How is Kathmandu Valley's Waste Managed?

Kathmandu Valley's waste management is a complex system involving formal, private, and informal actors, characterized by challenges in infrastructure, policy implementation, and resource recovery.

1. Waste Generation and Composition:

• Kathmandu is a rapidly urbanizing area, with a significant increase in waste generation due to population growth and consumption of disposable goods, especially plastics.
• Kathmandu produces over 1,000 tons of garbage daily. In 2018, about 12% of this was plastic waste.
• The highest waste category is organic waste (around 64-66%), followed by plastics (around 12-16%) and paper (around 9%).

2. Waste Collection:

• Waste collection is primarily carried out by Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) and approximately seventy private waste management companies.
• Collection methods include door-to-door using tricycles, roadside/point-based collection, and truck/tractor visits.
• The limited capacity of formal collection services often leads to piles of garbage on streets and poor sanitation.
• Itinerant Waste Buyers (IWBs) also conduct door-to-door collection of dry recyclables directly from households and businesses.

3. Waste Segregation and Resource Recovery:

• Formal segregation and recycling activities by the municipality are very limited. Only a few municipalities have adopted formal waste segregation policies.
• The informal sector is the core to recycling of solid waste in the city. Waste pickers and IWBs actively collect, sort, and recover valuable materials like plastics, metals, and paper from streets, bins, transfer stations, and landfill sites.
• This informal sector diverts a significant amount of waste from landfills; estimates suggest they treat 15% of household waste and recover 25-30% of recyclables from total solid waste in Kathmandu Valley. For example, they recovered over 10 tons of plastic waste per day in 2019.
• Despite the high organic waste content, composting practices are not widely adopted by formal entities, leading to wasted resources and greenhouse gas emissions. Some private companies do make compost from organic waste collected from specific municipalities. There's a biomethanation plant in Teku, but it's not fully functional due to lack of trained personnel.

4. Transfer and Disposal:

• Collected waste is taken to transfer stations (e.g., KMC's station at Teku) before final disposal. KMC's main transfer station is an open area, lacking proper segregation, despite being designed for composting. Private companies also have transfer stations where informal workers often perform segregation.
• The primary method of waste disposal is landfilling at the Sisdole landfill site in Nuwakot district, 28 km from Kathmandu. This site was meant to be temporary but has been continuously used beyond its mandated time and capacity.
• Landfills face longstanding issues of protests and blockades by local residents due to concerns over foul smell, respiratory diseases, and environmental justice, disrupting waste disposal.
• A new, long-term landfill site, Banchare Danda, is under construction next to Sisdole, but its completion has faced significant delays.
• Open dumping and burning of waste are common practices in the city, especially along riverbanks and in open areas, causing severe pollution and health hazards.

5. Governance and Policy:

• The jurisdiction of SWM shifted from the Ministry of Federal Affairs and General Administration (MOFAGA) to the Ministry of Urban Development (MOUD) in 2023.
• Nepal operates under the Solid Waste Management Act of 2011 and the Solid Waste Management National Policy of 2022, which aims to guide waste management, clarify roles of federal units, and promote public-private partnerships.
• However, there are significant gaps in policy implementation, inadequate funding, technical limitations, and insufficient human resources within local governments. KMC's SWM budget is mostly spent on street sweeping and collection, with less focus on diversified practices.
• Coordination among different government departments is often lacking, leading to delays in infrastructure projects.
• The government's approach has often been crisis-driven, focusing on waste disposal rather than developing sustainable, long-term resource management solutions.
• While policies promote public-private partnerships (PPPs), many existing partnerships are informal, and large-scale PPP projects (like the proposed integrated SWM project with a Finnish company) face delays and concerns about the inclusion of existing formal and informal workers.
• There's also a lack of up-to-date and reliable data on waste generation and composition, hindering effective planning.