Solid Waste Management and Recycling The GeoJournal Library Volume 76 Managing Editor: Max Barlow, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada Founding Series Editor: Wolf Tietze, Helmstedt, Germany Editorial Board: Paul Claval, France Yehuda Gradus, Israel Risto Laulajainen, Sweden Sam Ock Park, South Korea Herman van der Wusten, The Netherlands The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume. Solid Waste Management and Recycling Actors, Partnerships and Policies in Hyderabad, India and Nairobi, Kenya edited by ISA BAUD University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands JOHAN POST University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands and CHRISTINE FUREDY York University, Toronto, Canada KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS NEW YORK,BOSTON, DORDRECHT, LONDON, MOSCOW eBookISBN: 1-4020-2529-7 Print ISBN: 1-4020-1975-0 ©2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers NewYork, Boston, Dordrecht, London, Moscow Print ©2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers Dordrecht All rights reserved No part of this eBook maybe reproducedortransmitted inanyform or byanymeans,electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise,withoutwritten consent from the Publisher Createdin the United States of America Visit Kluwer Online at: http://kluweronline.com and Kluwer's eBookstoreat: http://ebooks.kluweronline.com TABLE OF CONTENTS Foreword and acknowledgements vii Chapter 1 Markets, partnerships and sustainable development in solid waste management; raisingthequestions 1 Isa Baud Part I Collection, transportation and disposal of urban solid waste Chapter 2 Evolving partnerships in the collection ofurban solid waste in the developing world 21 Johan Post Chapter 3 Collection, transportation and disposal of urban solid waste in Hyderabad 37 S. Galab, S. Sudhakar Reddy and Johan Post Chapter 4 Collection, transportation anddisposalof urban solid waste in Nairobi 61 Moses M. Ikiara, Anne M. Karanja and Theo C. Davies Chapter 5 Trial and error in privatisation; the case of Hyderabad’s solid waste management 93 Jaap Broekema Part II Reuse, recovery and recycling of urban inorganic solid waste Chapter 6 Reuse, recovery and recycling of urban inorganic solid waste; modalities, commodity chains and sustainable development 115 Isa Baud vi TABLEOFCONTENTS Chapter 7 Reuse, recovery and recycling ofurban inorganic solid waste in Hyderabad 133 S.Galab, S. Sudhakar Reddy and Isa Baud Chapter 8 Reuse, recovery and recycling ofurbaninorganic solid waste in Nairobi 161 Anne M. Karanja, Moses M. Ikiara and Theo C. Davies Part III: Reuse of urban organic solid waste Chapter 9 Urban organic solid waste: reusepractices and issues for solid waste managementindevelopingcountries 197 Christine Furedy Chapter 10 Urban organic solid waste: practicesinHyderabad 213 S. Galab, S. Sudhakar Reddy and Isa Baud Chapter 11 Demand for compost from urbanorganicsolid wastes in Hyderabad 229 Christine Furedy and Raakhee Kulkarni Chapter 12 Urban organic solid waste: practices in Nairobi 241 Theo C. Davies, Moses M. Ikiara, Anne M. Karanja and Christine Furedy Part IV: Conclusions Chapter 13 Government, market and community in urban solid waste management; problems and potentials in the transition to sustainable development 259 Johan Post and Isa Baud Methodological appendix 283 Bibliography 289 FOREWORD AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The project on which this book is based, results from the interest within the group of staff and junior researchers at the University of Amsterdam on how urban environ- mental management could be made more sustainable. Earlier studies in India and Peru had given us knowledge on how widespread small enterprises recycling waste mate- rials for profit and people picking waste were in many cities in the South. It also led to a realisation of how important the contribution of such activities was to reducing waste flows, despite the fact that such activities occurred in semi-illegal contexts and received no recognition from governments or middle-class residents. The debate on how to combine ecological sustainability with socio-economic improvements in the lives of many urban citizens, led to the formulation of the project that lies behind this book. It aimed at improving our understanding of the factors that underlie the dynamics of the provision of a particular urban environmental service (solid waste management), and also at providing policymakers and city managers with ideas about how they can tackle the problems of improving the quality of the urban environment they are dealing with daily. This project could not have been carried out without the help of a great many people. Our grateful thanks goes first of all to the EU INCO-DC Programme, which provided a generous grant for the research project on Enabling Strategies for Urban Environ- mental Management in Mega-cities (ERBIC18CT970152). The Consortium formed for the project consisted of researchers from the Amsterdam Global Issues and Devel- opment Studies Institute (AGIDS), Department of Human Geography, University of Amsterdam as coordinator under my guidance, the International Institute of Environ- ment and Development (IIED) in London, under the guidance of Dr. D. Satterthwaite, the Centre for Economic and Social Studies in Hyderabad, India under guidance of Dr. S.Galab, and the School of Environmental Studies, Moi University, Eldoret, Kenya, under guidance of Prof. Dr. Th. Davies. The teams put together from each contributing institute consisted of dedicated researchers, from different disciplinary backgrounds who were willing to listen to each others’ language and start to identify a common language. Furthermore, the project could benefit from the synergy arising from joining expertise on various aspects of the solid waste sector. We had experts on the privatisation of solid waste collection, on the organisation of the recycling business, on the role of local commu- nities and their organisations in waste management, on the use of organic waste matter in (peri-)urban agriculture, and on the environmental hazards connected to waste. viii FOREWORDAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS At IIED, Dr. David Satterthwaite and Dr. Cecilia Tacoli provided generous hospitality for two workshops and incisive comments on discussions and earlier versions of the manuscript, the latter contributing a background paper on rural-urban interactions. They also generously provided for the time contributed by Chris Furedy to the research project. The Centre for Economic and Social Studies, under the guidance of Dr. Mahendra Dev, provided for the time spent by Dr.S. Galab and Dr. S. Sudahkar Reddy on the field studies done inside and around Hyderabad with their teams, and their reports to the project team. The team in Kenya consisted of people from the School of Environmental Studies, Moi University and researchers already working with staff from AGIDS at the University of Amsterdam. Despite the changing compo- sition of the team, Prof. Theo Davies as coordinator and Anne Karanja and Dr. Moses Ikiara completed the fieldstudies with dedication, formed an integral part of the discussions at the workshops throughout the project, and contributed the chapters found here. Several contributions were also made by others to the project: Dr. M. Put contributed an interesting commissioned paper on the use of different types of organic manure – including urban solid waste – by farmers in areas around Hyderabad, India, broad- ening our understanding of the ways in which urban-rural links develop and wane. Anne Karanja wrote a working paper on the informal recycling sector in Nairobi, on the basis of her fieldwork studies for her Ph.D., which illustrated the differences in depth and complexity of the Kenyan and Indian situations. Erwin Koster of the University of Amsterdam carried out a field study on urban farmers in Nairobi, complementary to the work in India, in order to improve our understanding of the ways in which farmers use organic manure and waste materials in their farming strat- egies. Finally, Dr. Johan Berkhout carried out a transect study in Nairobi, pinpointing geographically areas of activities in SWM within the urban system, laid down in a CD-Rom. R. Dhanalakshmi checked recent elements concerning community-based initiatives in Hyderabad for finalization of the manuscript. Editing the final manuscript is a process in itself, and I would like to thank my co-editors for the generous amounts of time they made available to bring the manu- script to completion. Particularly, I would like to thank Dr. Johan Post, who provided the main liaison with the publisher and the layout-editor Anne van der Zwalmen during this process. Finally, the assistance of the University of Amsterdam project bureau was invaluable in guiding me through the maze of administrative and financial reporting throughout the project period. Particular thanks goes to Harry van Kesteren, who remained unruffled throughout and coordinated with his financial counterparts from the other contributing institutions, and the desk officers from the European Union, who provided backstopping for this project. Isa Baud Project Coordinator July 2003 ISA BAUD CHAPTER 1 MARKETS, PARTNERSHIPS AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT; RAISING THE QUESTIONS 1.1. INTRODUCTION The global economic crisis in the 1970s led to significant transformations in interna- tional and national institutional arrangements. Major actors on the international stage – countries such as the US and the UK, transnational corporations and the Bretton Woods institutions – strongly advocated the primacy of the market and the retreat of the state. Such neo-liberal ideas on market liberalisation and deregulation were imposed on many countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America under the aegis of struc- tural adjustment programmes. One area governments in the South were strongly advised to withdraw from was that of direct provision of basic services. However, the results of these reform programmes were less successful than expected. Although state governments reduced spending and economic growth occurred after an initial period in some countries, the late 1980s were characterised by increasing disparities between rich and poor. Within many southern states, urban poverty and informalisation of employment and economic activities grew rapidly, presenting huge problems for local authorities to deal with. In many cities, new forms of collective organisation started to emerge among poor households together with a variety of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in order to counter poverty and promote community and neighbourhood development. In the 1990s, the limits of the free market approach were increasingly recognized by even its most fervent advocates. Furthermore, the collapse of state communism and the fall of the Berlin Wall had created an entirely new political climate, one favourable to the democratic reform of state bureaucracies. The difficulties that many countries in the south, but also in the former communist world, experienced in their transition to a market economy also fuelled an interest in the (democratic) institutions that underpin processes of development. Economists have expressed this interest by looking at the role of meso-level institutions and how they influence economic growth1. 1 I. Baud et al. (eds.), Solid Waste Management and Recycling, 1-18. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.