What roles do diverse actors, both formal and informal, play in Kathmandu's waste management system?

 Kathmandu's waste management system involves a complex interplay of diverse actors, operating within both formal and informal frameworks. The system is characterized by its convoluted nature, with formal and informal practices often running parallel to each other, and significant gaps in the formal system.

Formal Actors and Their Roles:

• Municipal Bodies (Kathmandu Metropolitan City - KMC):
  • Primary Responsibility: Local governments, particularly the KMC, are primarily responsible for waste collection, segregation, and disposal. They are mandated to maintain a clean and healthy environment through sustainable solid waste management.
  • Current Practices & Challenges: Despite their responsibility, municipalities in Nepal, including KMC, often lack the necessary skills, resources, and adequate infrastructure for proper waste management, leading to overflowing waste and poor sanitation. KMC generates over 500 tons of waste daily, much of which ends up in overwhelmed landfills like Sisdole. Waste collection systems are stretched thin, and proper waste segregation at the source is often inadequate.
  • Financial & Regulatory Issues: Municipalities operate with limited budgets, making it difficult to fund necessary infrastructure. The KMC currently doesn't charge households for waste services, relying heavily on central government grants and property taxes. While regulations exist, their implementation is inconsistent due to insufficient monitoring and lack of stringent penalties for non-compliance.
  • Planning & Coordination: Waste management planning in Nepal starts at the national level with the National Planning Commission and extends to the municipal level. However, there's a lack of coordination between the KMC and ministerial departments (like the Ministry of Urban Development) which impacts landfill construction and site management. KMC's approach has historically been reactive, focusing on crisis management rather than developing sustainable long-term solutions.
  • Community Engagement: KMC has initiated campaigns to encourage waste segregation, sometimes with the support of local schools and NGOs. However, these efforts have had limited practical impact due to implementation issues and public distrust.
• Private Waste Management Companies:
  • Service Providers: These companies play a significant role, often filling the gaps left by municipal services. There are numerous private waste management companies operating in Kathmandu, providing services like door-to-door collection.
  • Informal Formal Status: Many of these companies are registered and pay taxes, yet they often operate without formal legal contracts from the KMC, maintaining an "informal" partnership based on personal relations or mutual understanding.
  • Profit-Oriented: Their primary focus is on collecting waste for profit, with less emphasis on waste reduction or segregation. They often collaborate with informal waste pickers for segregation at transfer stations to reduce transportation costs and gain income from recyclables.
• International/Donor Organizations (e.g., World Bank, UNOPS, SACEP, UNDP, JICA, ADB, USAID):
  • Support & Funding: These organizations support plastic waste management projects in South Asian countries, including Nepal, through funding and regional initiatives like the PLEASE Project. They provide technical assistance, capacity building, and encourage policy development.
  • Policy Influence: They advocate for aligning regional policies with global initiatives to combat plastic pollution, and their support can be contingent on national policies being in place.
• Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) / Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs):
  • Advocacy & Awareness: CSOs and NGOs are involved in promoting public awareness, advocating for responsible waste management, and educating communities on waste reduction, segregation, and recycling. Examples include Environment Conservation and Development Forum (ECDF) and Clean-up Nepal.
  • Support for Informal Sector: Some NGOs, like Phase Nepal and Médicines du Monde-France (MDM-F), provide support to informal waste workers, including health check-ups, occupational safety training, and livelihood upliftment programs.
  • Project Implementation: They can be involved in community-based waste management programs, establishing waste segregation systems and promoting eco-friendly alternatives.
• Academic Institutions & Waste Experts:
  • Research & Consultation: Academics and experts contribute by conducting studies, providing insights on waste management challenges, and suggesting policy changes and investments in research. They often highlight the need for comprehensive and integrated approaches.

Informal Actors and Their Roles:

• Informal Waste Sector (Informal Waste Workers - IWWs): This sector comprises individuals or small and micro-enterprises that engage in waste management without formal registration or official charge for providing services. They have been working in Nepal for over 50 years, providing jobs and economic activities to many, particularly low-educated or unskilled laborers.
  • Waste Pickers: These individuals collect dry recyclables (paper, plastic, metal, glass) from garbage bins, streets, and dumps. They are crucial for expanding the waste circular economy and reducing pollution. They manually sort recyclables at various points like transfer stations, scrap dealers (kawads), and landfill sites, and are highly efficient in this process. In Kathmandu alone, estimates suggest they handle up to 20% of the total waste, recovering significant amounts of plastic waste daily that would otherwise go to landfills.
  • Itinerant Waste Buyers (IWBs) / "Feriya" or "Kabadiwala": These actors purchase specific scrap wastes directly from households and commercial establishments through door-to-door collection. They play a role in changing consumer behavior towards waste segregation. They are often from the Terai region of Nepal or neighboring India and typically have weak economic conditions, relying on daily earnings for survival.
  • Sorters: Waste pickers who specifically sort and clean recyclables at various collection points or scrap centers before they are sold to larger dealers.
  • Contribution to Circular Economy: The informal sector collects a large amount of waste, recovering high recyclable materials from households and landfills, thus creating a circular economy.
• Scrap Dealers ("Kabad"):
  • Intermediaries: These are small, medium, and large-scale informal entrepreneurs who purchase collected scrap wastes from itinerant buyers and waste pickers.
  • Processing & Sales: They further segregate, clean, and bale recyclable items before selling them to large scrap dealers or directly to recycling and manufacturing industries in Nepal or India.
  • Economic Value: The economic value of materials recovered by the informal sector in Kathmandu Valley is estimated at USD 18 million.

Interrelationships and Challenges:

• Filling Gaps: The informal sector is an integral part of waste management in developing countries, often operating parallel to municipal services and providing services that formal entities cannot sustainably.
• Uncertain Relationships: The relationship between informal waste actors and authorities in Kathmandu is largely unclear, uncertain, and characterized by neglect and avoidance from the government's side. While their presence is visible, their contributions are often unrecognized in policy discussions.
• Lack of Recognition and Integration: Despite their vital role, waste pickers lack legislative recognition in Nepal's Solid Waste Management Act of 2011 and are largely excluded from planning processes.
• Vulnerability and Hazards: Informal waste workers face precarious conditions, lacking formal employment rights, access to healthcare, and basic safety measures. They are exposed to toxic substances, physical injuries, and health issues like respiratory diseases. Social stigma is also attached to their profession.
• Policy Disconnect: The government's aspiration for a modernized, integrated waste management system, often involving transnational corporations through public-private partnerships, poses a threat to the livelihoods of existing informal and even some formal private actors, as it overlooks their existing knowledge and contributions.
• Interdependencies: The formal and informal waste practices are interdependent; the informal sector supplies raw materials to the formal recycling industry in Nepal and India, highlighting a blurry boundary between the two.

In essence, Kathmandu's waste management relies heavily on the informal sector for recycling and material recovery, compensating for the limitations of the formal municipal system. However, this critical contribution is often unacknowledged and unsupported by official policies, leading to significant social and economic challenges for informal waste workers.