Lebanese designers keep waste from going to waste

Lebanese designers keep waste from going to waste. Al-Monitor, June 2017.

In a country plagued by a garbage crisis ongoing since summer 2015, several Lebanese designers have rolled up their sleeves to save glass, plastic and rubber from already full landfills.

The carafes, water pitchers and glasses in this undated photo were made from used bottles. (photo by Cedar Environmental Consultancy)

The colorful and practical designs of NK by Nour Kays, Waste Studio and the Green Glass Recycling Initiative Lebanon make chic clutch bags out of plastic bags and maps and cups out of old bottles.

Local and regional initiatives in Lebanon have encouraged people to sort garbage at home or to dispose of plastic, glass and paper at recycling centers, but few nationwide measures have attempted to address the country’s garbage crisis on a larger scale.

In this vacuum, some artists and environmental experts have focused their time and energy on finding small-scale solutions

Read the complete article.

 

Garbage clinical insurance wins sustainability entrepreneur prize

Garbage Clinical Insurance: Young Indonesian Doctor Receives Award From Prince of Wales | Source/complete article – Establishment Post, Feb 12, 2014.

Excerpts – Gamal Albinsaid, a young Indonesian doctor, has recently been awarded the inaugural “Prince of Wales Young Sustainability Entrepreneur Prize” from the Prince of Wales. He was given the award during a dinner reception at the Buckingham Palace at the end of January. His innovative project helps the poorest communities gain access to health services and education through the collection and recycling of garbage called the Garbage Clinical Insurance enterprise.

Photo: Courtesy of Indonesia Medika/Gamal Albinsaid
Mr Gamal Albinsaid received his award from HRH Prince of Wales during a dinner reception at the Buckingham palace at the end of January 2014.

Mr Albinsaid, currently the chief executive officer (CEO) of Indonesia Medika, is the Founder of the Indonesian social enterprise Garbage Clinical Insurance (GCI). He was inspired to set up the micro-insurance programme to empower people to take an active role in managing their waste while improving their sanitation.

The 24-year-old doctor set up the initiative in 2009 when he was still a medical student at the Brawijaya University in Malang, East Java province. Mr Albinsaid was saddened upon hearing the death of a three year old child from diarrhea because the parents could not afford to take the child to any clinic for help.

The GCI has help communities in need turn in their household waste into something that could improve their health.

The scheme provides insurance to members of the clinic in return for their garbage.  Every weekend, members bring their organic and non-organic waste to a collection point near the clinic to be directly processed and sold.

Afterward, collected garbage is processed into money considered as “health fund premium” for all members.

• Source/complete article – Establishment Post, Feb 12, 2014.

Robin Nagle: What I discovered in New York City trash

New York City residents produce 11,000 tons of garbage every day. Every day! This astonishing statistic is just one of the reasons Robin Nagle started a research project with the city’s Department of Sanitation. She walked the routes, operated mechanical brooms, even drove a garbage truck herself–all so she could answer a simple-sounding but complicated question: who cleans up after us?

Robin Nagle is an anthropologist with a very particular focus… garbage

Kibera, Kenya – Community Turns Garbage Into Energy Source

Kibera, Kenya – Community Turns Garbage Into Energy Source

A community-based organisation in the Kenyan slum area of Kibera set out to clean up garbage and deal with waste water; Ushiriki Wa Safi ended up creating a community cooker that turns waste into an energy source.

Open sewers and piles of garbage are an all too familiar scene in many of Kenya’s poorest urban areas. Local authorities are invisible in most of these slums, and poor public hygiene and the absence of sanitation leaves residents to their own devices to maintain a level of cleanliness and keep diseases like diarrhoea at bay.

But some have seen this as an opportunity to bring about change to communities. Ushirika Wa Safi – (loosely translated, the name means “an association to maintain cleanliness” in Swahili) – a community-based organisation in Kibera, was formed to deal with the garbage problem in Laini Saba, one of the thirteen villages that form Kibera slums, often described as Africa’s largest.

Ask a Garbologist – feature on Robin Nagle

Ask a Garbologist – By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Robin Nagle, the anthropologist-in-residence for the New York City Department of Sanitation, will be responding to readers’ questions about her work as a garbologist.

Robin Nagle

Readers who would like to ask Dr. Nagle a question should do so in the comments box below. Her first set of responses will be published on Wednesday.

Dr. Nagle was named anthropologist-in-residence for the city’s Department of Sanitation in 2006, but her fascination with garbage started in childhood. Her father took her camping in the Adirondacks one summer in the 1970s, and behind the lean-to at their campsite in the middle of a seemingly pristine forest they discovered a small open-air dump. She was horrified that hikers and campers could be so thoughtless. “Who did they think was going to clean up their mess?” she asked.

After graduate work in anthropology at Columbia University, Dr. Nagle started to design a research project with the Department of Sanitation around a variation on that question from her childhood:  Who cleans up after New Yorkers? More specifically, what is it to be a sanitation worker in the city today? What does it mean to put on the uniform, navigate the streets, heft the weight, and learn the city from a unique and intimate perspective? Why does the most important uniformed force on the streets face a persistent stigma, and how do sanitation folk reconcile that contradiction?

In searching for answers to these and a host of related questions, Dr. Nagle has spent many hours accompanying sanitation workers on their rounds, flinging trash side-by-side with them, interviewing women and men of various ranks. She held the job herself for a brief time. The initial questions have evolved into several new initiatives. The Sanitation Department archives are being collected, organized and cataloged for the first time. They will be a resource for scholars and students in many fields who want a better understanding of a crucial but little-studied aspect of urban history. Likewise, the Sanitation Oral History Project, a collaboration between N.Y.U., Columbia, the Sanitation Department and the parks department, aims to collect life histories of sanitation personnel and members of the public who have a connection to the city’s solid waste issues. Both the archives and the oral history project will become facets of the Sanitation Museum, which is in the planning stages.

Dr. Nagle, who lives in West Harlem, also teaches anthropology and urban studies at N.Y.U., where she runs the Draper Interdisciplinary Master’s Program in Humanities and Social Thought. Her book about the Department of Sanitation in New York, called “Picking Up,” will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Source: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/12/ask-a-garbologist/

Nepal, Kathmandu Valley: garbage collectors end strike

The Environment Management Department of the Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) said that it would take another three days to clear all garbage heaped in the capital valley over the last 12 days. The Department started garbage disposal from 1 February 2010 after the unions of local bodies decided to return to work. Employees had been on strike since 21 January 2010.

“Altogether 60 KMC garbage trucks are being used round the clock,” said Rabin Man Shrestha, chief at the department, adding, “Our staff will be busy in waste removal till the midnight.” Over 4,200 tons of garbage had piled up in the valley during the strike, he informed, adding, some 900 employees were engaged in garbage disposal. When dumping resumed, various organisations and government officials started pressurizing KMC to clear the mess from their respective neighborhoods early on, Shrestha said.

On Monday, calling off their protests, local body union employees said they would not sit for dialogue with CPN-UML-led government and would not allow concerned ministers to enter their office. Similarly, they also decided to continue their protests inside the concerned local body offices by putting black flags in front of the main gates, Ganga Dhar Gautam, president of Local Body Employees’ Union Nepal, said. “We will boycott all the government ministers in the local bodies as part of our protest,” Gautam added.

When KMC garbage carrying vehicles were not operating during the protest of the local body staff, Nepal Police and Armed Police Force personnel jointly disposed 500 metric tons of garbage at Tikathali over the last three days.

Source: The Rising Nepal / NGO Forum, 03 Feb 2010

Garbage Trucks Teach Children to Save the Environment

Garbage Trucks Teach Children to Save the Environment in New Earth Day Book, ‘Colonel Trash Truck’

Redondo Beach, CA (PRWEB) April 13, 2009 — Parents have a new way to teach children how to save the environment with the story of one of the world’s most eco-friendly garbage trucks in author Kathleen Crawley’s new children’s book “Colonel Trash Truck…Keeping the Planet Clean and Green.”

Colonel Trash Truck is a likable, fun-filled character who is extremely focused on his mission to win the garbage war. Crawley wrote the book, illustrated by Manuel Conde, for kids ages 3 to 6, with the goal to teach them early on in life to recycle and pick up trash, just in time for Earth Day 2009.

Being green is one of the most important issues today, but the number of those who actually recycle is estimated to be as low as 20 percent and as high as 50 percent. Why isn’t everyone recycling? Could it be that the older people get the less likely they are to start a new, good habit? If so, how do parents get kids to recycle and pick up trash early so that they will continue through adulthood?

Enter Colonel Trash Truck. Crawley noticed there are few things that really catch kids’ attention and believes imaginary, humorous characters are the best way to grab their interest and affect their behavior. She also noticed just how much kids love trucks, especially trucks that visit the house every week — garbage trucks.

“There’s no better way to teach kids to respect and save the environment than to introduce them to Colonel Trash Truck,” Crawley says. “‘Colonel Trash Truck’ appeals to children with its fun rhymes, vibrant illustrations and superhero-like persona. Colonel Trash Truck believes cleaning up trash and recycling is something we all must do and he wants nothing more than to have kids join him in his quest to ‘Keep the Planet Clean and Green’.”

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South Africa – Pay-per-bag may be Cape’s new mantra

CAPE ELIZABETH (July 31, 2008): Cape Elizabeth town councilors are considering regulations that would decrease town waste disposal bills by cutting down the amount of waste Cape residents throw out.

The proposed regulations would create a so-called “pay-per-bag” system for residents, require businesses to handle their own waste and not use the Cape Elizabeth transfer station, require commercial haulers to use facilities other than the Cape transfer station and require town departments to improve their recycling efforts.

More – keepMEcurrent

India – Garbage Politics Spreads Stench

For a city that boasts of IT hegemony in the country, Bangalore has a dismal record of garbage management. The Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagar Palike (BBMP), whose obligatory function is to collect, transport and dispose of the municipal solid waste (MSW), is apparently caught up in the politics of one-upmanship.

On the garbage management, Rs 90 crore is spent annually. Recently, the chief minister B S Yeddyurappa commented that garbage contractors were a mafia. The contractors say they are being harassed by the officials without giving them adequate facility to dispose off the garbage. Here is an attempt to understand the riddle.

The MSW Story
The city generates about 3500 metric tonnes per day (MTD) or about 700 truck loads of MSW from house holds, markets, hotels and other commercial establishments. Before Greater Bangalore was formed, the Palike had floated tenders for collection and disposal of garbage in the 100 wards by constituting 30 packages of contracts. The annual cost of the services was estimated to be Rs 90 crore.

More – Deccan Herald

Kenya – UNEP joins Nairobi River clean-up campaign

June 18, 2008: The Nairobi Metropolitan Development ministry has entered into a technical arrangement with Unep to bring rapid results in green initiatives. The two immediate projects on their agenda are cleaning up of the Nairobi River and solid waste management.

Previous attempts to tackle the twin problems suffered from private sector apathy and lack of political will. “I feel this time it will work because of the political commitment which was not previously there,” said Achim Steiner, the Unep executive director.

The new ministry needs up to Sh4 billion to clean-up the 200km stretch covered by the three rivers passing through the capital city.

It also faces the challenge of coming up with innovative ways to manage solid waste which is an eyesore with only one dumping site in Dandora , on the outskirts of the city.

More – Business Daily Africa