Planning for sustainable municipal solid waste management
Practical Action
disposing of waste?
How far are waste generators willing to walk to deposit waste?
Do waste pickers access waste from transfer points? If so, should they be discouraged
from picking, or can their activities be adapted to improve the management of the
transfer point as well as their livelihoods?
Also consult waste characterisation data:
in view of the quantity and density of waste generated, the number of householders a
single transfer point will serve, and the frequency of emptying, how large does the
transfer point need to be?
Where waste generators carry their own waste, transfer points need to be located within easy
walking distance (a good guide is ~ 50m) to discourage indiscriminate dumping. All transfer
points and areas should be cleared daily and cleaned as necessary to prevent odours and keep
rats and other disease vectors under control. All transfer points should also be designed to
ensure minimum double handling. There are a number of approaches to achieving this, including
'ramp transfer points' which raise primary collection vehicles up to the loading level of
demountable containers (photograph 3). Sometimes, however, space does not allow this.
Another innovative solution is to use carts which carry a series of small containers that can be
easily and safely lifted and emptied into containers (photograph 1).
Photo 3: Ramped transfer point in Bangladesh (Jonathan Rouse)
Secondary collection
Why is planning this important? Well-planned transportation can make optimal use of vehicles
and staff and ensure all waste is collected and reaches its designated disposal or processing
point.
Secondary collection entails the removal and transportation of waste from transfer points to
processing and disposal facilities. This is often one of the most costly elements of SWM
systems. Waste characterisation study data will play an important part in planning secondary
collection as it informs us how much waste requires collection, its weight and volume (affecting
payloads), where it is located (affecting collection routes) and so on. Key planning questions for
secondary collection include:
What resources (including staff and hardware) exist at present and how
efficiently/inefficiently are they being used?
What percentage of total waste generated is being collected?
Are the collection routes as efficient as possible?
Basic improvements to secondary collection include ensuring collection routes are as efficient as
possible, putting measures in place to ensure waste is dumped as intended (e.g. staff
incentives), and covering waste during transportation. Increasingly, municipalities are choosing
to contract secondary collection to private sector operators. This can ease over-stretched
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