Value for Waste (VfW) - Household Solid Waste Management

The Project

In its first phase (2013-2016) the Value for Waste pro­ject of Swiss­con­tact is ad­dress­ing the chal­lenge of solid waste man­age­ment in Bangladesh's cap­i­tal, Dhaka - one of the fastest grow­ing cities in the world. The pro­ject's main focus is on keep­ing the value of re­cy­clables in­tact by en­cour­ag­ing their seg­re­ga­tion at source in house­holds and en­sur­ing that waste and re­cy­clables are col­lected sep­a­rately in an ef­fi­cient and safe man­ner. Re­cy­clables that are kept clean fetch a higher price on the mar­ket, and get re­cy­cled in larger quan­ti­ties. Less waste needs to be land­filled, en­vi­ron­men­tal pol­lu­tion is re­duced, and the re­cy­cling sec­tor grows.

At neigh­bour­hood level, the key im­ple­ment­ing part­ners are the local res­i­dent's as­so­ci­a­tion and/or the local ser­vice provider in charge of door-to-door waste col­lec­tion. At mu­nic­i­pal level, the pro­ject re­lies on the en­dorse­ment and in­volve­ment of mu­nic­i­pal and gov­ern­ment au­thor­i­ties who al­lo­cate space for waste man­age­ment and op­er­ate waste trans­fer sta­tions. The pro­ject also works with schools and uni­ver­si­ties to en­sure a broad and sus­tain­able im­pact, and pro­motes green busi­nesses pro­duc­ing goods from re­cy­cled do­mes­tic waste.

In in­di­vid­ual neigh­bour­hoods, 200,000 res­i­dents of Dhaka will ben­e­fit from a bet­ter en­vi­ron­ment through their in­volve­ment at per­sonal and com­mu­nity level. Along the re­cy­cling value chain, 300 work­ers will ben­e­fit from im­proved work­ing con­di­tions due to in­creased quan­tity and qual­ity of re­cy­clables. 1,200 stu­dents will get sen­si­tized and in­volved in pro­ject ac­tiv­i­ties. Over­all, the pro­ject will con­tribute to urban en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, and more par­tic­u­larly cli­mate change adap­ta­tion and dis­as­ter (flood) risk re­duc­tion.