few dump pickers [in fact, currently, there are no operational official dumps (Huysman 1994a)]. Pickers are estimated to retrieve about 15% of wastes put out on streets and in over 12,000 street bins, amounting to perhaps 300 tonnes of materials per day within the city. Pickers earn from Rs. 10 to Rs. 30 per day (Can $ .50 to $ 1.25). Municipal collectors and sweepers are estimated to take out 37 tonnes per day, in addition to the wastes removed by pickers.

Itinerant buyers are individuals who have seized an opportunity for self-employment which often offers higher rewards than working in a shop or factory, but which is subject to seasonal downturns and increasing competition. Each recovers about 40 kgs per day, a total of between 1200-1600 tonnes per day for the city of Bangalore. (This amounts to between 400,000-500,000 tonnes of materials per year, as IWBs usually work every day of the week). In return, these buyers earn from Rs. 50-60 per day (Can $2- 2.50), compared with about Rs. 40 a day that an unskilled worker in a small factory will earn. IWBs sell almost exclusively to small or medium waste dealers although a few surveyed actually sold directly to wholesalers (and make better profits). Middle and lower-middle income households, are the main residential customers of the IWBs, who also buy from offices and shops. High income families with vehicles often store materials such as newspapers and plastics for some time and then take then directly to a dealer or even a wholesaler. However, these households still deal with the buyers of old clothes, and repairers of leather and metal goods, who come to the house. Trading by householders and shopkeepers who bypass IWBs is estimated to transfer 5 tonnes of materials per day to small and medium dealers.

It is the large amount of "voluntary" separation of synthetics at source (by residents, shopkeepers, etc.) or close to source (by pickers) that allows truckloads organic of wastes to be taken directly to farms and natural composting to take place on the old garbage dumps. At one dump, in 1990, about 15 truck loads (each of about five tonnes of fresh wastes) are delivered per day and about 12 farmers' truck loads of compost are removed. There is besides, a semi-mechanical compost plant that processes 50-100 tonnes of market wastes per day, producing about 20 tonnes of compost. About 210 tonnes of cow dung per day are collected from the roads for use as fuel by poor people. A considerable amount of kitchen wastes,leaves, grass and tree trimmings are eaten by stray dogs, cows, and pigs from street bins, amounting to perhaps 5% by weight of garbage put in bins. Recently, because some citizens groups are experimenting with decentralized composting and vermicomposting, a small amount of further household organics are being recycled. Overall, the diverted post- consumer and organic wastes which we can reasonably estimate are summarized in the following table.

Estimated Amounts of Post Consumer and Organic Wastes Diverted per Day (tonnes) in Bangalore

Post-Consumer Wastes
gathered by street & dump pickers	500
gathered by municipal workers	37
purchased by IWBs	1400
sold directly to waste dealers by householders	5

Organic Wastes
eaten by animals	200
sent to compost plant	50
diverted directly to farms	225
removed from dump	100
cow dung taken from streets for fuel	210

Total	2727

No study has been done of industrial wastes (metals, wiring, batteries, plastics, rubber, leather scraps, etc.) diverted by waste exchange or trading, nor of bones sent to fertilizer factories and food wastes used by pig and poultry farms. None of the major industrial recyclables reach the dumps; food wastes generated by restaurants and hotels are traded. Another unestimated category is construction wastes used for filling low-lying land. Virtually all of these unstudied wastes can be regarded as recycled (although some of the residual industrial and hospital wastes are illegally dumped near to the premises).

Due largely to these varied activities of recovery and reuse, only about 335 tonnes of solid waste per day is handled by the Corporation.

Although not all Indian cities have the capacity to recover and recycle as thoroughly as Bangalore, this study demonstrates that where convenient markets exist, traditions of separation and informal waste trading thrive. It suggests that frugal habits are well established across the spectrum of household classes and that financial incentives reinforce these habits in lower income groups, shop and factories. Such waste-reducing practices are found in other developing countries, although the proportions of materials taken by IWBs and waste pickers and the patterns of control in the trade may vary.

APPENDIX 2: TYPES OF RESEARCH AND PROJECTS RELATING TO URBAN SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT (not a complete list)

United Nations Centre for Regional Development (Nagoya): "Improving solid waste management in the context of metropolitan development and management in Asian countries (RES/524/87).

WHO/PEPAS (Kuala Lumpur): workshops, consulting work, collaboration with other organizations, e.g. sponsored workshop on ""Resource Recovery and Recycling from Municipal Solid Wastes in Asia & Pacific," Dec. 1991.

UNDP/WORLD BANK: World Bank: Urban Management Programme - environmental indicators research & city case studies.

UNDP: Water and Sanitation Program, Regional Water and Sanitation Group for East Asia and the Pacific: projects in Jakarta, Yogyakarta, Padang, Ujung Pandang re community participation; funds to NGOs or research institutes to undertake research and projects.

ESCAP/ with UNCHS: five cities case study project on waste recycling (Bangkok, Jakarta, Kanpur, Karachi, Manila). Training manual being produced from this project. CITYNET (Yokohama) has also collaborated.

UNCHS (Nairobi): Project on "Small-scale Composting and Digestion of Urban Solid Wastes." Decentralized waste management; technology development.

International Reference Centre for Waste Disposal: a group within Swiss Federal Institute for Water Resources and Water Pollution Control, with main funding from Swiss Government. Focus on reproducible, low-cost technical systems for waste management. "Community participation in primary collection of solid wastes."

Stockholm Environment Institute: collaborating in environmental sanitation research of the UNDP city case studies and environmental indicators work.

International Centre Research on Women (Washington): support to Open Univ. of Ho Chi Minh City and Ho Chi Minh University for research on women's roles in waste trading and recycling.

(a) research and projects: GTZ: (Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Technishe Zusammenarbeit) "Scavengers' Development in Indonesia." Universities and NGOs in Jakarta, Bandung and Surabaya with German consultants, e.g. Manfred Oepen.

(b) mainly research with desire to apply results to policy: University of Amsterdam- Karnataka State Council for Science and Technology: "Linkages in solid waste management." University of Toronto- National Institute for Scientific and National Forecasting and Strategic Studies (Hanoi): "The waste economy." York University- Univ. Toronto-Univ. Waterloo and several Javanese universities: environmental research which includes some work on industrial and solid waste management.

WASTE Consultants (Gouda): "Options for Small-Scale Waste Recycling" -Urban Agriculture Network (Washington): Project on "Urban Agriculture in Developing Countries." Includes reference to use of solid wastes in agriculture, composting.

International Institute for Environment and Development (London): integration of recycling in discussions of sustainable cities.

(a) Doctoral or masters' research: Michael Digregorio on Hanoi (Univ. of California); Mansoor Ail on Karachi (Univ. of Loughborough); Marijk Huysman on Bangalore & Pune (Univ. of Amsterdam); Pieter van Beukering on Bangalore (Univ. of Amsterdam); Claire Woolveri on Jakarta (Univ. of Toronto).

(b) Professors: Christine Furedy (York Univ.); Ian Blore (Univ. of Birmingham); Isa Baud (Univ. Amsterdam); Virginia Maclaren (Univ. of Toronto); Joe Whitney (Univ. of Toronto); Nonita Yap (Univ. of Guelph).