Proper solid waste management practices implemented in Puttlam Urban Council

Abstract

The total area of the Puttlam UC is about 25.24km2 which is divided in to nine divisions. In addition to the registered population of 56254, around 35000 displaced people of the Northern Province also live here. The town boundary ends with Colombo-Puttlam main road in south, Puttlam-Mannar main road in North and Puttlam-Kurunegala road in east. Majority of the population are Muslims.

Puttlam main town acts as central economic center for several other sub towns. With this situation, considerable amount of waste is generated daily in Puttlam town area. With a combination of domestic and market solid waste, people are facing critical health, environmental and visual problems.

Large amount of money is spent on cleaning, labor and health facilities to recover the waste problems. With the increasing population, solid waste generation rate is also increasing while the waste disposing space remains stable or in many instances is decreasing.

With this critical situation Puttlam UC introduced source separation in 3 stages as glass, metals, plastic, polythene and degradable organic waste. Separation bins were provided at domestic levels and divisional level.

But due to the lack of knowledge of waste disposal practices and rigid attitudes of people in waste disposal methods and behavior, this project was a failure.

Main objectives of the project were to dispose and manage sold waste to keep the town as a clean healthy environment and to convert waste to economical good. This is a medium scale project with labourers from UC health and sanitation division; four laborers to collect waste and six labourers for compost production.

Around five tons of mixed waste is collected daily and transported to the composting yard provided by Holcim (Pvt.) Ltd. After the manual separation of waste, the degradable waste (65% of the total) is used for compost production using windrow method. Water level, temperature, and odor are controlled with regular mixing of piles. Waste from fish market is used to maintain the C:N ratio in 1:25. After nine weeks of production process, sample checking, storing, and marketing is done.

Other advancements suggested are to use feces in compost production and introduce super compost production while overcoming the recent problems in waste transportation, less space and low facilities in compost yard.