17 household solid waste is still fraught
with gross inefficiency, as volumes of solid waste from households are seen dotting road medians and street corners. It is pertinent to note that, landfilling, which is regarded as the last option for MSW in Europe, is still a major method of solid waste disposal in developing countries (Hettiaratchi,
et al, 2010).
To manage HSW sustainably, it is important to ensure that the right policy that encourages source separation from households (as we have seen in the case of the EU) is in place so that waste materials collected by the municipal authority are properly categorised for transportation to recycling facilities. Source separation is the segregation or sorting of waste materials into different waste bins, at the point of generation, to make the process of recycling more efficient and achieve easy disposal (Web Finance, 2018). In essence, there are good reasons to carryout household solid waste separation from source. For example, it supports material recovery by ensuring that recyclable materials are collected in a neat state before they get contaminated in the waste stream and this equally guarantees the quality of recycled products. The source
separation of organic waste, for instance, results in high quality manure better than when they are already contaminated once it is mixed with other waste materials (Government of Western Australia, 2014). In Germany, the Closed Cycle Management Act seeks to turn waste materials into a resource management base through ensuring that useful materials that can be recovered at source are captured before they are lost into the waste stream (Nelles,
et al, 2016).
Source separation of HSW is achieved with the use of coloured waste bins for different waste categories. However, the colour of the bins differs slightly in some cities. For example, in Kiel, Northern Germany four waste bins with colours blue, brown, black and yellow are used (ABK, Kiel) while in Bonn, Western Germany the colour green replaces the brown colour used in Kiel (https://www.mpifr- bonn.mpg.de/2878166/Waste-disposal.pdf) for the sorting of organic waste.
In all cases, other waste categories like glass (white and coloured) are disposed in special metal bins located in various parts of the city while hazardous wastes like batteries are either taken to shops from where they are purchased for safe collection by the municipal waste authority or deposited at designated hazardous waste collection centers. Bulk wastes like large household furnishings that cannot go into the normal waste bins are kept neatly at the base of buildings from where they have been evacuated for collection by the municipal waste authority who must have been notified
(ABK, Kiel. The situation in Germany, which is well known to the researcher because of field
17
18 trips conducted earlier to some of the
recycling centers shows that, while there is a general waste management template, which stems from the Waste Framework Directive, Germany has much more stricter regulations aimed at ensuring compliance (Dornack, 2017).
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