ARTICLE

Solid Waste Disposal in the Hill Capital of Sri Lanka

By Dr. R. Shanthini, Sri Lanka

Shantini is a Senior Lecturer at the Dept. of Chemical Engineering, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. She is a chemical engineer, and her basic degree is from Sri Lanka. She has a M.Sc. from the University of Alberta, Canada, and a PhD from Luleå University of Technology, Sweden. Her current research areas include industrial pollution control, factors influencing carbon dioxide emissions, and in-situ solid waste disposal.

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Introduction

Having been surrounded by a formidable mountain terrain, the Hill Capital of Sri Lanka, known as Kandy, managed to keep its western invaders at bay for nearly 310 years till 1815, in which year it succumbed to the British Crown. During this period, the indigenous rulers of the Hill Capital enriched it with several exceptional adornments, including the 'Dalada Maligawa', which is the temple of the Tooth-relic. The picturesque lake in the heart of Kandy, by the 'Dalada Maligawa' is embellished by the last king of Kandy, Sri Wickrama Rajasinha in 1807 who used the island on the lake as a pleasure garden. Kandy has the best climate in all of Sri Lanka, it offers the best scenic beauty, and houses the Royal Botanic Gardens, which is 182 years old and spans 143 acres hedged by the 'Mahaweli Ganga', the longest river in the country and the Kandy-Colombo Road.

Today, Kandy is plagued by the problem of its wastes. The Kandy Lake, once the eden of the Kandyan Royals, is now so polluted that it gives off an unbearable stench every now and then. The white filter papers through which the Kandyan air is driven, come out nearly black. Despite the persistence of solid waste disposal problem in Kandy for over quarter of a century or more, Kandy does not have a proper solid waste disposal system. All it does is to collect its solid wastes from the points of generation to dump it on a dumping ground. When I say dumping ground, I mean a dumping ground, not a sanitary landfill or even anything akin to that.

Dumping Ground

Land of the size of nearly four or five foot-ball fields adjoining the country's longest river 'Mahaweli Ganga' is used as the dumping ground. The leachates leaving the solid wastes piled on top of each other for nearly quarter of a century now have found their way into the waters of 'Mahaweli Ganga'. Every day, nearly 50 to 60 tractor loads of solid wastes collected from all over the area that belongs to Kandy Municipality Council (KMC) are dumped on this dumping ground. The dumping ground, in contrary to what one would imagine, is steaming with lives, not just the lives of the microorganisms that decompose the solid wastes, not just the viruses and mosquitoes that feast on the wastes, but other lives, real lives. There are cows and goats that flock the fresh waste as soon as the tractors unload them at the dumping ground. There are dogs which get more than their protein supplements from the leftovers of the slaughter houses around Kandy, the final destination of which is the dumping ground. It is just extremely normal to see humans combing the wastes that are dumped, looking for 'valuables' among the wastes that could bring them some money with which their loved ones could be fed.

What is heart breaking is to see the families that live by the land adjoining the dumping ground. These are families of people who worked for the KMC, and are now retired. In recognition of their services, KMC has offered them this unsanitary land that, for certain, no developer would ever want. A few members of these family and their pet dogs can be seen in Figure 1 below. The young mother carrying her infant and her neighbours, seen in Figure 1, are in conversation with Dr. D.K.P. Abeysinghe, the Divisional Director of Health Service (DDHS) and the Medical Officer of Health (MOH) of Werellagama, to which MOH area the dumping ground belongs, even though the garbage dumped there comes from the Kandy Municipal area. The white background behind us, the people and the dogs, in Figure 1 is the garbage dump. The white colour is owing to the large amount of plastic and polythene that are an integral part of the waste originating from the modern way of life in Sri Lanka knitted with take-away meals and super-market shopping. What could not be conveyed by any photograph of the garbage dump is the disgusting odour that is ever present in the environs of the garbage dump. Those who live by it said, "If only the stench could be prevented."

Dengue mosquitoes which can breed to multiply themselves in the stagnant water that is contained in just a discarded yoghurt cup, of which there are plenty in the garbage dump, have their victims in the neighbourhood of the garbage dump. According to Dr. Abeysinghe, there were 25 dengue cases in 2002 from 'Gohagoda', the area in which the dumping ground is situated. Gohagoda contains only about one sixth of the population of her MOH area. The other five sixth of the population in her MOH area suffered only 20 dengue cases in 2002. Even though there is a frantic effort by the Sri Lankan government to combat dengue, which is a relatively new killer disease in Sri Lanka, no local authority in Sri Lanka, who are responsible for the disposal of solid wastes, makes any reference to the possibility of the garbage dump being a breeding ground.

Fig 1: Dumping ground, white in colour, on the background. The people who live by the dumping ground in conversation with Dr. D.K.P.Abeysinghe (DDHS/MOH, right) and the author (left) on the foreground.

Household Composting, as an Alternative

It is with the conviction that the major part of the problem of solid waste disposal could best be tackled at the site of generation, Ms. P. Batuwitage, Director/Environment from the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, Sri Lanka, launched a campaign on solid waste disposal through household composting. Household composting unit, which converts the organic wastes from the kitchen and the yard into compost, in one's back yard is an age-old method that has been practised around the world, including Sri Lanka, from time immemorial. Such composting units, differing from each other in shape and size, can still be found in the village environment where space is not a major limitation. In today's urban settlements, however, space available for a typical household is limited. It is, therefore, Ms. Batuwitage distributed discarded barrels to willing households to dump their biodegradable households wastes into. Following Ms. Batuwitage's food steps, my husband (Dr. K.S. Walgama) and I introduced several alternative designs of household composing units.

One such unit is simply a 100 cm x 75 cm thin aluminium sheet perforated using a 3-inch long wire nail and a hammer, and rolled into a cylinder of about 30 cm diameter and 75 cm height. This aluminium cylinder is then held by a home-made wooden frame of 85 cm height as shown in Figure 2 below. Used engine oil from the service station is applied to the wooden bars to protect them from any possible future attack by white ants and other insects. The top of the aluminium cylinder was aligned with the top of the frame so as to leave a 10 cm gap between the bottom of the aluminium cylinder and the surface of the earth. This gap is maintained to facilitate convenient removal of the composted mass from the bottom of the aluminium cylinder. Before starting to feed the kitchen waste into the aluminium cylinder, it is fed with adequate saw dust (or sand) to fill the 10-cm gap and also another 10 cm in and around the aluminium cylinder. A bricklayer border provided at the base of the composting unit, as shown in Figure 2, helps to maintain the sawdust in place. The sawdust base for the composting unit was necessary for absorbing the excessive amount of water present in the kitchen waste, and also for preventing rats and other animal from having easy access to the composting mass. A lid was provided to prevent the rain from beating into the composting mass, and to discourage flies from entering the composting mass to lay their eggs on.

In an experiment carried out with the composting unit described in the preceding paragraph, the unit was fed with a total of 177.5 kg of biodegradable kitchen wastes from a real household and 10 kg of dried grass clippings over 160 days. Only 41 litres volume of the composting unit, which has a total volume of 60 litres, were filled by all that solid wastes. The temperature of the composting mass within the unit remained, in general, in the range of 40 to 50^oC, which were about 15 to 25^oC above the ambient temperature. Feeding the composting unit with a larger load at a time, and turning the composting mass well before feeding a new load were found to raise the temperatures of the composting mass to values as high as 50 to 60^oC. Tomato seeds germinated in the medium of biodegraded mass collected from the bottom of the composting unit three months after the unit was stared. It indicated that the wastes added to the composting unit turned into matured compost in three months time. The composting mass gave out hardly any smell. However, there were a significant population of fly larvae present in the composting mass. Even though it was a problem to be concerned with, a neat solution to this problem was provided by the Mother Nature, herself. She sent the birds. Birds of several kinds flocked the composting unit to feed on the larvae that came out of the composting unit. Certain species of birds even put up a permanent shelter by the composting unit.

An alternative design of a composting unit is provided in Figure 3, which is based on the same idea as the aluminium unit. The difference being, this unit is made of concrete mixture reinforced with a chicken-mesh skeleton. The holes in the structure, seen in Figure 3, are made with the help of conduit pipe pieces inserted perpendicular to the chicken mesh frame before the application of concrete mixture. The four faces were made separately, and then cemented together as shown in Figure 3. The openings at the bottoms of all four faces facilitate convenient removal of the composted mass from the concrete composting unit. Figure 3 shows the dark composted mass being pulled out of the unit at its bottom.

Fig. 2 (left): Aluminium composting unit on a brick layer covered with saw dust, with a lid.

Fig. 3 (right): Concrete composting unit

How Popular is Household Composting?

There are many successful accounts of household composting, using the aforementioned units and other units, in the houses of people who are devoted to not scarring the Mother Nature if they could help it. Nevertheless, household composting has not become a popular alternative anywhere in Sri Lanka, except, of course, among the rural communities in Sri Lanka who live in perfect harmony with nature as their survival strongly depends on the well being of Mother Nature.

Dr. Chandani Galwaduge, consultant and community physician of the Central Province (which includes Kandy) took in onto herself to make household composting a popular alternative to the waste disposal on the dumping ground practised by the KMC. She had arranged several workshops on the topic of household composting, and used her influence in all spheres to push household composting as an alternative. She distributed barrels, aluminium composting units and concrete composting units to selected communities. Still, household composting does not take off the ground.

One of the major reasons for the unpopularity of household composting is people are used to have their wastes taken away from them. And, they prefer such practices in which the responsibility of disposing their wastes lie on the shoulder of the Kandy Municipal Council. And, what is worst is the only way the Municipal Council knows to tackle the solid waste disposal problem is by collecting the wastes to a central facility. The Municipal Council has no tradition in facilitating individual households with household composting, and the Municipal Council is also not prepared to adopt anything new. Even if the Municipal Council is ready to launch a household composting programme, it lacks the manpower needed to offer consultation and supervision of the household composting units.

Consultation and supervision of household composting units are vital for making household composting a popular alternative for garbage dumps. It is because the performance of the unit occasionally runs into a crisis situation. If the composting mass is too wet then there will be a smell. It can however be arrested by covering the surface of the composting mass by a thin layer of sawdust or dry soil. An occasional outbreak of larvae population within the composting mass is discouraging, which could be prevented if each kitchen waste input to the composting unit is covered with a layer of yard waste. The manpower needed to provide consultation and supervision of household composting units is available with the Public Health Services in the form of Public Health Inspectors (PHI) and midwives. A PHI is always a man, and he is responsible for the public health at the grass root level. There is one PHI for about 10,000 to 20,000 people. A midwife is always a woman, and she is responsible for reproductive heath of the population. There is one midwife for 3000 people. The problem is, however, solid waste is the responsibility of the local authorities, not of the public health services.

One problem in running a composting unit in one's back yard in Kandy is that the garbage contained in the composting unit attracts rats, mongoose, wild-pigs and other animals to your garden. They not only disturb the composting set-up, but also destroy part of your garden. There are so-called animal-proof designs of household composting units available in Sri Lanka, which are more expensive than the units discussed above. Cost of a composting unit is a major concern among the households in Sri Lanka, and thus it remains somewhat difficult to satisfy the customer who demands a fooled-proof composting unit that cost less. The other most stressing problem is the separation of biodegradable waste from non-biodegradable waste before feeding the household waste to the composting unit.

Conclusion

Making household composting a way of household waste disposal can become popular, if we all really give it a thought. First of all the local authority must consider household composting as an acceptable method of solid waste disposal. Then, it could encourage its people to maintain household composting units by a suitable tax reduction mechanism. The local authority could collaborate with the public health services in the avenue of solid waste disposal, since dengue and other viruses may as well be originating from the dumping ground in Kandy. That way, the manpower needed to provide supervision and consultation for the crisis-free maintenance of the household composting units can be ensured. Every citizen of the Kandy Municipality Council may take a ride down to the dumping ground at Gohagoda to be convinced that a household composting unit may make a considerable contribution towards the general well being of all that live and share the resources of this Hill capital, which was once the seat of the defiant Kings of this land.