Present Situation of Solid Waste

Management in Yangon City

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Nirmala Menikpura, PhD Sustainable Consumption and

Production (SCP) Group Institute for Global Environmental

Strategies (IGES)

Administrative boundary of Yangon City Development Committee

Source :YCDC

Yangon is the former capital of Myanmar and remains as the most important centre of commerce, politics and culture.

Total area of Yangon city is 759 km2 and the population is 4.72 million (as of December 2012)

General background of Yangon City

There are 33 townships in Yangon region and divided into four districts – North, South, East and West

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Waste management in Yangon City

Daily Management -Waste Collection -Waste Transportation -Disposal at the final disposal sites

Pollution Control (progressing) -Final disposal sites management -Recycling -Green composting -Awareness raising

Pollution Control and Cleansing Department (PCCD) is responsible for waste management in Yangon city

Responsibilities of PCCD in Waste management

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2001-2002 2003-2004 2006-2007 2010-2011 2011-2012

1540 tonnes/day

1690 tonnes/day

kg/c

apit

a/d

ay

Total waste generation - 1,690 toness/day Total waste collection - 1,550 tonnes/day The remaining 140 tonnes share the recycling and illegal dumping More than 75% of waste is organic

Organic waste , 76%

Paper & textile 0.1%

Plastic 10 %

others , 10 %

Waste generation and composition in Yangon

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Satellite TSP 300 Kyat per day Old suburbs-300 kyat per month/household

Sub-Urban - 450 kyat per month/household

Central Business District - (600) kyat per month/household

Monthly fee for waste collection service

Charges from commercial centers, hotels etc. are based on sizes, kind of facilities, waste types and others

Picture by YCDC

1. Bell Ringing System 2. Collection at a street Dumps Yard 3. Kerb side collection

Waste collection methods in Yangon

By Trucks

Pictures by YCDC 6

By carts

Waste separation at Yangon

Waste is mainly separated into two parts: Wet and Dry

However, all the separated waste is loaded to the same vehicle for transportation

Pictures by YCDC 7

There are 13 kinds of trucks are used for waste transportation

No. of trucks available 297 and capacity of trucks varies 2-8 tonnes/trip

Many trucks are too old and often, vehicle breakdown do happen.

Waste collection vehicles

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Pictures by YCDC

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Existing dumping sites in Yangon

Htain Bin

Hlaw Gar

Htawe Chaung

Da La

30 Km 26 Km

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Kyi Su

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6 Shwe Pyi Thar

Present situation of open dumpsite at HtainBin

PCDC is planning to implement a landfill gas-to-energy recovery plant to replace this open dumpsite

Future

This is the biggest open dumpsite in YCDC 847 tonnes of incoming waste is disposed per day

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Present situation of open dumpsite at Htwei Chaung This is the second biggest open dumpsite 612 tonnes of incoming waste is disposed per day

YCDC is considering installation of incineration plant (with electricity recovery)

Future

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Present situation of small open dumpsites

Dumpsite at Shwe Pyi Thar Disposal capacity – 50 tonnes/day

Dumpsite at Hlaw Ger Disposal capacity 25 tonnes/day

YCDC is considering installation of small incineration (without electricity production) plants to replace these dumpsites .

Future

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Situation of waste recycling in Yangon YCDC has estimated that 86 tonnes/day generated waste is

recycling Valuable recyclables are stored at household level and sell to the

nearby junkshops YCDC is also running a small-scale plastic recycling plant and

green and blue plastics bag is produced using the waste plastic.

Plastic recycling activities at YCDC

Composition of recyclables in Yangon

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Estimation of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions from current waste management in Yangon IGES GHG calculation tool was used to estimate the climate impacts from current waste management in Yangon

Emission of CH4 from open dumping 22.88 kg of CH4/tonne

Direct GHG emission from mixed waste open dumping 480.48 kg of CO2-eq/tonne of mix waste GHG emission from open dumping from monthly disposed waste 22,342 Tonnes of CO2-eq/month

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GHG emissions from open dumping

YCDC uses 128,704 L diesel and 900 L of gasoline for waste transportation GHG emissions from transportation 7.51 kg of CO2-eq/tonne of waste Monthly GHG emission from transportation 349 tonnes of CO2-eq/month

GHG emissions from Waste Transportation

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Estimation of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions from current waste management in Yangon

Direct GHG emissions from recycling 866.42 kg of CO2-eq/tonne of mixed recyclables

Avoided GHG emissions from recycling via materials recovery 2646.79 kg of CO2-eq/tonne of mixed recyclables

Net GHG emissions from recycling (life cycle perspective) -1780.37 kg of CO2-eq/tonne of mixed recyclables

Monthly total GHG reduction from recycling -4,593 Tonnes of CO2-eq/month

GHG emissions from recycling activities in Yangon

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22,342

-4593

18,098

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GHG emissions fromtransportation

GHG emissions fromopendumping

GHG reduction fromrecycling

Overall GHGemissions from waste

management

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Overall GHG emission from waste management in Yangon

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YCDC plan for future waste management

Landfill gas-to-energy recovery and incineration would be the two major technologies in the intended waste management system in Yangon Our suggestions to improve the climate benefits and other co-benefits from waste management

Careful planning is very important in the designing phase to avoid the failure that may happen after the implementation

Improving the efficiency of the landfill gas recovery is the key to mitigate GHG. That can be done by starting gas recovery soon while waste tipping continues, and extending the duration of gas recovery project to cover the peak production period of methane

Composition and the moisture content of the waste can be greatly effected on the efficiency of the incineration plant. Pre-treatment would be necessary to reduce the moisture content waste prior to combustion

Despite all the waste-to-energy technologies, development of proper recycling scheme in Yangon would contribute for significant GHG reduction and then to attain the target of low carbon city

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How to select a appropriate set of technologies (especially pre-treatments) to match with waste characteristics of Yangon city?

How to establish a capacity of local governmental officials to plan and operate integrated approach for long term sustainability of waste management?

How to secure operational costs for upgraded technologies and approaches?

How to improve the efficiencies of proposed waste-to energy technologies to extract maximum amount of energy from waste?

How to reduce running costs including fossil fuel input? What are the possibilities for applying JCM? How to improve recycling activities in Yangon to divert

waste flows going into landfill and reduce GHG?

Points to be discussed for further improvements

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THANK YOU VERY MUCH Nirmala Menikpura, PhD

Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) group, Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES)

Email: menikpura@iges.or.jp

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