PETpla.net Insider 09 / 2013

EDITOUR REPORTS 21 PET planet insider Vol. 14 No. 09/13 patiently and persistently attempting to persuade the resi- dents of the major Bolivian cities of the virtues of waste separation. To get the message across they have estab- lished an initiative known as Ecovecindarios. We spoke with Mrs Ximena Ayo and Anna Apel about how the project is progressing. The scale of the problem of waste in Bolivia is daunt- ing. The majority of Bolivians live in poverty and disposing of household rubbish is the least of their concerns. Organ- ised waste collection has been rudimentary and unreli- able, so Bolivians dispose of their rubbish either by simply dumping it by the wayside, or burning it, throwing into the nearest river or even bury- ing it in the garden. The consequences for health, hygiene and the envi- ronment are not hard to imagine. Over the past four years or so, swisscontact has been providing advice to rural communities with a view to creating a com- prehensive and sustain- able waste management system. The current system is that municipalities have had their rubbish collected by private sector organi- sations which are paid 246 Bolivianos (roughly €27) per tonne of waste. In La Paz this amounts to around 0.5kg per inhabit- ant, per day. Sorting out and separating the recy- clables from the waste is carried out entirely (and illegally) by the black economy. The incentive to do this is the humble PET bottle, one of the most highly sought-after commodities in the piles of rubbish, and the reason it is so highly prized is that its resale value is 2 to 3 Bolivianos (around €0.22- 0.33) per kg. Swisscontact starts with the smallest unit, the neighbourhood zone. Typically, between 2,000 and 5,000 people live in such zones. They elect a President charged with the administration of the zone. With the support of these Presidents, Ecovecindarios has been able in certain of the zones to set up sys- This is how informal recyclables collections have looked up to now: collectors sifting through the waste on the side of the road.