Behaviour Change: A Key To Sustainable Waste Management

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2022-11-08T14:40:54+05:00 Dr Saleha Mahmood
Do we feel responsible for the waste we produce?

It’s a simple question that we have been neglecting for many years. Each of the 230 million people living in Pakistan produces around 0.45kg/cap of waste every day, resulting in the burden of more than 100,000 tonnes on the waste management authorities.

The impact and cost of waste management on environmental and human health is totally ignored in the country. Only waste collection and transport can make more than 70 percent of the total waste management cost.

Unfortunately, linear economic development, aggressive consumption patterns and busy lifestyles have changed our values and deprioritized the concept of planned waste management. Our behavior changed and we surrendered our duty of proper waste management the day we started believing that the authorities were responsible for it. We stopped creating awareness about the disadvantages of improper waste disposal. We never tried to design and implement targeted awareness plans to bridge science with human psychology. Now in the 21st century, warning people about negative impacts of poor waste management practices does not work.

Segregating organics from recyclables and non-recyclables waste is an integral part of any sustainable solid waste management system and crucial to achieve objectives of a circular economy. Waste segregation enables maximum recovery potential of waste components into valuable products by applying suitable recycling and treatment options before it gets mixed, and returned to the nature. This essential step reduces the overall waste management cost required to collect, transport and dispose of huge volumes of waste and the need of large land space and expensive sorting plants at the final disposal sites. This may prevent empty spaces and roadsides from becoming a habitat of houseflies, rodents and diseases.
Segregating organics from recyclables and non-recyclables waste is an integral part of any sustainable solid waste management system and crucial to achieve objectives of a circular economy.

Unfortunately, we are not interested in making effort to change the daily routine. The main issue is that we are not encouraged to separate waste in our homes or public spaces. A few public places like shopping malls and parks do provide this facility but bins mostly end up with mixed waste because people are not aware of the benefits of waste segregation.

Another important aspect that needs immediate attention is the serious problem of organic waste management. The wrongly perceived lower economic value of organic waste by both people and waste management companies makes it one of the most neglected and unaddressed issues. Despite its major proportion (around 50-75 percent) in the municipal solid waste (MSW), it is still not considered worthy of recycling. Its dumping is one of the causes of land, air, and water pollution, threatening our health.

The informal sector, ‘waste pickers’, collects the recyclables (around 30 percent) of MSW such as paper, plastic and metal from disposal sites, indicating that there is a well-established profitable market for recyclables. According to the study, Sustainable Waste Management at Household level with Black Soldier Fly Larvae, a group of researchers introduced and implemented a successful behaviour change intervention to encourage separate collection of organic waste at the household level in Pakistan. This was the first study that substituted the traditional waste bins with the unique organic waste recycling waste bins assisted with tiny grubs, known as the Black Soldier Fly Larvae (BSFL).

BSFL voraciously eats up a large variety of organic wastes and converts waste into valuable high quality revenue, generating protein and fat-rich animal feed and organic frass with compost like properties. The process can bring up to 95 percent reduction by weight and volume along with waste sanitization. A bin containing 30kg waste can be reduced efficiently to 5kg in a time period of just two weeks without harming the environment.
Unfortunately, we are not interested in making effort to change the daily routine. The main issue is that we are not encouraged to separate waste in our homes or public spaces. A few public places like shopping malls and parks do provide this facility but bins mostly end up with mixed waste because people are not aware of the benefits of waste segregation.

The idea was so successful that it encouraged 50 percent of the selected households to separately collect and recycle their kitchen food waste by placing these magical bins in their houses. It was the economic benefit that convinced them to treat their household organic waste at source and divert it from the disposal lands.

Influencing the behavior change towards waste segregation is one of the most challenging tasks for the practitioners worldwide especially in the low- and middle-income countries like Pakistan. The problem can be solved by applying effective behavior change interventions based on scientific and psychological research that can encourage people to segregate waste at the production source with a purpose.

It is the duty of governments, waste management companies and NGOs to implement efficient behaviour change interventions to encourage the habit of waste segregation at the point of waste production. Researchers and academia of Pakistan must come up with innovative and implementable interventions that are economically viable for the country and reduces the communication gap between public and industry. A replicable example is the successful model applied in Tamil Nadu India.

We must act swiftly and with persistence or “We’ll drown in our own waste”, says the Chief Seattle.
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