THE SMALL EARTH NEPAL

9 June 2013

Most of the waste, that are in the streets, come from the houses. Realizing the need of management of household waste training for housewives in Buddhanagar was organized. Approximately 35 participants, including both men and women actively participated in the training. The training was initiated with the warm welcome by Mr. Sudarshan Rajbhandari, Vice President at SEN. Followed by the introduction of the participants, Ms. Kabita Gautam presented on the need of such campaigns from grassroots level and gave a review on some of the activities that SEN has been doing for solid waste management. She also highlighted on 3R principle that can be applied at home with few examples.

Then the training was facilitated by Mr. Rajaram Karmacharya from Department of Environment, Kathmandu Metropolitan City. He gave a motivational presentation on waste management in Nepal. He trained the housewives on waste segregating and composting. First of all, he demonstrated few exercises on how to identify the useful waste out of the wastes generated in houses. He said that 3R principle is not enough for Nepal, there should be 3R+2R principle that includes Reuse, Recycle, Reduce, Responsible and Respect. He emphasizes to be responsible and respect the waste as well as the waste collectors. Then he demonstrated on composting and its necessary procedures. He also shared different methods of composting.

After the training there was a discussion session during which Mr. Suresh Shakya, Advisor of Buddhanagar Tole Sudhar Samiti, shared the activities that they have been carrying to make the area cleaner and beautiful. He said that to acquire the ownership of community these works have been done with the community efforts. He urged KMC for further support at least to pick up the waste form the area frequently so they do not have to throw the waste directly in the river. Ms. Gautam suggested collaborating with KMC while organizing such events and Cleaning should be done weekly rather than on some special day to encourage the community. Mr. Karmacharya said KMC will support the initiation as far as it can. He further said that the number of sweepers has declined from 1400 to 800 and there is lack of human resource in KMC. He expressed his happiness that community people are being more responsible and it is a great support to KMC in today’s context. Ms. Gautam said the declining number of human resource might be due to dignity as people always want a good profession rather than being a sweeper and she encompassed on the need of change in attitude and make an individual responsible for the change.