Analysis of barriers to development in landfill communities using interpretive structural modeling

Abstract

Landfill sites in the developing nations are endowed with waste resources which could be utilized as a potential revenue stream for the community that inhabit such sites. Many international aid agencies have started focusing on development of such landfill sites and also on improvements to the associated scavenger community. The paper analyses the barriers to such an intervention by aid agencies using Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM). ISM employs a systems approach to the decision making process and is used traditionally in management studies. The paper highlights the potential of using such techniques to understand and analyze urban planning issues. The case study of a US based organization’s proposed intervention in a Karachi landfill community is used to formulate a general model of the barriers and their interactions.

Introduction

With an increasing standard of living around the world in recent decades, the production of waste and its’ management have evolved in tandem with increases in consumption. Although formal waste management structures exist, many communities in developing regions have developed large informal sector processes for handling municipal solid waste, providing an “important survival strategy for poor populations through the developing world” (Medina, 2000). As defined and described by Ahmed and Ali (2004) and Wilson, Velis, & Cheeseman (2006), informal sector economic activities are typically transient, small scale (individuals or families), poorly capitalized, existing outside of law and/or regulations as well as “labor-intensive, low-technology, low-paid, unrecorded and unregulated work.” Informal sector waste management, performed by very poor individual waste pickers with few skills or other resources fits these definitions well (Samson, 2008, Ul Haq, Hiller, Nahol, Shams, & Smith, 2009).

The informal waste management sector can be categorized into three rough categories: waste buyers, waste pickers, and waste dealers; working in parallel with the informal sector are usually a formal waste collection and disposal system and a larger wholesale recycling industry (Rouse, 2006; Wilson et al., 2006). Fig. 1 depicts these components and their relationships. Note that some recycling activity often takes place directly between the formal waste management sector and the recycling industry. The people engaged in waste picking usually live in extreme poverty and are easily exploited. Scavenging occurs at roughly three different levels. First, waste buyers collect waste directly from the source. This often includes collecting waste from households either pre-sorted or for immediate sorting. Waste collected and sorted at this level is of the highest quality and hence has the highest value in the reclamation chain.

At the next level, waste pickers scavenge recyclable materials from waste bins, trucks, and from the streets. This waste is more contaminated and higher quality materials have most likely been extracted. As a result, materials scavenged at this level are of only intermediate value and presents health and safety hazards to the pickers. Note that recyclable materials can be reclaimed through the formal sector at this level as well. At the lowest levels, waste pickers scavenge recyclable materials at waste dump sites. At this level the waste is of the poorest quality and lowest value, containing mostly decomposing organics. This paper will focus on communities living at this level in the informal sector.

Conditions in scavenger communities located at waste disposal sites are appalling. As Rouse (2006) describes one such site, the community is made up of “mostly poor rural migrants who have gravitated towards urban areas seeking work. Their waste storing and recycling work, which involves burning waste, is now responsible for serious environmental degradation and poor waste management.” Since dump sites receive waste that has been heavily picked over by other scavengers, the landfill communities must sift through organic waste in an advanced state of decomposition to recover low value recyclables. To free these materials and minimize odors, the waste pickers burn the waste and sift through the smoldering ash. Already living in extreme conditions and poverty, the people must manage a network of payoffs and corruption, and they have few skills or resources from which to improve their situation (Rouse, 2006).

Considering the appalling living and working conditions at unregulated waste disposal sites and the waste’s resource potential, many international aid agencies have directed their attention on reducing poverty and improving living conditions for these landfill communities. Fahmi and Sutton (2006) analyze an intervention involving the Cairo’s Zabaleen community of waste pickers. Samson (2008) uses the case of study of landfill sites in South Africa to study the interaction between the scavenger community, local governments, waste management firms and the NGOs. These case analyses demonstrated that any organization endeavoring to improve conditions at landfill sites will face challenges and barriers including strong outside interests, extreme poverty, government opposition, and cultural differences.

To help define and understand these and other barriers a review of the literature was conducted to isolate specific barriers related to interventions into landfill communities. These barriers were then analyzed for a case study aid organization using Interpretive Structural Modeling to better understand their interactions and to provide an ordered, directional framework for the landfill-barrier system. The modeled results help visualize the case organization’s barrier system and identify the case’s most influential, resource intensive, and/or priority barriers.