A LIFE IN TRASH
In recent decades, Nepal has experienced profound changes, including the explosion of urban population and changing consumption patterns. After ten years of civil war and the 2015 earthquake, Kathmandu's population has more than doubled. Creating an environmental challenge: waste management, about 1000 tons are generated every day.
In the Kathmandu Valley, responsibility for waste is allocated to the municipality. Despite a 2011 law specifying the importance of sorting at source, no solution is provided by the government, and waste collection is more than random. Private companies make up for the shortcomings of the state. As in most developing countries, the informal sector plays an important role in waste management. It employs 10 to 15,000 self-employed workers from the poorest populations, low castes without education, street kids or Indians, who have come to try their luck in the recycling business. All of these people usually have no other choice to earn a living.
They collect the waste in the street, along the rivers to sell it then to intermediaries, the "scrap dealers" allowing the sorting of plastic, glass, scrap etc... The sale of waste gives collectors 25 rupees (about 0,10 euros/kg of plastic), their monthly salary is about 8 000 rupees (60 €). The scrap dealers send mostly recyclable materials to India, despite the ban on their import in 2016 by its government, only about 1000 tons of plastic are recycled in Nepal. One of these recycling companies is Himalayan Life Limited, located in Pokhara (the second largest city in Nepal), which transforms used PET bottles into plastic pellets and resells them to plastic bottle manufacturers.
Despite these attempts to reduce waste, 75% of the waste generated in Kathmandu is dumped at the municipal landfill, Sisdol. Opened in 2005, it was supposed to be a short-term solution, 14 years later, for lack of alternative, it is still in use. About 100 people work there at the risk of their lives, accidents are frequent. Like the street collectors, they are self-employed workers, mostly women and children. They separate recyclable materials and also sell them to scrap dealers.
