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A solution for Bloemendhal garbage
and the Sri
Lanka model for sustainable municipal solid waste
management

by Cyril H Thalpe Gamage
BSc (Eng) Sri Lanka, C Eng
MIESL
MSc (Enviro Eng) The Netherlands

Garbage is the premier problem where human civilisation has been
affected, befallen or otherwise displaced from place to place like, gypsies. The
problem is obviously a result of ill planned human activities in
industrialisation and urbanisation. It is always difficult to bring something
back into the orderly position if it has been disordered. The entire process of
‘Solid Waste Management’ could fail due to the wrong start with the methodology
of ‘Dumping Before Sorting.’ Therefore, Municipalities have to understand and
practice the correct methodology of ‘Sorting Before Dumping’ for Sustainability
of ‘Municipal Solid Waste Management’.

Collecting garbage and dumping or disposal is a very narrow
boundary of Municipal solid waste management, in any country, which could not be
sustainable at all. It could create a lot of environmental issues such as health
hazards, air pollution, land pollution, leacking of contaminants into water
bodies and emission of methane into the atmosphere to aggravate Global Warming.

The Bloemendhal case is the identical example where things went
wrong resulting ultimately in a volcanic issue of garbage.

However, the child is born and now it’s of no use arguing or
wasting time by searching for the culprit. Finding a way to get rid of
Bloemendhal garbage alone could not be a solution, because another baby could be
born tomorrow, unless the correct methodology is established in ‘Solid Waste
Management’. Where there is a problem there is a solution and let us consider
how the main components in ‘Solid Waste Management’ should array in a proper
sequence, for sustainability of the process.

1. Sorting Before Dumping

2. Collection

3. Transport

4. Processes to reduce, Reuse, Recycle plus Recovery and Land filling

Municipal solid waste is a promising resource which comprises lots
of reusable things, recyclables, recoverable energies and land filling
materials. But sorting has to be done before dumping or otherwise. Ninety
percent of the resource value is lost at the very instant of dumping as unsorted
garbage.

Municipalities of western countries, have drawn lots of emphasis
to establish the order ‘Sorting Before Dumping’ by providing named baskets
everywhere in order to collect only the separated waste materials. But to be
frank, it is very seldom that you could observe a content of unmixed material in
a named basket. That is perhaps due to the language barrier in reading name
boards or complete carelessness. However, the entire effort of automatic waste
separation could be lost by a single action of a careless person.

Therefore, many Municipalities in western countries, short of
human resources, have gone for expensive machinery to separate the solid waste,
which is dumped as a salad. The process with machineries is very costly and
ultimately a heavy burden on Municipal expenses, which is thrust upon the
citizens through sky rocketing taxes. Not only that, but also they are trying to
promote their unaffordable machineries and non-productive technologies for
developing countries to compensate their losses, through high academic paths
under knowledge globalization.

Sri Lanka, being a country of ample human resources,
Municipalities have to build up their strategic planning to get the maximum
involvement of the settler communities in the correct methodology of ‘Sorting
Before Dumping’ through establishment of Community Based Organisations
(CBO).

The strategies must be based upon enhancing the maximum advantage
of the available potentialities related to the urban waste such as;

1. Potentiality exists with citizens to get rid of their waste

2. Potentiality exists with other social groups to reuse sorted
waste

3. Potentiality exists with producers to recycle sorted waste

4. Potentiality to recover energy out of sorted waste

5. Potentiality of land reclamation by filling of unusable
waste

The Waste Generator (Citizen or Businessman), is badly in need to
get rid of his waste and this potentiality has to be identified and used in a
proper methodology of ‘Sorting Before Dumping’ as the first step towards
Sustainability of Municipal Waste Management’.

It is not a good way of grading people in a society but as it is
said, ‘Distance to waste decides the Class’. However, there is a big
potentiality in that to understand, because the waste from higher social layers
of society (except from the carbonic waste) could be a resource for the lower
layers to reuse. It also indicates that the higher classes are ready even for a
small payment if CB0s are prepared to do a quality service promptly.

The Municipal expenses on payments to service providers (CB0s)
could be minimised or perhaps cut off by following the correct methodology to
take advantages of the existing potentialities as mentioned under 1, 2 and
3.

The valuable potentialities under 4 and 5 can be directly handled
by Local Governments for income/opportunity generation.

Two innovative techniques by figures 1 and 2 are suggested hereby
to be considered by scenarios in forming a ‘Sri Lankan Model for Municipal Solid
Waste Management’.

1. Municipal Compost Plant and Agro Eco Farm Complex

Once the carbonic waste of the city is separated at the origin
itself, through a proper methodology, it could be a never ending flow of a
valuable resource. Even though it doesn’t have any market as a waste, a value
can be added through composting.

As shown in the figure-0 1, the configuration comprises of several
chambers in a row to be filled one after another with sorted municipal carbonic
wastes. It is a well known practice that compost is formed through aerobic
biodegradation of wet carbonic wastes with time. Therefore, the sequence of
filling the chambers of the plant must be scheduled in such a manner that the
first chamber is given enough retention time before unloading from the
bottom.

However, the market for compost could not be booming enough and a
practice of value addition by mixing with a certain percentage of direct
fertiliser too is suggested as a measure of promoting the product. Besides of
all that, a Municipality has to run a productive agricultural land some where
away from the city because, it has all the essential resources to run it
productively for income generation. Not only compost, but electricity too, can
be generated to meet the domestic demand of the farm by energy recovery through
incineration of non recyclables, non reusable things and any flammable dry
materials.

2. Sea Land Reclamation by Garbage Fill Eco-land

However, the danger is up when the garbage mountain range at
Bloemendal becomes volcanic by flaming a fire due to emission of methane and it
is not the time for arguments or more and more researches to analyse how gasses
are formed in it.

Handling of this size of a garbage problem at too late and not at
an easy stage. There is technology known as ‘Sanitary Land Filling’ but that
will also give birth to another white elephant, difficult to afford by
Municipalities. In that technique, the heap of garbage is buried or covered and
the gas is collected to use for power generation. The land is definitely lost
and ultimately the uneconomical power plant becomes a heavy burden to a
Municipality. Therefore, let us try a Sri Lankan model to solve our problem,
when no sound foreign technology is available to import or to imitate as we
usually do.

As the first step, a barren shallow sea bay (not a large one), in
Colombo or the suburb has to be located to build up the garbage filled ‘Green
Eco Island’. As shown in the figure-2, a rock fill dyke is constructed to
separate the small island from the water body. The dyke is not so high and the
moving unit of apparatus, as shown in the figure, can construct the dyke
gradually by continuous feeding of rubble and watered sea sand. When rubble and
sea sand are dumped together, the dyke is automatically formed by gravity
settling and slopes too are formed by the high internal friction of rubble. {
This is the easiest technique of constructing dykes in shallow waters).

Once the island is encircled by the dyke, garbage is transported
to fill it from the landside up to a considerable height and then covered by a
sea sand layer and a soil layer at the top. The dyke structure becomes more
stable when the inner slope is loaded by the filling materials.

The island subsurface needs few years to be fully settled and
thereafter it is ready for any sort of recreational facility development upon
income generation. This technology is environment friendly because the dyke
comprises an inner core of fine sea sand, as a filter, to protect the coastal
sea belt from being contaminated by the buried garbage.

The economy of the project could certainly be helped by the high
land value of the ‘Eco Island’ and perhaps it could be built upon advances from
investors.

Besides that it could also be the smallest attempt to recover the
coastal belt from everlasting scaring action of the sea.

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