Nepal

What’s been launched:

A project aiming to bring sustainable waste management to local communities, focusing on waste sorting and recycling initiatives.

Where:

This project will benefit 18,000 people living in the Badimalika municipality in west Nepal. This region has the lowest human development index (HDI) ranking in the country.

Why:

This region creates about 2.5 tonnes of waste per day, much of which is mismanaged. The result is excessive litter, polluted streets, and open burning of waste. Local authorities need to do more to encourage community groups to reduce waste and care for the environment.

How:

This project will:

• Stop plastics being burnt in the open: by encouraging residents to use public bins, and by setting up waste collections from local markets that have previously had no such services.  
• Train people to sort and recycle waste, and produce marketable products such as bio briquettes and bags. 
• Generate compost from food waste, which will be sold to benefit local agriculture.
• Form new committees to raise awareness around the need to reduce waste, and recycle as much as possible. 
• Create and equip voluntary ‘community action groups’ to carry out weekly litter-picks.
• Urge local government to increase the budget for waste management and awareness.

The project in numbers

• In its pilot year, this project educated 1,000 of the area’s most vulnerable people to understand the need to reduce, recycle and re-use. 
• This project aims to benefit more than 4,000 people in the next two-and-a-half years.