The project “Waste for Life” focused on generating poverty reducing solutions for a serious environmental issue in the country, the waste problem. This study achieved environmental sustainability by reducing the waste in the environment and, socio-economic sustainability by improving the livelihood of marginalized people in the community who work with waste.
Key aspects of this project are;
-
Current waste management system in the country and the role of the informal sector in waste management was identified.
-
Assessed the socio-economic, environmental and technical feasibility of a Waste for Life project in Sri Lanka.
-
Key stakeholders, the needs of the community and social impact of the project were identified.
-
Socio-economic and environmental sustainability of the project was found out and a small scale pilot project was implemented.
This project was an initiate in developing poverty reducing solutions through an innovative waste management approach for marginalized sectors in the community such as small scale recyclers, waste collectors and community based organizations who work on waste management.
For the past few decades the waste management in Sri Lanka has being primarily focusing on the environment. This project took a different approach and made an effort to include the marginalized sectors who work with waste into the system.
WASTE FOR LIFE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF JAFFNA, KILINOCHCHI.
I joined as a Research Assistant for this project from July 2016 to Present. My role in this project is developing a composite materials from waste plastic and natural waste (Banana fiber, fabric waste and paddy husk). And we develop some simple domestic and building materials from those materials such as notebook covers and roof sheets.
Fig 1. Some of the domestic products that we developed.
Fig 2. Some tiles for building materials.