Last week, I participated for a research symposium where there was a separate session for Waste Management and Pollution Control. Therefore, it is interesting to write an article regarding the waste challenge and the available waste management practices in Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka is a small island with the population of more than 20 million. It has been estimated that solid waste generation potential in Sri Lanka ranges between 0.25-0.5 kg per person per day. Therefore, waste has become a major environmental problem in Sri Lanka. Though the Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) is collected and transported, they are not subjected to a proper segregation process and the largest proportion of collected waste in Sri Lanka is subjected to open dumping. Open dumping is a cause for several other environmental issues such as, odor problem, visual pollution, providing breeding places for mosquitoes and flies etc. Other than these visible impacts, the most complex ones occur due to open dumping are emissions of landfill gases and leachate due to a complex sequence of biological and chemical reactions that occur within the solid waste matrix in a landfill.

Integrated solid waste management including, waste reduction, resource recovery, reuse and recycling, biological treatment, incineration and landfilling has been strongly promoted by the Ministry of Environment, Central Environmental Authority (CEA), and various governmental and non- governmental organizations in the country. Therefore there can be seen a good trend within Sri Lankan industrial sector that most of the waste generated (except food waste) in industrial sector is sent for incineration at one of the cement manufacturing plant in Sri Lanka as an energy source for the cement kiln. Most of the food waste generated in the industrial sector is sent for piggeries and industrial sector has good commitments to reduce their waste generation also. Though there are good practices within the industrial sector, there is a considerable amount of MSW generation in Sri Lanka. The daily collection of MSW in the country is about 12313 tons of waste (Source: World Bank, Waste Atlas-2013). According to the studies, the largest proportion of MSW consisted with short term bio degradable materials. Other materials are long term bio degradable materials, plastics, glass, wood, paper, building materials and other.

One of the major reasons for large amount of waste generation and open dumping is due to the lack of knowledge of households and industry people regarding waste management practices. Therefore, it is important to aware the households regarding the exsisting waste burden in Sri Lanka and increase the knowledge of community regarding waste management. As a citizen and an environmental lover I thought to do something helpful to solve this problem. Therefore, these days, I am working on preparing a database of waste collectors and recyclers in Sri Lanka which may helpful to industries and households to manage their waste properly through handing over their waste to those places.