Better waste management proves valuable for coastal communities

Poor waste management practices in Mairood impact both the local environment, as it accumulates in waterways and mangroves that surround the community, and the health of local people by polluting water sources and providing breeding habitat for insects such as mosquitoes that are vectors for infectious diseases. Although there are municipal services to collect waste, many households often do not segregate their waste and open dumping is common  in public areas.  The social challenge is that many people are not aware of simple steps they can take at an individual and household level to improve waste management.  Furthermore, there is a lack of incentives for people to change their ways.   

Raising awareness

Recycling groups were created among the Mairood community to sort and recycle household waste. Their involvement in this group improved people’s knowledge and awareness about the importance of waste management and the potential value of the different type of waste (e.g.  plastic PET bottles, aluminium cans, plastic bags). 

Outreach and awareness activities included developing signage around the community to advocate the 3Rs (reduce, recycle and reuse) and community clean ups to reduce waste already in the environment.  This built a sense of community responsibility to deal with the issue.  These events not only strengthened the waste management capacity of the Mairood sub-district communities, but also served as a platform for other neighboring communities to participate and learn about waste management as well. 

Enabling factors

One of the key success factors to raising awareness was that the activities were designed by the community during regular monthly meetings. This gave community members an opportunity to participate in decision making and allowed them to have a sense of ownership, resulting in better participation at the different events.  Furthermore, local government authorities also participate in the decision making processes and activities which shows communities that there is political support and recognition of their efforts to address the issue at the community level.  

Lessons learned

Collaboration and dialogue between the government officials and the local community members contributed to the success of the awareness activities. The participation of local government officials in the events was crucial to generating interest and commitment within the community throughout the project.

Building local capacity

To build capacity and raise awareness the project implemented training and outreach activities to engage local community members.  Training focused on educating communities about the implications of poor waste management and how it can impact their health and the local environment.  Trainings were also held to inform communities of simple waste segregation practices they can implement at the household level and how they can take steps to reduce their waste.     

Enabling factors

Although there was little community based action before the project, many residents in the community did recognize that something needed to be done.  This meant that community members took an active interest in receiving support to address waste management issues. 

Lessons learned

Although these communities are now better informed about how they can contribute to better waste management, more needs to be done in neighboring communities to achieve impact at scale.  Encouragingly, following the success of the project other local government organisations became aware of the solutions implemented in Mairood, and they, along with neighboring communities, have visited Mairood to learn about what they can do to contribute to better waste management at the community level.  

Providing direct incentives to reinforce behavior change

Recyclable items such as plastic bottles, glass, cans or plastic bags can be separated at the household level, collected by the community groups, and then sold on to recycling companies such as Wongpanit.  Linking the community groups to a buyer of their recyclable waste provides a direct incentive mechanism that contributes additional income to households and the group, thus reinforcing changes in waste management behavior at the community level. 

Enabling factors

Community members already actively participating in waste segregation practices, and an established business in the vicinity of the project area that is already linked to recycling supply chains.  

Lessons learned

Supply needs to meet demand to make the relationship sustainable between the community groups selling their recyclable waste and the small business enterprise purchasing it.  The community groups must invest time and resources to collect and segregate waste, and similarly the small business enterprise to travel to the village and purchase recyclable waste.  If either of these partners fail to deliver on their role in the supply chain, then this can place pressure on the relationship between them and potentially affect the incentive mechanism to improve waste management at the community level.   

For the small business enterprise purchasing waste from community groups, their proximity to the next link in the supply chain and on-selling large quantities of recyclable materials needs to be considered. For example, in this case the Wongpanit company expressed some challenges in the economics of transporting recyclable waste to the next link in the supply chain with transportation costs being very high.