COLOMBO, 23 July 2008 (IRIN) - Staff at the UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS) who manage a waste-management project in the southeastern Sri Lankan District of Ampara consider it a sign of success when town residents complain that their rubbish needs collecting.

"When we started [the project] there was very little awareness of the negative aspects of improper disposal or of proper waste-management systems," Gary Morris-Iveson, UNOPS's programme manager for environmental restoration in Ampara, 350km east of the capital, Colombo, told IRIN. "Now when they complain that bins are full, it shows they want the waste removed."

The project is part of the EU's tsunami reconstruction assistance to Sri Lanka. The EU had allocated US$12.5 million for post-tsunami environment projects in the Ampara District, including environmental restoration, drainage and cleaning the beaches of tsunami-related waste, Morris-Iveson told IRIN. "We removed debris from the entire 95km beach stretch in the district as part of the overall project."

The three-year waste-management project, run with local government authorities, was launched in Ampara District in November 2006. The district was divided into three "clusters" or regions - in Ampara, Kalmunai and Thirukovil - and the $5.5 million project covers all 12 administration divisions in the district.

Holistic approach

Morris-Iveson told IRIN that the project proposed a "holistic" approach to the rubbish problem by tackling it from point of collection to disposal.

"Usually projects will concentrate on one aspect, like collection, recycling or composting," he told IRIN, "but this project looks at the waste cycle from start to finish and throughout the entire district."

Arumaithurai Subakaran, project manager with EML Consultants (http://www.emlconsultants.com), which conducts training programmes for local public officials and the public for the project in Ampara, told IRIN that much of its success would rest on community participation.

"A lot will depend on how people dispose of waste and how it is collected," he told IRIN, "the mindset needs to be changed that proper waste disposal can actually benefit the community."

Local awareness

Subakaran said local awareness had increased and now some residents waited for collection trucks or brought waste to collection centres if the bins were full. "Earlier it would be dumped just anywhere."

The project has received favourable reaction from the community because it has improved infrastructure and capacity levels while raising awareness, Subakaran said. "If you just talk and there is no real help, these programmes would end up flops; you need to match the preaching with action," he said.

Forty tonnes of waste are accumulated in the Ampara District a day, according to Morris-Iveson. Before this project, only 20-25 percent of the rubbish was collected and was either improperly dumped or burnt, he said. "There was no proper disposal; even solid waste from hospitals that carries health hazards was dumped and burnt together."

Three landfill sites and 12 recycling and composting facilities are to be established in the three cluster areas to process all the daily waste; 1,500 collection bins have been distributed throughout the district.

"We will also provide incineratory facilities to burn waste from hospitals," Morris-Iveson said.

The recycling facilities and the landfill will be complete in the Ampara cluster by the end of 2008 while the other two cluster areas are likely to be completed by June 2009.

Selling compost

The project also plans to promote recycling and composting as an income generator. "We have looked at partnerships between the public and the private sector," Morris-Iveson told IRIN. "The local administrative bodies in each division will link up with a private company and explore selling the compost."

UNOPS also hopes to implement similar programmes in other regions. "This is the first time that such a project has been launched in Sri Lanka where the entire waste-disposal mechanism is being looked at," Morris-Iveson said. "We are documenting the project completely so that we can implement similar projects, for example in the neighbouring Batticaloa or Trincomalee Districts."

EML's Subakaran believes that similar projects can succeed elsewhere, but the trick is capacity-building while raising awareness: "Preaching has to go hand in hand with action."

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