Environmental Research Cycles of Carbon and Nitrogen & Interactions with Waste Management Practices

ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH CYCLES OF CARBON AND NITROGEN & INTERACTIONS WITH WASTE MANAGEMENT PRACTICES

UWEP Plus report

Working Document 15

Michael Simpson and Nadine Dulac

Anne Scheinberg (editor)

February 2005

Nieuwehaven 201 tel : +31 182 522625 2801 CW Gouda fax : +31 182 550313 the Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] Cover photo: Compilation of photos showing effective use of C and N from waste ©WASTE

Copyrights

The research for this publication received financing from the Netherlands Agency for International Cooperation (DGIS), Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Citation is encouraged. Short excerpts may be translated and/or reproduced without prior permission, on condition that the source is indicated. For translation and/or reproduction in whole, WASTE should be notified in advance. This publication does not constitute an endorsement from the financier. FOREWORD

This environmental research on the carbon and nitrogen cycles and their interactions with waste management practices, in short the C-N research, has been part of the Urban Waste Expertise Programme (UWEP Plus), a two year programme (2001-2003) implemented by WASTE and its regional partners in seven countries. The programme has been funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Division for International Development (DGIS).

This research covers integrated and sustainable waste management and its relation with global climate change. It focuses on the control of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the implementation of sustainable development: in other words, integrating sustainable development with mitigation of GHG emissions. The aim of the research was to calculate greenhouse gas emissions under current practices of solid waste and wastewater management in the South and to subsequently forecast the reduction of these emissions if sustainable waste management approaches were applied.

Four communities in the South were targeted for the research. Their current waste management activities were documented, including quantities of waste materials generated, flows of these quantities within the formal and informal waste management systems and the final destination of these waste materials either through recovery or disposal. The C-N research covered both solid and liquid household waste. It included domestic solid waste, excreta and wastewater from centralized excreta and wastewater treatment plants, sludge from pit latrines or septic tanks, as well as urine and excreta from households.

This is exploratory environmental research on the interaction of carbon and nitrogen cycles with the emissions and processes associated with management of household waste in four cities. Major innovative features of this research are:  its geographical focus on specific cities in the South  its attention for liquid waste recovery  its attempt to quantify the effects of complex or integrated systems, rather than on the effects of specific technologies

Traditionally, this kind of research focuses on the situation in the North; is limited to a focus on the solid waste fraction and carbon cycles; and is focused on the results from one technology or facility. For example, the large-scale recovery of methane, a carbon product, from sanitary landfills, is a traditional point of measurement of the effects of solid waste processes on atmospheric cycles. Likewise, when there is a focus on sanitation or management of the liquid waste fraction, traditionally the emphasis is on the improvement of centralized excreta and wastewater treatment plants and on avoiding the formation of nitrous oxide, a known greenhouse gas, through nitrification-denitrification processes. In both of these cases, there is a tendency to model, rather than measure, effects.

This research looks instead at the development of a complex of smaller-scale, mixed or integrated approaches which contribute sustainably both to the preservation of the atmosphere and the conservation of natural resources. One very interesting example is the recovery of nitrogen through ecological sanitation practices, as is taking place for example in Djenné, Mali. The idea behind this is that technologies do not have a strong positive track record in the South, and that it is therefore necessary to develop other approaches in order to be able to quantify the effects of an integrated approach on the environment.

Environmental Research 1 WASTE, February 2005 The research has had as its aims:  Making an inventory of the quantities and types of wastes generated by households within residential areas of the four cities;  Conceptualising and visually representing the flow and transformation of these generated quantities as they move through the formal and informal waste management systems;  Assessing the effect of these specific transformations within the waste management systems on greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions; and  Developing an approach to measuring the effects of an Integrated Sustainable Waste Management (ISWM) as a strategy to reduce the impact of ghg emissions.

A leading concept in this research is the concept of Integrated and Sustainable Waste Management (ISWM), which has been developed by WASTE.1

This research is the result of a collaboration of four different research teams2 over a 2 year- period. The research took place in Bamako (Mali), La Ceiba (Honduras), Tingloy (the Philippines) and Bangalore (India). The research teams consisted of researchers from the waste management sector, and, where possible, researchers with a background in climate change issues. Sometimes other groups of stakeholders were involved such as local governments or households. These were very helpful in conceptualising the C and the N cycles and making a visual representation on posters.

For solid waste, an existing model for calculating GHG emissions guided the analysis. This model, a framework developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), focuses on methane generation (CH4) from solid waste disposed in landfills. In the C research, researchers modelled the quantities of materials; assessed the quantities destined for disposal and calculated GHG.

There was not a comparable model available for the N cycle, specifically, for the analysis of excreta and urine and resulting generation of nitrous oxide from the disposal of human excreta/liquid waste. The researchers formed new hypotheses and used various techniques used to test them. The excreta and wastewater stream has thus been analysed in different ways across the four research sites.

The four case studies can best be viewed as independent research efforts that shared an overall framework for modelling GHG emissions. In spite of best efforts, this means that the comparability amongst and between the communities’ modelling efforts is limited due to variations in:  Existing data regarding waste management practices and the associated quantification of materials generated.  Climate, the results of waste management practices and cultural perceptions that have an impact on waste handling, recovery and disposal.  The depth of understanding and prior experience of researchers pertaining to waste materials flow and management.  The definitions and concepts used to describe specific activities associated with the informal and formal waste management systems.

1 For further reading: Integrated Sustainable Waste Management, A Set of Five Tools for Decision-makers, Experiences from the Urban Waste Expertise Programme (1995-2001), A. v.d. Klundert et.al., WASTE Gouda 2 A total of 10 to 15 researchers and co-ordinators

2 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 The research has faced various limitations, especially due to the limited amount of available data3. Another limitation lies in the challenges of planning, coordination and overall management of the research of four different teams facing different contexts, different levels of data, and widely differing status of the waste management practices in place. Another weak point is the lack of consultation in the adaptation and application of the methodology. Some of these constraints were mitigated by the preparation of an overall literature review from documents on C-N research, the set up of an Intranet network, the implementation of a workshop and a C-N closure day.

Finally, although the focus was to ascertain if ISWM can significantly contribute to reducing GHG emissions from the waste management sector and thus to find out whether an ISWM approach can be considered a Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), there were other related issues raised in this analysis. These include:  The sustainability of a labour intensive system for managing solid and liquid wastes within a community;  The benefit to the agricultural sector of diverting nutrients to the soil rather than to the atmosphere; and,  Improved local environmental and public health due to better control of carbon and nitrogen-related emissions to the environment.

In spite of its deficiencies, we believe that this research has made a start on an important line of investigation, one that, if and when carried further, has important potential to improve the local and urban environment and to mobilise structural financing for sustainable urban improvements. We invite other researchers and waste management and sanitation professionals to use these ideas, and to enter into a dialogue with us about improvements and further work.

Nadine Dulac, November 2003 Michael Simpson, Anne Scheinberg June 2004

3 Every country has conducted its own National Inventory, using the methodology from the revised 1996 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories

Environmental Research 3 WASTE, February 2005 4 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 GLOSSARY

CH4 Methane CO2 Carbon dioxide CBD Convention on Biological Diversity, which was passed at the Rio conference in 1992 CDM Clean Development Mechanism CER Certified Emission Reduction CERUPT Emission Reduction Units Purchasing Tender for CDM projects. (basically a request for interest to purchase CERs) CGE Consultative Group of Experts on National Communications from Non-Annex I Parties COP Conference of the Parties COP/MOP Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol DOC Degradable Organic Carbon EcoSan Ecological Sanitation EIT Economy in transition, i.e. countries of the former Soviet Union and Central and Eastern Europe ERU Emission Reduction Unit EU European Union GCOS Global Climate Observing System GEF Global Environment Facility GHG Greenhouse Gas GJ Giga Joule GWP Global Warming Potential HDPE High Density Polyethylene INC Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for the UNFCCC, 1990-1995 IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ISWM Integrated Sustainable Waste Management JLG Joint Liaison Group of the UNFCCC, CBD and UNCCD secretariats KaR Knowledge and Research project (Capacity Building for Municipal Waste Management 2001-2003, by ERM and WASTE Kg kilogram Kt kilo tonnes LDC Least developed country LULUCF Land use, land-use change and forestry N2O Nitrous oxide NAPA National Adaptation Programme of Action for least developed countries NGO Non-governmental organization OECD Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development PFC Perfluorocarbon RMU Removal Unit SBI Subsidiary Body for Implementation SBSTA Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice UNCCD United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification UNCED United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1992 UNDP United Nations Development Programme UNEP United Nations Environment Programme UNFCCC United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change WEOG Western European and Others Group (UN regional group) WHO World Health Organization WMO World Meteorological Organization

Environmental Research 5 WASTE, February 2005 6 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 TABLE OF CONTENTS

FOREWORD ...... 1

GLOSSARY ...... 5

TABLE OF CONTENTS...... 7

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION AND MOTIVATION FOR THE RESEARCH...... 10 1.1 The UWEP Plus Urban Environmental Research ...... 10 1.2 Why research climate change and waste management?...... 11

CHAPTER 2 CONTEXT OF THE RESEARCH...... 14 2.1 The Research Focus: Carbon and Nitrogen ...... 14 2.2 Carbon cycling...... 15 2.2.1 Carbon and GHG Emissions...... 16 2.2.2 Methanogenesis in landfills and the UWEP study sites...... 17 2.3 Nitrogen cycling...... 18 2.3.1 Nitrogen and GHG emissions ...... 18 2.3.2 Nitrogen in the atmosphere...... 19 2.3.3 Trading nitrogen between media ...... 20 2.4 The International Response to Climate Change...... 20 2.4.1 The First World Climate Conference in 1979...... 20 2.4.2 Intergovernmental conferences focusing on climate change in the late 1980s and early 1990s...... 20 2.4.3 The First Assessment Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1990...... 21 2.4.4 The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change...... 21 2.4.5 Financing instruments of the Kyoto Protocol ...... 23 2.4.6 The Clean Development Mechanism and waste management ...... 24 2.4.7 Criteria for CDM projects...... 25 2.4.8 The baseline scenario...... 25 2.4.9 Allowable sectors for CDM projects ...... 26 2.5 CDM Funding Mechanisms...... 27 2.5.1 The Community Development Carbon Fund (CDCF) of the World Bank.. 27 2.5.2 The CDM versus the Global Environment Facility ...... 27 2.6 The UWEP C-N Research Sites ...... 27 2.6.1 Bamako, Mali...... 28 2.6.2 Bangalore, India...... 29 2.6.3 La Ceiba, Honduras ...... 30 2.6.4 Tingloy, Philippines...... 34 2.6.5 Country GHG Inventories...... 35 2.6.6 Estimating GHG emissions at community level: the UWEP Plus C-N modelling ...... 37

Environmental Research 7 WASTE, February 2005 CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH PROTOCOL FOR UWEP PLUS ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH ...... 38 3.1 ISWM Approach ...... 38 3.1.1 The First ISWM Dimension Stakeholders:...... 39 3.1.2 The Second ISWM Dimension: Waste, excreta and wastewater System Elements,...... 39 3.1.3 The Third ISWM Dimension: Sustainability Aspects: ...... 40 3.2 Research Goal...... 40 3.3 Research Hypotheses...... 41 3.4 Research Approach: Life Cycle Analysis...... 41 3.4.1 Analysis of the Baseline Scenario...... 43 3.5 Model Structure...... 44 3.5.1 Methodologies for the Carbon cycle...... 44 3.5.2 Methodologies for the Nitrogen cycle ...... 48 3.6 Limitations of Research and Results ...... 50

CHAPTER 4 FIELD INVESTIGATIONS AND RESULTS FOR THE CARBON CYCLE...... 53 4.1 Materials Generation and Composition...... 53 4.1.1 Waste Generation Rates...... 54 4.1.2 Waste Generation Details by City...... 55 4.1.3 Waste Composition and Characterisation...... 57 4.1.4 Detailed Comparison of Waste Composition ...... 58 4.1.5 Summary and Conclusions ...... 60 4.2 Baseline Scenarios ...... 60 4.3 Key Assumptions For Baseline Algorithm...... 61 4.3.1 MSWt & MSWf...... 62 4.3.2 MCF ...... 62 4.3.3 DOC and DOCf...... 63 4.3.4 F, R & Ox...... 64 4.3.5 Summary of IPCC inputs...... 64 4.4 Building the ISWM Scenario ...... 65 4.4.1 Completion of Scenario Analysis ...... 66 4.4.2 Results of Modelling...... 67 4.4.3 Summary...... 68 4.5 Conclusions ...... 69

CHAPTER 5 FIELD INVESTIGATIONS AND RESULTS FOR THE NITROGEN CYCLE...... 71 5.1 Nitrogen Generation ...... 71 5.2 Process Flow/Management Systems ...... 73 5.3 Baseline GHG emissions...... 76 5.4 Scenario Development...... 77

8 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 5.4.1 Alternative Approaches to Reduce N20 Emissions...... 77 Avoiding Decomposition of Organic Nitrogen...... 80 5.5 Scenario Results...... 81 5.6 Conclusion...... 82

CHAPTER 6 SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS...... 84 6.1 Meeting The Research Goal ...... 84 6.2 The Potential of ISWM Leveraging a CDM ...... 85 6.2.1 Transparency, Assumptions, Comparability...... 86 6.3 Recommendations Regarding Continued Research...... 87 6.3.1 Carbon...... 87 6.3.2 Nitrogen ...... 89

ANNEX 1 RATIFICATION AND ACCESSION...... 91

ANNEX 2 CALCULATIONS OF THE DEGRADABLE ORGANIC CARBON IN LA CEIBA (HONDURAS)...... 92

ANNEX 3 PROCESS FLOW DIAGRAMS FOR CARBON...... 93

ANNEX 4 NITROGEN EMISSION PATHWAYS...... 96

ANNEX 5 NITROGEN INFLUX AND EFFLUX IN BANGALORE...... 97

REFERENCES AND WEBSITES VISITED ...... 98

Environmental Research 9 WASTE, February 2005 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION AND MOTIVATION FOR THE RESEARCH

WASTE, Advisers on Urban Environment and Development, is a Dutch foundation, which works on “bottom-up” development in the areas of urban environment, specifically, solid waste management and ecological sanitation. WASTE and its partners have developed, and use, the framework of Integrated Sustainable Waste Management (ISWM) as the lens through which to assess the current waste management and sanitation state-of-the-art in cities, and to plan improvements in a participatory manner.

1.1 The UWEP Plus Urban Environmental Research WASTE has been involved for many years with the urban environment, in programmes ranging from MAPET, where a design was made for micro-commercialisation of manual pit latrine emptying technology, to the UWEP programme, with its strong focus on bottom-up decision-making and knowledge generation.

Based on this experience, in the UWEP Plus programme WASTE and its partners proposed to assess the significance of a new research theme focusing on the environmental effects of waste management and sanitation activities. The two points of focus have been the carbon cycle, and the impacts of waste activities, such as recycling, burning and methane generation; and the nitrogen cycle the losses of nitrogen and the interactions with sustainable and integrated approaches to sanitation, including waterless and water-poor sanitation, or EcoSan, and options for final treatment in liquid waste management.

The environmental research has, therefore, sought to explore the relationships between waste management and global climate change from both a scientific and strategic point of view. The scientific goals include:  To inventory the quantities of wastes generated within residential areas of the targeted communities, and compare these among research sites;  To conceptualise, and visually represent the flow and transformation of these generated quantities as they move through the formal and informal waste management systems.  To assess the effects and impacts of the specific activities within the waste management systems, and to model their contributions to GHG emissions;  To explore and develop the scholarship on how to measure mixed, complex, or integrated socio-technical systems with sufficient rigor and transparency to meet international standards; and  To understand how an Integrated and Sustainable Waste Management (ISWM) approach, and other integrated approaches, can be mobilised to reduce the potential impact of GHG emissions.

The strategic goals include:  The generation of capacity and knowledge to analyse connections between complex urban environmental systems and local and global environmental effects;  To mobilise structural funds for the urban environment by tapping into global climate change management systems of carbon transfers and associated payments;

10 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005  To understand and make known new opportunities for poor people and the agricultural sector to capture nitrogen, and its economic value, while at the same time improving the local environment  To explore and legitimise sustainable and integrated sanitation practices, not only for poor cities in the South or as transitional systems, but as legitimate approaches for sustainable management of faecalia, urine and grey water, especially, those approaches based on ecological sanitation approaches.  To contribute to the body of knowledge and methodology for the establishment of baseline analyses for the cycling of the macronutrients carbon and nitrogen, including assessment of current practices and their disadvantages in terms of N2O emissions in the atmosphere and N losses in water.

1.2 Why research climate change and waste management? In the research sites, and in the South in general, large segments of the population live with an inadequate waste management, sanitation, and potable water. For example, a significant part of Bangalore’s population in India, classified as lower income, lives in the congested sections of the city in houses without their own toilet facilities. They have little opportunity to obtain toilets or even latrines, and as a result, even in crowded sections of the city, open defecation is still common. This is typical also of peri-urban communities, informal settlements, slums, and villages even as they are annexed to cities: without any provision for sanitation or waste, a majority of the population uses nearest open space for their “needs.” Even in cities like Bamako, where most households have puisard latrines or other individual latrines or simple sanitation facilities, there is no satisfactory emptying service nor final treatment schemes available, or these function below hygienic and health standards. Where urban environmental management is inadequate, it is the poor who suffer the most, both in terms of the impact on their own households, and because inadequate or improper management approaches allow wastes to migrate to the commons, and the poor are the ones who depend the most on the commons.

In the majority of the neighbourhoods where the C-N modelling was done, grey and black waters run in open canals or over the street into rivers and the ocean, as happens in La Ceiba or Bamako, go directly into the sea as is the case in Tingloy, accumulate in and around the city where they form ponds or contaminate swamps and areas where children play, as in Bangalore. Regular emptying, transport and treatment of grey and black waters is rare; in dry areas, excreta and wastewater may be diverted to cultivated fields by urban and peri-urban farmers who need both the water and the nutrients. This option, although it makes some kind of resource management sense, must be organised and managed carefully to avoid the high risk of contamination in food production.

For the first time in history, environmental damage has an impact at every scale. This means that at the local scale, an island or a single country or region is influenced by emissions produced far away, and also that its own environmental behaviour has an impact on the global environment. Projections are that the destruction of some isolated islands in the Pacific will be the first measurable major impact, but the overall negative impact is expected to be high and will especially affect the least developed countries. Among the expected adverse effects are changes in regional rainfall patterns, climate and agricultural zones shifting towards the poles, melting glaciers, and rising sea levels.

Environmental Research 11 WASTE, February 2005 The largest contributors to climate change have been identified as the high-income countries in the North. Both high and low-income countries have agreed that measures have to be taken to control the greenhouse gas emissions. Countries from the North (except the USA) agreed in 1997 to reduce their emissions by signing the Kyoto Protocol, while countries from the South have also agreed to contribute to solving the problem. Cooperation among countries is needed, but it is a very large challenge. To cope with this challenge, WASTE and its local partners designed and implemented a research focusing on the climate change interactions with waste management in countries in the South.

Under traditional climate change analysis, solid waste management is considered as one of the sectors emitting greenhouse gases4 and can represent as much as 20 % of all the greenhouse gases (GHG) produced annually by countries in the North5. The same distribution rate seems to be applicable to other countries too.

By looking first at the main contributors, such as final waste disposal at municipal landfills and the existing excreta and wastewater treatment plants, and secondly at the overall waste management system, UWEP Plus research teams in four cities worked to assess the GHG rate by ton of household waste for different waste producers. This resulted in varying outcomes that can be partially attributed to differences in climate and physical land characteristics, regional and local economies, cultural and historic developments.

The study limits its investigation for solid waste management to the creation of methane (CH4), although it expands its approach from the IPCC one, so that creation of methane is modelled from more kinds of sites than closed landfills. Effects of sanitation and management of liquid waste focus on the effects of the creation of nitrous oxide (N2O) and the volatilisation of ammonia in the atmosphere.

In addition, by looking at the interactions with other waste management practices such as reuse and recycling activities, UWEP research teams have worked to build and support the hypothesis that implementing more sustainable and integrated approaches can cause GHG emissions to decrease. Demonstrating this would pave the way for countries in the South to team up with countries in the North to implement ISWM approaches under a Clean Mechanism Development framework, and would, in the process, set a precedent for measuring the environmental effects of mixed or complex systems6. A further line of investigation is how national-level stakeholders promoting ISWM approaches in the cities, can meet CDM requirements for transparency and rigour, and so benefit from selling carbon credits.

Finally, although the original focus was to ascertain if ISWM can significantly contribute to reducing GHG emissions from the waste management sector, and thus to find out whether an ISWM approach can be considered a Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), other related issues were also raised in this analysis. These include:  The long-term sustainability (or not) of a labour intensive system for managing solid and liquid wastes within a community;

4 The main sectors contributing to GHG emissions are: energy, industry, agriculture, waste and land use, UNFCCC, 1994 5 Based on European assessment 6 CDM is defined as a mechanism for countries in the North to finance GHG reductions in the South, which help the investing country to fulfil its international commitments to reduce GHG.

12 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005  The benefits (or not) to the agricultural sector resulting from the diverting of nutrients to the soil rather than to the atmosphere; and,  Improved local environmental and public health due to better control of carbon and nitrogen-related emissions to the environment.

Environmental Research 13 WASTE, February 2005 CHAPTER 2 CONTEXT OF THE RESEARCH

This section will begin by introducing theoretical concepts regarding the modelling of the carbon and nitrogen cycle, and, specifically, those aspects that pertain to the UWEP C-N research. This will then be followed by a brief discussion regarding the international response to climate change. This will be followed by brief profiles of the four communities in which the UWEP C-N research was completed and what those countries have done in regards to GHG inventories to date.

2.1 The Research Focus: Carbon and Nitrogen This section provides a brief review of the theory of carbon and nitrogen processes that are central to the current UWEP C-N research. This section begins with a brief summary of atmospheric gases7. Since the focus of this research is targeting solid waste, excreta and wastewater management at the community level, subsequent discussions narrow to deal specifically with the generation of methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O).

Figure 1 Factors impacting Global Climate Change Source: Climate Change 2001: Working Group I: The Scientific Basis

The composition of the atmosphere is composed mainly of nitrogen (N2, 78.1%), oxygen (O2, 20.9%), and argon (Ar, 0.93%). These gases have only limited interaction with the incoming solar radiation and they do not interact with the infrared radiation emitted by the Earth.

7 This brief overview is adapted from Climate Change 2001: Working Group I: The Scientific Basis

14 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 However there are a number of trace gases, such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) and ozone (O3), which do absorb and emit infrared radiation (Figure 1).

These so called greenhouse gases, with a total volume-mixing ratio in dry air of less than 0.1% by volume, play an essential role in the Earth’s energy budget. Moreover the atmosphere contains water vapour (H2O), which is also a natural greenhouse gas. The foregoing diagram reflects the complexity of the factors the result in global warming. The release of greenhouse gases is directly related to the global climate we observe, which is visually represented in Figure 2.

2.2 Carbon cycling As can be seen, changes in ocean and land surface driven by human decisions do impact global climate and can result in an increase in global warming. Estimates have been made that since industrialisation, the impact of fossil fuel burning has raised GHG concentration in the atmosphere by 30%.

Figure 2 Worldwide Energy Related CO2 Emissions 1860-1997 Source: PEW Centre on Global Climate Change

Because GHG concentrations trap heat (infra-red rays), with higher concentrations, more heat is captured. In the end, this puts the entire planet on a human-caused trajectory of increasing global warming with global climate changes having potentially disastrous effects. European researchers believe that cuts in GHG emissions in the order of 60 - 80% are required immediately just to stabilize GHG concentrations in the atmosphere at present high levels.

Environmental Research 15 WASTE, February 2005 2.2.1 Carbon and GHG Emissions The focus of the C-N research was primarily on the waste sector. The carbon research team targeted the emission of methane from the management of solid waste. The following chart shows that the waste sector comprises approximately 2% of the anthropogenic sources of greenhouse gases worldwide.

Figure 3 Sources of Anthropogenic GHG Emissions Worldwide in 1990, in Co2E Source: PEW Centre on Global Climate Change

Methane is generated by organic solid waste that decomposes in landfills. Initially the decomposition process is aerobic, with carbon dioxide (CO2) being the primary gas released. As the rate of oxygen consumption outstrips the diffusion of oxygen into the landfill, the decomposition of the degradable organic (DOC) fraction of the solid waste shifts to an anaerobic metabolic pathway.

Figure 4 indicates that after deposition of waste there is a lag before methane is generated. CO2 generation is high during this “lag phase” of methane production. This is due to the residual presence of oxygen in the waste, resulting in initial aerobic decomposition of the degradable organic carbon (DOC), resulting in the release of carbon dioxide. Eventually CO2 generation decreases and methane (CH4) generation increases. Over the lifetime of gas generation from a landfill, it has been calculated that approximately 50% of the gas release is 8 CO2 and the other 50% is CH4. There are also trace amounts of other gas emissions.

8 USEPA (1998), User’s Manual: Landfill Gass Emissions Model, Version 2

16 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 CH4

Figure 4 Generic Landfill Methane Generation Curve Source: Biogas Association The following equations summarize the anaerobic process of methogenisis, which results in methane production.

- - CH3COO + H20  HCO3 + CH4 and - - CO2 + 4H2  4 H2O + CH4

The rate of decomposition of the organic fraction is influenced by a number of site-specific factors. The environment within the landfill influences both the rate of methane generation and the extent that organic material decomposes. Major other factors that directly impact methogenisis include:  oxygen content  moisture content  nutrient content  pH and alkalinity  temperature

The estimated rate and quantity of CO2 and CH4 landfill emissions are of importance to the current research because these gas compounds have been identified as primary contributors to global warming.

2.2.2 Methanogenesis in landfills and the UWEP study sites It should be noted that disposal sites in the UWEP cities, while they are typical of open or partially controlled dumps in the South, are not reflective of the type of disposal facility identified as a “sanitary landfill” in developed economies of the North. This is especially true as the organic or putrescible waste fraction in the South may be diverted from the waste stream via a number of informal system pathways before it reaches either the collection system or the landfill9. This is in contrast to the Northern situation, where organic waste is either diverted via a (measurable) formal source separation and recovery system, or it goes in

9 For example: it is fed to animals belonging to the household; it is buried or burned in the backyard; it is eaten by waste pickers or animals during transfer or on the dumpsite itself; it dries and decomposes on its own during long periods of storage under hot sun; and the like.

Environmental Research 17 WASTE, February 2005 its entirety to the landfill via the collection system. This makes it highly likely that methane generation models from the US or EU may in fact overestimate actual methane generation in the South.

Table 1 indicates the global warming potential of these carbon-based gases. Nitrous oxide (N2O) is also of a concern and the generation of this GHG is discussed in the next section. Table 1 Global Warming Potential Of Selected GHGs Greenhouse Gas Chemical Formula Global Warming Potential10 Molecular weight Carbon Dioxide CO2 144 Methane CH4 23 16 Nitrous Oxide N2O 296 44 Source: IPCC’s Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis, Table 4.1a

Annual emissions worldwide of methane are 600 Tg (Terragram11) and the rate of methane increase has been calculated at approximately .4% per year.

2.3 Nitrogen cycling

2.3.1 Nitrogen and GHG emissions To better understand the work of the UWEP Plus community research into nitrogen-based GHG emissions, a brief overview is given of nitrogen transformation within the environment.12

Animals and humans obtain their nitrogen requirement from their food as proteins or amino acids. These nitrogen compounds enter bodies as part of the food intake, undergo digestion in the digestive system, and are somewhat later assimilated into metabolic processes and ultimately, into cells. A portion of the food intake that remains undigested and whatever is not assimilated is discharged from the body as faeces, or in urine. Nitrogen is present in faeces mainly as proteins. In urine, it is present mainly as uric acid.

Via excretion and death, nitrogen from terrestrial organism is returned to the soil. Bacteria and fungi decompose dead plants and animals. Nitrogen in these organic materials is + eventually released as ammonium (NH4 ). Uric acid from urine is also converted to ammonium and in an aqueous soil environment with adequate oxygen; this ammonium is - - converted by micro-organisms to nitrites (NO2 ) and then further to nitrates (NO3 ) in a process known a nitrification. One possible gaseous by-product from this transformation is Nitrous oxide (N2O), a greenhouse gas.

Most plants obtain their nitrogen from the soil solution in an inorganic form, either nitrate - + (NO3 ) or ammonium (NH4 ). These inorganic forms of nitrogen enter a process (referred to as assimilation), by which they are transformed into amino acids.

10 100-year time horizon from IPCC’s Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis 11 1 Terra gram = 1 million metric tons. 12 This section on the chemical transformations of nitrogen was adapted from Nitrogen Balance in the Municipality of Tingloy, Batangas by A. P. Rollon, M. Dapit, C. Aquino & L. F. De Sales

18 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 Some of the ammonium and nitrates are returned to the plants via uptake and assimilation. Some of the nitrates percolate through the soil and are leached to neighbouring surface or groundwater. These may reach rivers and lakes and eventually coastal waters. Final removal of nitrogen compounds from the soil or water environment occurs when the nitrogen enters living matter and becomes organic nitrogen or leaves as a gas, either as ammonia (NH3), nitrous oxide (N2O) or nitrogen gas (N2).

+ More specifically, in the soil, ammonium ions (NH4 ) exist in chemical equilibrium with free ammonia (NH3), which, as a gas, can be released to the atmosphere via volatilisation. If there is oxygen present, nitrous oxide (N2O) gas can be liberated during this process of nitrification. In the absence of oxygen and with nitrates present, certain microorganisms transfer the nitrates to nitrogen gas (N2) through a process called denitrification.

The representation below emphasises the cyclical nature of nitrogen movement through and the environment. To meet the objective of reducing nitrogen-based greenhouse gas emissions, the human managed systems should direct the nitrogen through pathways that allow recovery of the nutrient value for agriculture, thus reducing the need for supplemental nitrogen-based compounds created synthetically by industry.

Figure 5 Cyclical nature of nitrogen movement Source: Adapted from: Brown, L & J. Johnson (1996) Nitrogen and the Hydrologic Cycle, Ohio State University, Agricultural & Biological Engineering, Columbus, Ohio, USA

2.3.2 Nitrogen in the atmosphere

The atmosphere is the largest reservoir of elemental nitrogen (N2). Nitrogen is also present as nitrous oxide (N2O), ammonia (NH3), nitric oxide (NO) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) in the atmosphere. It is the nitrous oxide that is the primary focus for these case study analyses.

Environmental Research 19 WASTE, February 2005 N2O is a greenhouse gas, and ton for ton, it has a greater impact on global warming than either carbon dioxide (CO2) or methane (CH4). The table in the previous section on carbon- based GHG gives a relative global warming potential for these chemical compounds.

Worldwide, N2O emissions are only 16.5 Tg, which translates to about 6% of the anthropogenic contribution to GHG loadings. Nitrous oxide annual increase is estimated at 0.25 %. The main anthropogenic sources for N2O to the atmosphere from the waste and agricultural sectors are excreta and wastewater treatment, use of fertilizers, waste burning, and biomass combustion.

2.3.3 Trading nitrogen between media

As previously described, N2O gas can be released to the atmosphere through either the nitrification or the denitrification processes. These biologically mediated chemical transformations can result in the reduction of nitrates and ammonium from the water/soil- water column, but releases nitrogen compounds as a gas.

Thus any waste/excreta and wastewater management system needs to consider that decisions to reduce nitrogen pollution in water may increase the level of N2O gas in the atmosphere. As household solid waste, excreta and waste water are directed to natural and manmade pathways that necessarily involve a nitrification/denitrification process, nitrogen compounds can be removed from the water column, but to do this nitrogen compounds can be converted to N2O, which increases GHG loading.

Alternatively, if the treatment of human excreta, excreta and wastewater incorporates natural and manmade systems that recycle the nitrogen back into living biomass or store the nitrogen in a natural sink, e.g. soil, then the potential for reducing atmospheric N2O may be realised.

2.4 The International Response to Climate Change This section provides a brief summary of the historical development of the international community’s response to climate change in general, and to global warming in particular.

2.4.1 The First World Climate Conference in 1979 The First World Climate Conference was held in 1979. This scientific gathering explored how climate change might affect human activities. It issued a declaration calling on the world’s governments "to foresee and prevent potential man-made changes in climate that might be adverse to the well-being of humanity". It also endorsed plans to establish a World Climate Programme under the joint responsibility of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Council of Scientific Unions.

2.4.2 Intergovernmental conferences focusing on climate change in the late 1980s and early 1990s Participants to the intergovernmental conferences on climate change included government policy-makers, scientists, and environmentalists. Together with increasing scientific evidence of global warming, these conferences helped to raise international concern about global climate change.

20 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 The meetings addressed both scientific and policy issues and called for global action. The key events are listed below:  The Villach Conference (October 1985)  The Toronto Conference (June 1988)  The Ottawa Conference (February 1989)  The Tata Conference (February 1989)  The Hague Conference and Declaration (March 1989)  The Noordwijk Ministerial Conference (November 1989)  The Cairo Compact (December 1989)  The Bergen Conference (May 1990)  The Second World Climate Conference (November 1990)

2.4.3 The First Assessment Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1990 Established in 1988 by UNEP and WMO, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was given a mandate to assess the state of existing knowledge about the climate system and climate change. Included in this mandate was the instruction to explore the environmental, economic, and social impacts of climate change, as well as the possible response strategies.

Approved after a painstaking peer-review process, the Report confirmed the scientific evidence for climate change. This Report had a powerful effect on both policy-makers and the general public and provided the basis for negotiations on the Climate Change Convention.

Scientific consensus, as presented in the report, is that global warming will result in an increase in the worldwide average temperature of 1,5 to 4,5 °C over the next 100 years. Since the consequences are quite uncertain, it is correspondingly difficult to predict what the related problems may be and how they may develop.

2.4.4 The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change In 1992, this convention represented a gathering of countries from around the world. Its primary purpose was to address the issue of climate change and the anthropogenic factors affecting global warming. As the result of this historic gathering, and within two years of the 1992 gathering, one hundred and sixty five states joined the convention: as of this writing over 100 countries have ratified it.

The UN framework that grew out of this gathering took effect on March 21, 1994. They also identified the Conference of the Parties (COP) as the Convention’s ultimate authority. The Convention’s framework included the following provisions:  The signatories are legally bound by the framework.  The Convention’s ultimate goal is to stabilize greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.  The Convention determines that GHG stabilization should be achieved within a time frame sufficient to allow: 1) ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, 2) to ensure that food production is not threatened and 3) to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner.

Environmental Research 21 WASTE, February 2005  The Convention established preliminary steps for immediate implementation and created the framework for a process for reaching agreements pertaining to future actions deemed critical to reaching the convention’s goal.  Countries ratifying the convention (called the Parties to the Convention) agreed to take climate change into account in planning and creating policies pertaining to the management of agriculture, energy, natural resources and coastal regions.  Parties to the Convention agreed to develop national programmes to slow worldwide climate change. The convention encouraged them to share technology and to cooperate in other ways to reduce GHG in the energy, transport, industry, agriculture, forestry and waste management sectors.  The Convention encourages scientific research on climate change and the Parties to the Convention agreed to develop a GHG inventory that estimates its contribution to worldwide greenhouse gases. As part of this inventory, countries were also asked to indicate what natural mechanisms were in place to ameliorate releases GHGs by sequestering of carbon in temporary sinks, such as soil or forests.  The Convention ‘s framework looks to the developed economies (Annex 1 Parties) to take the lead in both the reducing GHG emissions and financially supporting GHG emission reductions in developing economies.  The Convention supports the concept of sustainable development and calls for the development and sharing of appropriate technologies.

The Kyoto Protocol In December 1997, in Kyoto, Japan, Parties to the Convention agreed to an historic Protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by harnessing the forces of the global marketplace to protect the environment. The status of the four UWEP Plus cities in relation to ratification of the so-called Kyoto Protocol is presented in Box 1. Box 1 Status of the four UWEP Plus cities in relation to the Kyoto Protocol The status of the four countries involved in the UWEP C-N are:

 Mali ratified the Protocol on 28 March 2002.  Honduras ratified it on 19 July 2000.  The Philippines has not ratified it as of yet.  India obtained its accession on 26 August 2002.

To date, eighty-four (84) countries have ratified the Kyoto protocol. The full list is available at following web address: http://unfccc.int/resource/kpstats.pdf.

Key aspects of the Kyoto Protocol included:  setting emission targets,  establishing timetables for industrialised nations to meet such targets, and  creation of market-based measures for meeting those targets, which necessarily included a meaningful role for developing countries.

The specific limits or GHG emission targets vary from country to country. Those for the key industrial powers are approximately 8 percent below 1990 emission levels for the European Union, 7 percent for the United States, and 6 percent for Japan. The emission targets include all six major greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, as well as three synthetic substitutes for ozone-depleting CFCs.

22 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 The emission targets are to be reached over a five-year emissions budget period rather than by measuring a single year, allowing emissions to be averaged across the extended period. The initial budget period is set to be 2008-2012.

An innovative aspect of the Kyoto Protocol is that it allows nations with emission targets to trade greenhouse gas allowances and consequently to achieve reductions at the lowest cost. In the literature about GHG emissions reference is made to ‘Annex 1’, ‘Non-Annex 1’ and ‘Annex B’ countries. These Annex designations are explained in Box 2 below.

Box 2 Country Designation under the Kyoto Protocol Annex 1 countries These are the 36 industrialised countries and economies in transition listed in Annex 1 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Their responsibilities under the Convention are various, and include a non-binding commitment to reducing their GHG emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2000. Annex B countries These are the 39 emissions-capped industrialised countries and economies in transition listed in Annex B of the Kyoto Protocol. Legally-binding emission reduction obligations for Annex B countries range from an 8% decrease (e.g., EC) to a 10% increase (Iceland) on 1990 levels by the first commitment period of the Protocol, 2008 – 2012. Annex 1 or Annex B? In practice, Annex 1 of the Convention and Annex B of the Protocol are used almost interchangeably. However, strictly speaking, it is the Annex 1 countries that can invest in projects to reduce GHG, while non-Annex 1 countries can be the source of the projects to create GHG credits, even though it is the Annex B countries that have the emission reduction obligations under the Protocol. Non-Annex 1 countries Many countries in the South, including the four countries in which the UWEP C-N is being conducted, are those countries that can receive investment funds from Annex 1 countries.

2.4.5 Financing instruments of the Kyoto Protocol Because of concern for the costs of policies to curb climate change, the Kyoto protocol created three instruments, collectively known as the 'flexibility mechanisms,' to facilitate accomplishment of the objectives of the Convention. A new terminology was adopted to refer to these mechanisms, as detailed below. 1. Emission trading (EI): Article 17 of the Protocol allows for Annex B countries (see Box 2) to transfer among themselves portions of their assigned amounts (AAs) of GHG emissions. Under this mechanism, countries that emit less than they are allowed under the Protocol (their AAs) can sell surplus allowances to those countries that have surpassed their AAs. Such transfers do not necessarily have to be directly linked to emission reductions from specific projects. 2. Joint implementation (JI): This mechanism is set up to allow industrialised countries in the North to work together to meet their GHG emission targets. In addition to the industrialised countries, eleven (11) countries in Central and Eastern Europe are also included in this mechanism. They include Bulgaria, Hungary, the Czech Republic and some countries in the Balkan region. The main reason to set up this mechanism lies in the recognition that the economic costs of reductions

Environmental Research 23 WASTE, February 2005 among industrialised countries can vary widely. Therefore JI can help countries to jointly implement emission reduction projects. The countries that invest are able to deduct the reductions against their own reduction obligations. For example, Japan (through the government or a company) can invest in an emission reduction project in Russia and then use the credits to offset its national reduction target. This mechanism is explained in Article 6 of the Protocol. JI refers to climate change mitigation projects implemented between two Annex 1 countries (see Box 2). JI allows for the creation, acquisition and transfer of "emission reduction units" or ERUs. 3. Clean Development Mechanism (CDM): CDM provides credits for financing the prevention or reduction of GHG emissions. The CDM was established by Article 12 of the Protocol and refers to climate change mitigation projects undertaken between Annex 1 countries and non-Annex 1 countries (see Box 2). While resembling JI, this new mechanism has important points of difference. In particular, project investments must contribute to the sustainable development of the non-Annex 1 host country, and must also be independently certified. This latter requirement gives rise to the term "certified emissions reductions" or CERs, which describe the output of CDM projects. Under the terms of Article 12 these CERs can be banked from the year 2000, eight years before the first commitment period (2008-2012). The average value of global trading is estimated at US $ 3-10 billions/year. In practice, the GHG calculations refer to CO2 equivalent, which is the reference gas for measurement of heat-trapping potential, also known as global warming potential (GWP). For each gas, there is a GWP. For methane for example, the GWP is 21.

2.4.6 The Clean Development Mechanism and waste management The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) has been defined in 1999 and has a dual aim: 1. To achieve cost effective greenhouse mitigation for industrialised countries and 2. To promote sustainable development in developing countries.

The 7th meeting of the Conference of Parties in 2001 defined the most important aspects of the CDM, such as the design of a project activity cycle, as well as the validation and implementation aspects. In the same period, the Parties introduced the notion of small-scale CDM projects, with a value of less than 20,000 CERs.

CDM allows for a project or activity that reduces GHG emissions in one country to compensate for an equivalent quantity of GHG emissions in another country, without changing the global emission balance. One important condition is that the emission reductions must (a) create real, measurable, and long-term benefits related to the mitigation of climate change; (b) Be additional to any that would occur in the absence of the certified project activity. As such, CDM remains a financial mechanism, which promotes co-investment to generate a product, emissions reductions, and allow the producer to sell the product and make a profit on its overall investment.

24 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 2.4.7 Criteria for CDM projects A CDM project has to fulfil certain criteria, which are listed below. A CDM project can only be valid when the CDM procedural rules have been applied strictly and are supervised by an independent, international Executive Board (EB)13.

The criteria for a CDM project are: 1. The project will not add additional net GHGs  Emission reductions are calculated using the following equation: Emission Reductions = hypothetical baseline emissions – effective (project) emissions

2. The project contributes to sustainable development, which includes criteria developed by the host country, and is subject to an Environmental Impact Assessment and stakeholder consultations. 3. The project should be viable from a technical and financial point of view. 4. The project should have the approval of the host country. 5. The project’s emission reductions should be real, measurable and long term. They also should be validated.14

2.4.8 The baseline scenario The baseline scenario is a methodologically derived scenario that describes the most likely course of action and development over time, i.e. the situation that most likely would have prevailed without the CDM project. It is also called the business-as-usual scenario. The following figure illustrates how comparing the baseline scenario with the project scenario allows one to assess the emissions that would have occurred with and without the project.

Baseline scenario (that would occur without the proposed CDM project)

CO2 emissions Measurable Results

Additional ER

Baseline scenario Years

Figure 6 CO2 Emissions and Scenarios Source: WASTE, C-N Workshop held in Gouda, 2003

13 The Executive Board has been appointed at the 7th Conference of Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Marrakech, Morocco, in April 2001. The EB task is to supervise the CDM under the authority and guidance of parties to the Kyoto Protocol. The EB is responsible for the accreditation of operational entities that will validate the project results and to approve new methodologies related to baseline and monitoring plans. EB is also the official registrar for the transfer of CERs between parties. 14 According to paragraph 35 of CDM Modalities and Procedures, "Validation is the process of independent evaluation of a project activity by a designated operational entity against the requirements of the CDM, on the basis of the project design document,"

Environmental Research 25 WASTE, February 2005 Figure 6 shows the trend in CO2 emissions in the case of a baseline scenario, and contrasts this with the case when a CDM project is implemented. In the case of a CDM project additional emission reduction (ER) is achieved.

2.4.9 Allowable sectors for CDM projects The sectors in which CDM projects can be implemented are the following: energy efficiency, switching to renewable fuels, methane gas recovery or removal, hydro-energy, transport, waste incineration and carbon sequestration. Table 2 shows the CDM projects that are currently in the validation process or have been validated already.

Table 2 Number of CDM projects validated or in validation process (April 2004) Energy Forrest Transport Waste incineration Fuel Methane Large Renewable efficiency sequestration Switching Recovery hydropower energy (plantations) 13 2 1 1 6 23 12 40 Source: CDM Watch, Bali Indonesia (http://www.cdmwatch.org/about-us.php)

To date, eight-four CDM projects are planned claiming a total of 239,574,338 CERs. A total of 9 projects are related to GHG from waste activities: one (1) is for waste incineration and (8) are for landfill gas management. These latter projects target landfill generated methane and either flare it or use it as an energy source. Box 3 Example of a Methane Recovery CDM Project Category :Gas Capture or destruction Location :India

Luknow municipal solid waste project

Description of Project : Utilization of methane generated from treatment of municipal solid waste to generate power

Participants (including financial assistance) : World Bank Prototype Carbon Fund (PCF) Asia Bio-energy

Gas reduced/sequestered : CH4

GHG reductions claimed (in TCO2e) : 1,018,477

Crediting period (years) : 10

Status : The baseline and monitoring methodology for this project has been approved

Comments: The project has three components: bio-methanation; displacement of fossil fuels; displacement of chemical fertilizer by the organic fertilizer produced by bio-methanation. The current PDD only documents the expected reductions resulting from bio-methantion and the reduction of methane emissions from the landfill. Asia Bio-energy is a special purpose company that includes Entec UM GBH of Austria

Further Information: www.prototypecarbonfund.org

26 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 2.5 CDM Funding Mechanisms Under CDM, there are a number of so-called funding mechanisms, which are described here.

2.5.1 The Community Development Carbon Fund (CDCF) of the World Bank At the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002, the World Bank launched the ‘Community Development Carbon Fund’ (CDCF), which targets small projects in least developed countries and rural areas of all developing countries. The idea behind this fund is that small projects in these areas would miss out on benefits of the international carbon market without this type of targeted intervention. The fund aims to catalyse private capital to invest in the poorest of the poor. Projects funded under the CDCF will pay particular attention to the benefits of the project to the local community, and will monitor such benefits together with the creation of the emission reductions.

2.5.2 The CDM versus the Global Environment Facility The Global Environment Facility (GEF), established in 1991, helps developing countries fund projects and programs that protect the global environment. GEF grants support projects related to biodiversity, climate change, international waters, land degradation, the ozone layer, and persistent organic pollutants. This fund is managed by ODA, the Office for Development Assistance of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

Table 3 summarizes the major characteristics of each fund.

Table 3 Comparison between CDM and GEF CDM GEF Financial mechanism for implementing the Financial mechanism for implementing of the Kyoto Protocol UNFCCC and the Biodiversity Convention Developed countries use this mechanism to GEF finances the incremental costs of global comply with their committed GHG environmental protection, including prevention of emission reductions. The financing is used global warming processes and protection of for projects in developing countries that biodiversity. reduce emissions of GHG.

2.6 The UWEP C-N Research Sites The UWEP C-N research was primarily an effort to model GHG emissions based on current and projected domestic solid waste, excreta and wastewater management systems with communities of the South. The research was done in the four cities where the UWEP programme has been active for a period of between six and nine years, the so-called “pilot project setting (PPS) cities. These are:  Bamako, Mali  Bangalore, India  La Ceiba, Honduras  Tingloy, Philippines

The many years of UWEP programme activities have allowed the generation and capture of data that is useful to the environmental research, although it may not have achieved the desired level or rigour or comparability. In addition, each of these cities already had, in 2001,

Environmental Research 27 WASTE, February 2005 a longstanding project management relationship between WASTE and the regional UWEP programme manager, or “partners.” Thus, there was some confidence going into the C-N research that the partner in each of the cities would be competent to select and manage the local research teams charged with collecting community-specific data as input into the carbon and nitrogen GHG models.

The four case-study communities vary not only in population size but also for such factors as climate, topography, association with water bodies and seasonal cycles. In addition, the communities have had different cultural, economic and political histories, which have influenced the development of the waste, excreta and wastewater management systems seen today. Due to the inherent variability across these communities’ waste, excreta and wastewater management systems, the reader is cautioned in attempting to make any cross- community comparison of research results.

What follows are brief profiles of the communities targeted for the UWEP C-N research.

2.6.1 Bamako, Mali Commune IV in Bamako, Mali is one of the six Communes (Municipalities), which form the metropolitan area of the District of Bamako. It has about 200,000 inhabitants and is located in the western part of Bamako. It includes some peri-urban areas where agriculture is practised. Commune IV is divided into eight Quarters, (the lowest units of the local government structure) of which the traditional Chiefs and their councillors form powerful leaders.

The population is socio-economically mixed. It includes professionals, civil servants, and teachers as well as traders, businessmen, self-employed artisans, labourers, and livestock owners. Some people have a reasonable income, while many have low or very little income.

Photo 1 Open sewer with solid waste in Photo 2 Organics Recovery in Bamako, Bamako, Mali Mali ©WASTE ©WASTE

There are no official centralized sites for waste or excreta and wastewater treatment. The population has only limited involvement in waste and sanitation activities. Many households have no soak pits for the disposal of wastewater. Or households have soak pits and latrines that do not meet official standards.

The population generally re-uses objects or materials as far as possible. Only a few artisans are engaged in recycling of waste materials, notably plastic, household batteries, and metal.

28 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 The micro/small enterprises (GIE) and cooperatives, which alone carry out primary waste collection, lack a suitable technology for household garbage collection. Their service with donkey carts is irregular and expensive to operate. Secondary waste collection from the transfer disposal sites in the neighbourhoods, to be carried out by the Waste Department, is insufficient and irregular. This encourages people to dispose of their garbage in indiscriminate and careless manner in public open space.

The municipal authorities in Commune IV have had, until very recently, only limited interest in waste management, partly because the highly centralized institutional infrastructure curbs the effectiveness of decisions, and partly because waste and environmental cleanliness are not political issues. This has been changing during the period of UWEP Plus, 2001-2003.

2.6.2 Bangalore, India The city of Bangalore covers an area of about 225 sq. km, and has a population of 5 to 6 million inhabitants (2001). It is situated in the south of India and is today regarded as one of the major cities of India where industrialisation, especially in the area of information technology, is taking place at a very rapid pace.

Since 1992 the cleaning and garbage collection from several areas had been handed over to commercial private contractors on basis of a tender system. Seventy such areas, falling under 50 wards had been privatised.

In spite of the fact that eight potential landfill sites had been identified several years ago for the disposal of the city’s garbage, none had been commissioned. Generally waste is taken to the outskirts of the city and allowed to decompose in unofficial disposal locations. The sites often then become areas for the informal sector to raise crops.

Photo 3 Bangalore, India Photo 4 Composting Organic Solid Waste in ©WASTE Bangalore, India ©WASTE

There is both composting and vermin-composting operating in and around Bangalore. Challenges facing this solid waste management alternative include establishing compost production as a stand alone industry that is not subsidised by volunteer labour from socially

Environmental Research 29 WASTE, February 2005 responsible NGOs, making a usable compost product that can be sold to surrounding end- uses, monitoring the compost process to create a stabile product efficiently.

Photo 5 Collection of Recyclables, Bangalore, India ©WASTE

This was due to the fact that production processes needed continuous monitoring for process control. The study also revealed that the cost per kilogram of compost was much higher in the neighbourhood schemes compared to the centralized and large-scale operations. Another problem concerned the marketing of the products which is a difficult task for groups that run mainly on voluntary energy and whose genesis is based on environmental or social reasons rather than economic.

On the other hand, collection and processing of recyclables is well developed within the community. There is a large force of informal sector collectors, who are supported by NGOs throughout the city. These same individual may work for the municipal government as street cleaners.

Primary collection of materials is by hand, bicycle or motorized carts that can gain access to the narrow streets of the City and associated informal settlements. Material is then often brought to a centralized temporary disposal site. This site is along a major access route so that larger trucks can gain access to move material beyond the city’s bounds.

2.6.3 La Ceiba, Honduras La Ceiba is the third largest city in the country located on the north coast of Honduras it is the capital of the Department of Atlántida when this department was formed in 1902. The population of La Ceiba has grown significantly over the last 10-20 years and has passed the 150.000 in 2003. The city covers 639.45 km² with the urban area covering 73.22 km² (11.5%

30 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 of total area). The most important economic activities in La Ceiba are agriculture (fruit for export), tourism, industry and commerce. La Ceiba has a rather special social character, being known for its concentration of artists, intellectuals, writers, and theatres.

An estimate from the municipality is that household waste generation in La Ceiba is between 75-80 tonnes/day. This would suggest a per capita generation rate of 0.51-0.54 kgpcd. Studies carried out by IPESH in 1997 and ACEPESA in 2000 gave other estimates as they took different factors into account. Nevertheless, both surveys provide an estimate for household waste generation of approximately 0.5 kgpcd.

The municipality does not currently include source separation and materials recovery programmes as part of the official solid waste management system in La Ceiba. This means that material recovery and recycling is undertaken in a largely informal manner. There are two main groups involved in the informal recycling sector; those that collect from households, local tipping points and on the street within the city boundary and those that work directly on the city dumpsite.

Waste treatment in La Ceiba is limited to small local recyclers that collect waste materials for their own use. For some materials e.g. metals’, recycling is quite well developed, as there are regional recyclers and exporters who are willing to pay for the transportation of the metal from La Ceiba to their operations in San Pedro Sula.

Composting has not been attempted with municipal waste in La Ceiba. Although the large organic fraction (estimated at between 60-80%) of the household waste, composting could be a valid part of an integrated waste management system. One of the key questions that remain to be addressed however is the market potential for the composting product. La Ceiba is located in a very fertile area where the need for soil improver is limited and hence it may be difficult to generate a market for the composting product and without this market the economic if not the environmental attractiveness of this option is significantly reduced.

There is no incineration capacity in La Ceiba for either municipal or hospital waste. Given the waste composition is largely organic it would suggest that incineration may not be an appropriate treatment method for municipal solid waste. Hospital waste is often collected separately but delivered to the final disposal site along with the rest of the municipal waste. It is clear that improvements in the treatment and disposal of hospital waste are required to minimise the risks posed by this type of waste to human health. Incineration could be an option for this type of waste.

Waste disposal is via dumping at a site at Los Laureles some 5-10 km from the city centre. This site has been in operation for approximately 15 years. Initially waste dumping took place on municipal owned lands, however, over time, dumping has expanded to the lower part of the site, which is privately owned. The perimeter of the site is unmarked and waste pickers many of whom live in Los Laureles and any other interested members of the public have free access. The type of waste dumped at the site is also uncontrolled.

Until 2000, the municipality tried to improve the site by periodically filling and compacting the waste. In mid-1999, important advances has been made such as the control of insects, birds and domestic animals on site. In addition, when the waste was covered some of the bad smells emanating from the site disappeared, as did the spontaneous and intentional fires.

Environmental Research 31 WASTE, February 2005 However, the budgeting crisis of 2001, led to the deterioration of the site and the return of these problems. During a visit to the site in December 2001, it was clear that site management was sporadic at best. Waste was not compacted or covered and there was clear evidence of both hospital and industrial waste being mixed with the general municipal waste.

La Ceiba is the third largest city in the country located on the north coast of Honduras it is the capital of the Department of Atlántida when this department was formed in 1902. The population of La Ceiba has grown significantly over the last 10-20 years and has passed the 150.000 in 2003. The city covers 639.45 km² with the urban area covering 73.22 km² (11.5% of total area). The most important economic activities in La Ceiba are agriculture (fruit for export), tourism, industry and commerce. La Ceiba has a rather special social character, being known for its concentration of artists, intellectuals, writers, and theatres.

Waste treatment in La Ceiba is limited to small local recyclers that collect waste materials for their own use. For some materials e.g. metals’ recycling is quite well developed, as there are regional recyclers and exporters who are willing to pay for the transportation of the metal from La Ceiba to their operations in San Pedro Sula.

Photo 6 The lake near La Ceiba, Honduras ©WASTE

Composting has not been attempted with municipal waste in La Ceiba. Although the large organic fraction (estimated at between 60-80%) of the household waste, composting could be

32 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 a valid part of an integrated waste management system. One of the key questions that remain to be addressed however is the market potential for the composting product. La Ceiba is located in a very fertile area where the need for soil improver is limited and hence it may be difficult to generate a market for the composting product and without this market the economic if not the environmental attractiveness of this option is significantly reduced.

Photo 7 Centralized Excreta and wastewater Treatment in La Ceiba, Honduras ©WASTE

However, the budgeting crisis of 2001, led to the deterioration of the site and the return of these problems. During a visit to the site in December 2001, it was clear that site management was sporadic at best. Waste was not compacted or covered and there was clear evidence of both hospital and industrial waste being mixed with the general municipal waste.

Environmental Research 33 WASTE, February 2005 2.6.4 Tingloy, Philippines Tingloy is an island municipality within the Batangas Bay Region of Batangas province. The Batangas Bay Region is situated some 100 km south of Manila, the capital of the Philippines. The region is very urbanised and has several municipalities with towns ranging from 15,000 – 60,000 inhabitants.

Photo 8 Tingloy, The Philippines ©WASTE

Batangas Bay is a semi-enclosed body of water, bordered by the mainland municipalities of Bauan, San Pascual, and Mabini. It also includes Batangas city, Verde Island and the municipality of Tingloy on Maricaban Island. Its total water area is about 220 square km and the total coastline is 470 km.

Tingloy covers around 1/16 of the entire island of Maricaban. A large part of the island is forested and uninhabited. Rugged hills and sloping mountains with lowland plains and valleys and flat shorelines characterise the topography of the area

Photo 9 Open Disposal Site, Tingloy, Philippines ©WASTE Tingloy is composed of 15 barangays each headed by a barangay captain. The Poblacion area, the focus of UWEP Plus activities, is composed of three barangays (Barangay 13, 14 and 15), which are more urbanised compared to the rest of the barangays.

34 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 The coastal area has been experiencing steady industrial development. Although the municipalities have official formal solid waste collection services, performance is poor and coverage is very limited. Waste from areas without collection is mostly burned or composted in the back yard. Some groups of houses have a small-scale common composting site in a pit.

Itinerant waste buyers (IWBs) offer regular collection of recyclables from households, and pay a small amount for especially glass bottles and jars and metal. Until recently, most of these were transferred via normal shipping to dealers in Metro Manila. The activities of the UWEP programme have brought some change in the management of recyclables: they are now collected more intensively, and brought to the BBREC recycling co-operative, which has received support from UWEP

Within the more urbanised areas of Tingloy, residents use either private or public toilets, some of which are equipped with septic systems. The septic systems are reported to be in poor state and not to function adequately.

Photo 10 Excreta and wastewater exiting to the environment in Tingloy, Philippines ©WASTE

In the more rural areas, there is open urination and defecation, either near houses or into rivers or the sea. There is also some burning of dried excreta.

2.6.5 Country GHG Inventories In 1988, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an international scientific and technical body, began to build a global consensus on the issue and these efforts finally

Environmental Research 35 WASTE, February 2005 culminated in the formation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Signed in June 1992, by over 150 nations, at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, UNFCCC has since then been the basic document setting guidelines for international negotiations on climate change.

In order to estimate GHG emissions, each country, which has signed the protocol, prepared a national GHG inventory using UNFCCC guidance15 for measuring the GHG impact. The UNFCCC approach allows each country to identify the sources and sinks of GHGs associated with each country’s development trajectory.

A brief summary of the current inventory of GHG emissions in the research countries is presented in Table 4 below, which presents CO2 equivalents generated by the UWEP partner countries. Table 4 Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Emissions Country Philippines Mali Honduras India CO2 Emissions (1000 tonnes) 75.988 485 5.115 1.061.050 CO2 Emissions per capita (tonnes) .9 .00005 .7 .9 Source: Earth Resources Institute: Earth Trends16

As can be seen, the countries emission rates range from .00005 tonnes per capita, a total of 485 megatonnes, in Mali to over 0.9 tonnes per capita, or more than one million mega-tonnes for India. This range is attributed to the variation in the size of population, size and type of economy, historical development, cultural and climatic differences. It is interesting to note that, with the exception of Mali, the generation rate per capita for all of the country locations of the UWEP PPS cities is of the same order of magnitude.

Table 5 Total equivalent CO2 emissions by sector Sector/Country Philippines17 Mali18 Honduras19 India20 Waste 9% 19% 7% Agriculture 32% 40% 22% 34% Land Use Change and trace 30% Forestry Industry 10% 5% 2% Energy 49% 60% 24% 56% Source: National Inventories/Research

The specific methodology adopted for these country inventories were taken from the Revised 1996 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories. Each inventory calculated the presence of human-induced or anthropogenic greenhouse gases in the atmosphere attributed to activities and processes. To achieve greater accuracy, the UNCCC suggests an

15 The guidelines consist of three UNFCC separate documents: the reporting instructions, the workbook and the reference manual. 16 Earth Trends: The Environmental Information Portal is sponsored by Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, UNEP, SIDA, UDEP and the World Bank and can be found at http://earthtrends.wri.org/text/CLI/data_tables/data_table1.htm 17 Tracking Greenhouse Gases, the Manila Observatory, Philippines, 1994. 18 Based upon information from the regional project PNUD/GEF RAF/93/G31 19 Government of Honduras. 1996. Executive summary. Central America Project on Climate Change. Honduras: Ministerio de Recursos Naturales. 20 India’s National GHGs inventory for 1990, ADB-GEF-UNDP. 1998. Asia Least-Cost Greenhouse Gas Abatement Strategy: India National Report

36 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 analysis per sector. The sectors upon which this analysis focused were: energy, industry, agriculture, waste and land use change and forestry.

These first national greenhouse gas emissions inventory was prepared with the 1995 period as a reference. Table 5 reflects the work done to date by each country to inventory their anthropogenic GHG emissions by sector.

As can be seen, energy related activities dominate each of the country’s GHG emissions. Also, because these countries have a significant agrarian economy, the impacts from the agricultural sector also dominate.

The waste sector by comparison is a smaller contributor to the overall countries’ inventories, with Honduras’ waste sector being accounted as a greater percentage contributor than what the other countries reported.

Mali has not completed a countrywide inventory but has developed, as part of a UNDP/GEF (United Nations Development Programme/Global Environment Facility) study, some preliminary data. It has indicates that the household sector with its massive burning of the solid biomass is the main contributor for CO2 emissions. As is true for the other UWEP partner countries, the agricultural sector is a significant contributor.

2.6.6 Estimating GHG emissions at community level: the UWEP Plus C-N modelling The next section will review the approach taken to estimate the GHG emissions at the community level by the four UWEP partners. It addresses both the research protocol for estimating carbon-based GHG emission generated by the management of the solid waste and nitrogen-based GHG emission emissions associated with the generation and management of human excreta and wastewater.

Environmental Research 37 WASTE, February 2005 CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH PROTOCOL FOR UWEP PLUS ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH

This section will review the approach taken to estimate the GHG emissions at the community level by the four UWEP partners, by explaining the Integrated Sustainable Waste Management (ISWM) approach, which structured all of the field investigations. This will be followed by a statement of the research goal and associated objectives and the proposed research hypothesis. The discussion then turns to the specific approaches for estimating both the carbon and nitrogen-based greenhouse emissions, from the solid waste, excreta and wastewater streams, respectively. The section closes with a discussion of the limitations to the research model.

3.1 ISWM Approach

Figure 7 ISWM diagram

The concept of ISWM, which is presented in Figure 7 recognises three important dimensions in waste, excreta and wastewater management: (1) the stakeholders involved in and affected by waste management, (2) the (practical and technical) elements of the waste, excreta and wastewater system and (3) the sustainability aspects of the local context that should be taken into account when assessing and planning solid waste, sanitation, and excreta and wastewater

38 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 management systems. Figure 7 presents this for solid waste management. For other sectors, like sanitation, the system elements in the middle would be different

3.1.1 The First ISWM Dimension Stakeholders: ISWM is, first and foremost, about participation of stakeholders. A stakeholder is a person or organisation that has a stake, an interest in - in this case- waste, excreta and wastewater management. A number of key stakeholders are listed in diagram. The municipality, with its general responsibility for urban cleanliness and the citizens or households who use the system, are (almost) always stakeholders in waste, excreta and wastewater management. But other stakeholders differ in each city, so they need to be identified in the local context and grouped according to their interests.

Stakeholders by definition have different roles and interests in relation to waste, excreta and wastewater management; the challenge of the ISWM process is to get them to agree to cooperate for a common purpose, that of improving the waste system. In addition, the stakeholders in a particular city or region share a common social and geographic context and may be bound together by other systems in addition to solid waste

3.1.2 The Second ISWM Dimension: Waste, excreta and wastewater System Elements, The waste and sanitation system elements are sometimes referred to as the technical components of waste and sanitation management. Waste and sanitation system elements refer to how waste, excreta and black and grey water are handled and where they finally are discharged to nature. While traditional management strategies focus mainly on centralized treatment, this is inherently an end-of-pipe approach. The ISWM approach also considers a number of alternative management strategies which try avoid or minimise initial generation of wastes and excreta, but if generated then one first looks to reuse and recycling of the materials before centralized systems to treat or dispose of the materials.

For solid waste, such technical components could involve re-use strategies for handling materials, better coordination of collection and transfer of materials, and utilization of recycling and composting approaches and technology. Final disposal sites are then only used for that material that can neither be reused, recycled nor composted. For human excreta and wastewater technical components can include decentralized treatment of wastes through septic systems, latrines and composting toilets. But a core concept under which this research was conducted is what is known as an Ecological Sanitation (EcoSan) approach. This approach refers to managing urine and faeces without water. It is an approach that saves water, protects water quality, prevents pollution and returns valuable nutrients into the loop on which our food security depends. Important characteristics of ecological sanitation are:  Efficient destruction of pathogenic organisms  Separation at source: no mixing of water, urine and faeces  No drinking water, or very little drinking water, is used  Recycling of urine, faeces and grey water  Emphasis on logistics instead of infrastructure

Environmental Research 39 WASTE, February 2005 Figure 8 Waste management hierarchy Source: Adapted from SPG for Municipal Solid Waste Management, ERM 2001 Other alternatives to combine with decentralized strategies are to improve the use of a centralized treatment approach so to recover and utilize resources inherent in the waste and excreta.

3.1.3 The Third ISWM Dimension: Sustainability Aspects: Within ISWM the third dimension consists of six sustainability aspects, or lenses, through which the existing waste system can be assessed and with which a new or expanded system can be planned. The sustainability aspects, ranging from political-legal, to social-cultural, institutional-organizational, technical-performance, environmental-health and financial- economic, cover the range of factors influencing solid waste activities and, taken together, predict or influence the sustainability of the entire system.

3.2 Research Goal The goal of the C-N research is to assess whether it is possible to provide municipal managers, in charge of urban waste and excreta management, with insight into how an Integrated Sustainable Waste Management approach (ISWM) contributes to the reduction GHG emissions, and at the same time how such an approach contributes to increased reuse of nitrogen and carbon in agriculture. By doing so, ISWM contributes to the overall objectives of the convention on climate change, which are: preservation of the atmosphere, poverty alleviation and securing food production.

To attain this stated goal, the following objectives were identified:  At a community level, determine to what extent waste, excreta and wastewater management practices contribute to creation of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG).  To determine the impact of introducing system improvement, or modernisation, based on ISWM may have in changing a community’s GHG emissions.

40 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005  Ascertain whether the results from the research could support the claim that interventions based on the ISWM approach within a community can qualify as a Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).

The research had a specific focus on estimating the generation of methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O). Certain other greenhouse gases are associated with the management these materials, in particular carbon dioxide (CO2), but as can be seen in the following table, methane and nitrous oxide have a much greater impact on global warming potential than CO2, when considered on a ton per ton basis.

Table 6 Global Warming Potential of GHGs Greenhouse Gas Chemical Formula Global Warming Potential21 Molecular weight Carbon Dioxide CO2 144 Methane CH4 23 16 Nitrous Oxide N2O 296 44

3.3 Research Hypotheses The research took as its main hypothesis that within the boundaries of the analysis, implementing an ISWM approach to the management of these material streams would stimulate or directly cause a net reduction in a community’s greenhouse gas emissions of methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O).

A significant portion of the solid waste stream, including human excreta, is composed of materials that are high in carbon, which has the potential of creating CH4 emissions. Similarly, wastewater, which is comprised primarily of urine, is high in nitrogen, which can be a source for N2O emissions.

Since it is assumed that an ISWM approach represents a mechanism to reduce the ultimate release or disposal of solid waste, excreta and waste water, the hypothesis is that the introduction of an ISWM approach will also reduce the carbon and nitrogen that can be the source of a community’s GHG emissions.

3.4 Research Approach: Life Cycle Analysis The overall logic to approaching GHG loading estimates within the researchers’ case study communities is often termed a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) approach22. The LCA concept, often referred to as a “cradle-to-grave” assessment, has been utilized within the waste management field to model environmental impacts from waste material generation, transportation, transformation and eventual disposition.

21 These values are based on a 100-year time horizon and can be found in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis, Table 4.1a 22 For further discussion regarding LCA approaches and methodologies one should refer to both the United Nations Environmental Program on Sustainable Consumption (http://www.uneptie.org/pc/sustain/lcinitiative/lca_information.htm) and the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (http://www.setac.org/lca.html).

Environmental Research 41 WASTE, February 2005 Figure 9 Organizational Development of a LCA Approach Source: United Nations Environmental Program: Program on Sustainable Consumption The LCA approach utilized for this research focuses upon material mass balances, in which materials are inventoried and tracked through the waste, excreta and wastewater management systems and then CH4 and N2O emissions are estimated. Such input-output constructs for materials are often treated as bounded systems with a clear demarcation of what materials and associated processes will be included within the analysis.

For the UWEP Plus C-N research, it is assumed the movement of carbon- and nitrogen- based compounds parallel the movement of the wastes and wastewater, with transformations of these compounds into forms that contribute to GHG emissions.

The material balance, being an input-output approach to analysis, allows for the characterisation of transformations within the system under study, and specifies information about these transformations, including when and where transformations occur in time and space. The temporal and spatial locations where such transformations occur are considered the “compartments” of the system, and these form the steps in the LCA analysis.

For these case studies, the inputs are the degradable organic carbon associated with solid and human excreta and the inorganic and the organic and inorganic forms of nitrogen compounds associated with human excreta and wastewater. The outputs are the releases of CH4 and N2O compounds into the atmosphere. The transformations within the system include physical and chemical changes in the carbon and nitrogen-based compounds as they move through the management system and are released into the soil and water environment.

42 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 Households

Excreta Food Wastewater Waste W/WW Direct deposition SW Diversion

Soil Surface Burned Animal grazing water Excreta Excreta Wastewater Wastewater

Manure

W/WW On-site treatment W/WW Municipal sewage

Soil Surface water

Septic Surface Tanks Latrines water Sludge

Soil

Soil Ground Sludge Ground water water

Soil

GHG

Figure 10 Generic process flow diagram of human excreta, excreta and wastewater management system

3.4.1 Analysis of the Baseline Scenario In order to answer whether the ISWM approach can be used to reduce GHG emissions, the researchers first developed what was characterised as a baseline scenario, which reflected the current material balance and flow within the four communities’ waste, excreta and wastewater management systems. From this, CH4 and N2O emissions were estimated.

Once each researcher had gained and documented a clear understanding of the existing waste, excreta and wastewater system for each community, the next step was to construct a projected ISWM scenario, designed to build upon already existing centralized and decentralized approaches but to increase the recovery and utilization of resources.

Environmental Research 43 WASTE, February 2005 The hypothesis was tested when the emissions of the GHG gases from both the baseline and ISWM scenario were compared. If the ISWM scenario showed a reduction is such emissions the hypothesis was deemed true.

3.5 Model Structure The methodologies selected for the carbon and nitrogen cycles will be described in this section. There are differences in methodology used to model the carbon gas emissions versus nitrogen gas emissions. The carbon analysis was based on the IPCC approach (IPCC 1997), which focuses on solid waste, using existing assumptions to estimate net methane release from the four research sites.

For nitrogen balances, the researchers had no existing model to use for calculating allowed estimates of nitrogen gas release from the combination of centralized and decentralized systems found within the study communities. WASTE did not have a clear alternative either, so each research team proceeded to develop different approaches that borrowed from existing models.

Having no standardized structure conducting the nitrogen analysis prior to the beginning of the research, the first task of the researchers was to develop a structured approach for the variety of decentralized nitrogen management systems in the four cities in this study.23

Researchers assessed in detail the main sources of nitrogen emissions into water, soil and air and identified the associated routes to these receptors. They then looked to where already existing models could allow an analysis for decentralized releases into soil and water environments, which, in turn, would allow estimates of nitrogen-based GHG releases.

This multiplicity of approaches has the benefit that a broader spectrum of research approaches is initially developed, from which appropriate guidelines can be created to build upon and refine each other’s work. The drawback of such an approach produces reported estimates of greenhouse gas emissions that have limited comparability across the four communities.

3.5.1 Methodologies for the Carbon cycle The guidelines developed under the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in short the IPCC model, was used by all the researchers for analysing the four case study communities, which allowed the researchers to estimate the GHG emissions from solid waste management activities. In addition, the Waste Reduction Model of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in short the WARM model, also provided emission factors for specific waste management activities.

Both of these models are ultimately based on the “Scholl Canyon” model. The Scholl Canyon model is used in the USA to model landfill gas management, based on modelling a variety of parameters including landfill site and design characteristics, such as depth, slope, and the like, waste characteristics, climatic factors like temperature and rainfall pattern, and other factors. The formula calculates methane (CH4) production over a long period of time rather than at one

23 The researchers from each of the Partner communities developed and presented their approaches at the Environmental Research Workshop held in Gouda on March 2003. Based on their initial work and what they learned from the other researchers, they refined their initial analysis to develop projected baseline and alternative GHG emission estimates.

44 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 point in time. Its main limitation is that the methane generation rate is based on US climate, rainfall, and waste composition data.

The Scholl Canyon Model was not utilized for the UWEP Plus research; it would have required more time than was available to develop representative, site-specific input factors for each of the communities. Instead, the two other models, IPCC and Warm, were depliyed the researchers to estimate GHG emissions. The IPCC model Researchers in the four UWEP Plus cities used the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) guidelines for greenhouse gas inventories for initially ascertaining the net GHG impact from introducing the ISWM approach in each of the four communities.

The IPCC guidelines present a variety of approaches for the GHG inventory. The first is considered a purely theoretical gas yield methodology based on a standard algorithm and utilizing, to a lesser or greater extent, generic assumptions within the guidelines themselves.

The second approach is a permutation of the first, which utilizes mass balances reflecting actual waste materials process flow and compartmentalisation for a specific study location, then estimating the degradable carbon (DOC) content in solid waste and using this to estimate methane (CH4) generation. This is in part also based on generic assumptions provided by the IPCC.

Simply stated, the material balance approach utilizes focus a core algorithm shown in Figure 11.

Methane Emissions (Gg/yr) = (MSWt x MSWf x MCF x DOC x DOCf x F x 16/12 – R) x (1-Ox)

MSWt = Total household MSW generated (Gg/yr) MSWf = Fraction of MSW disposed to SWDS MCF = Methane Correction Factor DOC = Degradable Organic Carbon DOCf = Fraction DOC Dissimilated F = Fraction of CH4 in landfill gas R = Recovered CH4 Ox = Oxidation Factor

Figure 11 Methane emissions algorithm from the IPCC model

The IPCC guidelines provide default information that can be used to determine the GHG (methane) emissions without utilizing any other information except the number of people within the study area. Alternatively, a number of the default coefficients can be replaced with input data that is representative of a particular locality.

This IPCC mass balance approach was utilized for all four of the case study communities. The researchers did not use default solid waste information, rather they developed specific solid waste generation and composition coefficients reflective of the current situation within their particular community.

The IPCC model is ideally used when there is very little information about the urban solid waste quantities for a location. The calculations are based on the Degradable Organic Carbon fraction

Environmental Research 45 WASTE, February 2005 (DOC), which depends on specific waste composition. Figure 11 explains the calculation procedure. The analysis makes a major assumption in treating all waste material that is not recovered as landfilled, and therefore subject to methanogenesis. Thus, the quantities landfilled form the basis for determining GHG emissions from solid waste. The IPCC model also treats all potentially formed CH4 as being released in the year the waste is disposed. The model focuses only on methanogenesis, excluding CO2 generation at landfill sites from the model’s algorithm.24

The mass balance approach also treats all calculated GHG emissions as being discharged in the same year that the waste is generated. For both models, this is problematic, as in reality it is seldom the case that this occurs. The biochemical breakdown of depends on a number of factors, such as how well the disposal site is managed, the depth of the disposed material, the moisture content of the material, the internal and ambient temperature of the material, etc. the transformation of the DOC. Even under optimal conditions (which are seldom achieved in the North, let alone in South landfills), the time period for bio-degradation of degradable carbon compounds within a landfill environment easily exceeds one year.

To address this issue of the rate of degradable organic carbon (DOC) transformation, the IPCC methodology introduces a third approach to GHG emission modelling. This is characterised as the Theoretical First Order Kinetic Methodologies. Such a kinetic approach is designed to include the rate of DOC transformation in each of the model compartments in the emission estimate; thus the results better reflect the aggregate GHG emissions in the current year based on what waste entered the system over the preceding years and are still experiencing DOC transformation, as well as calculating the DOC for waste entering the system in the current year.

Due to the time constraints associated with the current C-N research effort, researchers did not utilize a kinetic approach. Rather they based their over modelling efforts on the mass balance approach assuming that this approach, although not reflecting DOC transformation rates, does give a reasonable estimate of the current year’s emissions. This is based on the overarching assumptions that the current year’s waste generation is similar to the recent past (material already in the process train) and there is not a great deal of variation from the recent past in the formal and informal waste management institutional structures that handle, transport, recover and dispose of this material. In cases where the solid waste system is in rapid transition, such as Bangalore and Tingloy, this assumption is also problematic; it works better for La Ceiba and Bamako, where changes happen more slowly. The WARM model The Waste Reduction Model is based on the quantities of GHG emitted as the result of managing solid waste through recycling, composting, combustion and landfilling. The model calculates emissions in metric tons of carbon equivalent (CE) and carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2E) by waste material types such as metals, kitchen waste and so on.

The WARM model models results according both to waste composition and distribution of waste activities. The sources for the model coefficients are based on earlier life-cycle analysis

24 The “F” or fraction of methane in landfill gas has a default of .5 (or 50%). A significant fraction of the other 50% is CO2. But this impact is not calculated. And although the volume of methane and carbon dioxide generation may be comparable, the GHG impact of CH4 is 23 times greater the CO2. The underlying assumption is that the CO2 generation would occur naturally, thus it is excluded from a model the focuses upon net increases in anthropogenic sources of GHG.

46 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 studies25. The model offers analysts the opportunity to complete a set of data tables, used for filling in specific quantities of materials that are directed towards different solid waste management strategies. Then, the model applies previously developed and validated default GHG emission values to the data tables, and produces a set of modelled, calculated results.26

Depending on the specific material, the boundaries of the life-cycle analysis inherent in the Warm model’s assumptions expand beyond the community. For example, this model brings into the calculation the question of GHG emissions related to manufacturing, distribution, and other steps prior to consumer use; that is, emissions related to the upstream history of particular materials. In this it is similar to the “rucksack” analysis of Wuppertal Institute, which assigns effects in country of manufacturing to materials sold in Europe.

Table 7 provides an example of the model’s coefficients that reflect avoided GHG emissions from the introduction of specific solid waste management strategies within a particular community. Table 7 GHG-emission factors by waste material and activity Type of material Source Recycling Storage at Composting Burning reduction landfill Metals - -7,13 - - - Glass/ bottle -0,56 -0,323 - - - Hard plastics -1,976 -1,533 - - 0,82 Plastic film -2,46 -1,896 - - 0,82 Paper -3,27 -3,832 -0,85 - 0,14 Food waste - - -0,08 -0,2 0,14 Yard trimmings - - -0,85 -0,2 0,14

(metric tons of CO2 equivalent per tons of listed material) Source: US EPA (2002), Solid Waste Management and Greenhouse Gas: A Lifecycle Assessment of Emissions and Sinks

One major shortcoming of utilizing the Warm model for the case study communities is that the GHG gas emission factors reflect manufacturing processes within the developed economies of the North but may not be reflective of economies in the South.

Only the research team in the Tingloy, Philippines community utilized components of the WARM model. This resulted in an expansion of the boundaries of their LCA beyond the community’s waste management system. This resulted in the reported emissions from Tingloy significantly higher than reported by the other research teams.

Table 8 presents an overview of the three models for C-cycle analysis, the IPCC model, the WARM model and the Scholl Canyon model, and their use by the UWEP research teams.

25 For one of the earliest approaches that developed such coefficients utilized by the US EPA, one can refer to the Tellus Packaging Study (May, 1992), which can be obtained at www.Tellus.org 26 The Warm model calculates the GHG emissions by utilizing a set of linked Excel spreadsheet tables.

Environmental Research 47 WASTE, February 2005 Table 8 Methodologies for C-cycle research IPCC default methodology Scholl Canyon Model EPA Waste Reduction (IPCC model) Model (WARM model) Special The IPCC model focuses on solid The Scholl Canyon model The WARM model looks features waste disposal. Source reduction is includes CH4 production over at all waste management not included. a long period of time rather activities, with a special than at one point in time. focus on waste reuse and The methodology also allocates recycling. some waste-related activities to It requires site-specific inputs other sectors: e.g. waste of rainfall, materials, slope, The calculation incineration to the energy sector, particle size, background pH, incorporates upstream composting to the agricultural background nutrients and GHG emissions from the sector. background buffering and the manufacturing of rate of accretion of materials materials to be consumed According to the IPCC model, in a landfill over time. and eventually to be GHG is related to the waste sector discarded as waste. are only counted at the landfill. It is the simplest method for calculating CH4 emissions from waste disposal sites.

Approach The IPCC model follows a mass The Scholl Canyon model The WARM model is balance approach that involves relies on the first order decay structured around a Life estimating the degradable organic equation. Cycle Analysis approach. carbon to calculate the amount of CH4 that can be generated by the Its main limitation is that the Default coefficients are solid waste. Solid waste generation methane generation rate is suitable for the US and and composition can be site based on US rainfall data. other countries in the specific North. Use of All research teams used this This methodology was not The research team in models methodology. Except for specific used by any of the research Tingloy used this model, information of solid waste teams. in conjunction with the generation, composition and size of IPCC approach. population, the researchers used default values.

3.5.2 Methodologies for the Nitrogen cycle The focus of the assessment of nitrogen-based GHG emissions was human excreta and wastewater. However, this was expanded by some of the researchers to include both organic solid waste and animal manures generated within the community.

The IPCC guidelines only reference N2O generation within the Waste sector resulting from the sewage treatment by centralized facilities. This simple model can be summarized as:

Total Annual N2O Sewage Emissions = PR * Pop * FracNPR * EF6

PR average annual per capita protein consumption Pop population on sewage treatment system FracNPR fraction of nitrogen in protein EF6 emission factor

48 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 With this model, the population size is required to provide an estimate of N2O emissions for a specific community. The IPCC guidelines provide defaults for other coefficients. To refine the model, data can be collected on the average protein consumption by the population.

This single IPCC algorithm fails to capture the mix and complexity of centralized and decentralized approaches to waste, excreta and wastewater management systems reflective of the four case study communities. A generic process flow diagram reflecting the combination of possible solid waste, excreta and wastewater management strategies can be seen below.

The actual movement and transformation of nitrogen-based compounds requires one to look for modelling methods that can estimate GHG emissions as the nitrogen-based compounds move into and through the water and soil environments

With no clear guidance from the IPCC guidelines on how to treat the variety of methodologies for the disposal of human excreta and wastewater in the developing South, the research teams took a variety of approaches to addressing the LCA modelling of the nitrogen flow and transformation with the following initial guidance provided.

Each research team had the following tasks:  Identify sources and amounts of nitrogen (e.g. from households, selected pig and poultry farms, solid waste disposal sites);  Make an nitrogen material balance reflecting the current management of human excreta and wastewater; and  Assess the nitrogen allocation to the various receivers such as air, soil, sea, solid waste disposal sites, septic tanks and other excreta and wastewater treatment systems.

Upon completion of this initial research, the researchers attended a meeting in Gouda27 to share results and approaches for calculating the nitrogen GHG emissions based on the materials balance developed for each of the cities. At this meeting, the group agreed to use the IPCC guidelines referencing the Agricultural Sector in order to estimate nitrogen-based GHG emissions at the point when solid waste, excreta and wastewater enter the natural soil and water environment.

The researchers then returned to the field to refine their initial work in the research sites, working to assess the efficiency of the present excreta and solid waste management systems and develop a baseline scenario that would calculate an annual quantity of nitrogen-based GHG emissions. This was to be followed with calculating GHG emissions utilizing a projected ISWM scenario utilizing an EcoSan approach.

Generally, the scenario analysis in each of the four communities incorporated some aspect of each of the following three scenarios (Figure 12).

27 Environmental Research Workshop held in Gouda on March 2003

Environmental Research 49 WASTE, February 2005 Scenario 1: The current situation, or baseline Excreta and wastewater management situation, a combination of centralized and Treated and untreated wastes decentralized exit into the surface water, ground water and soils.

Scenario 2: Business as usual

Project the expansion of a centralized system Excreta, treated wastewater and to the entire population associated solids exit into the surface water, ground water

Scenario 3: ISWM approach Utilize an EcoSan approach, which build Excreta, treated wastewater and upon the current system and could include associated solids recovered as such strategies as separation of liquids and resources as a soil amendment/ solids at the source and capture of nutrients fertilizer or food source after initial treatment of liquids and solids

Figure 12 scenario analysis

3.6 Limitations of Research and Results The UWEP Plus environmental research should only be considered preliminary in regards to the quantification the effects of integrated management of solid waste, excreta and wastewater on the emissions of carbon- and nitrogen-based greenhouse gases. The models themselves are simplifications of a complex system of management pathways and chemical transformations. But such a simplification allowed the researchers to complete these initial analyses within the constraints of time and budget.

The procedures utilized to track and estimate quantities utilized models that had been developed for countrywide greenhouse gas inventories. Application of these models at a community scale is an innovative step, but it limits the validity of the results. This is because community applications imply a level of specificity that may not be reflected in the numbers generated. As part of all the modelling, generalized default coefficients were used.

Specificity can also be found in the process flow representations. These do accurately reflect the pathways of materials flow currently found in the four case-study cities. Similarly, population data is representative of current conditions, bearing in mind that any population figures for informal squatter settlements may inherently be less accurate.

The data used by the various researchers regarding waste, excreta and wastewater generation per person, and the associate composition of these waste streams, ranged from actual field

50 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 analysis to utilizing information from previous studies, without any critical analysis of the accuracy or specificity of previously generated information and data.

That is, if those previous studies had errors, they are replicated in the C-N analysis, something that is generally true when using previous studies as the source of input data into any modelling effort. Such challenges can include:  The pre-existing classes or categories of data, which may not match the analytic categories desired.  Questions about the accuracy of the tracking of materials through each component of the management system.  Uncertainty or incomplete information about the assumptions were used to extrapolate to the entire population.

In the case of the C-N research, all of these challenges lead to the conclusion that the results are indicative, rather than precise: they probably do not give an accurate reflection of waste- management-based carbon and nitrogen releases to the environment, but they do indicate the likely pathways and orders of magnitude of such releases. Such challenges are only exacerbated when dealing with the data collection, management and multiplication issues related to measuring mixed, complex, and decentralized approaches to the handling of solid waste, excreta and wastewater management.

In addition to these questions about general specificity of the data, there is also quite significant inherent variability across the four case-study communities. This can be attributed to climate, topography, culture and the historic development of waste, excreta and wastewater management systems. As such, this variability in input data sources, combined with the inherent differences between the four case-study communities, does not invite cross-study comparisons.

Carbon Analyses The carbon based analyses from the researchers focused primarily on solid waste. Thus the carbon analyses neither measured nor modelled carbon-based, GHG emissions from excreta and wastewater. In addition, due to the dependence upon the IPCC guidelines, carbon-based GHG emissions focused exclusively on the potential methane generation potential, assuming that all material was delivered to landfill disposal. If landfilled, incinerated or composted, the associated release of carbon dioxide from these same waste quantities was not quantified.

Finally, the boundaries of the analysis, even though they were not clearly articulated, consistently excluded quantification of carbon-based GHG emissions associated with the use of motorized, fossil-fuel-powered equipment in collection, transportation and processing of waste materials, even though these are integral components of most waste management systems studies.

The boundaries of the carbon-based GHG analyses were designated as the boundaries of the municipalities’ waste management infrastructures. In contrast, the IPCC model is influenced by other sectors such as the energy, industrial processing sectors (in the case of recycling) and the agricultural sector (in the case of composting). Thus, the results reported in UWEP Plus necessarily underestimate the carbon-based GHG emissions associated with the management of solid wastes.

Environmental Research 51 WASTE, February 2005 Nitrogen Analyses The nitrogen based analyses from the researchers focused primarily on human excreta and the associated black water, together with grey water. With few exceptions, the nitrogen analyses did not quantify GHG emissions from solid waste.

Unlike the carbon analyses, for the nitrogen research, there was little found in the literature that would provide a consistent, existing modelling approach for analysing a complex mixture of centralized and decentralized solid waste, excreta and wastewater management systems. In order to ascertain the impact of decentralized waste, excreta and wastewater management systems, the IPCC model is self-limiting. Within the Waste sector of the IPCC model, there is only a procedure for determining nitrogen-based GHG emissions from the centralized treatment of sewage.

As a result, there is significant variability on how the individual research teams approached the modelling of the nitrogen-based GHG emissions within their specific community. For this reason, as is also true for the carbon analyses, cross-city comparisons are limited.

The lack of defined modelling approach for estimating potential nitrogen-based GHG releases meant, in addition, that the researchers in their projection of future scenarios did not provide a comparable quantification of indicators that water quality would, in fact, be better from implementing proposed changes in the management system. Ideally, the projected scenarios would not only reduce GHG emissions but also maintain or improve the current water quality, thus meeting the criteria of increasing local sustainable development and environmental quality. As such, a major assumption underlying the demonstration of GHG reduction utilizing an ISWM approach is that there is a comparable improvement in the community’s water quality.

The next two sections section summarizes the results of the modelling of GHG emissions from solid waste management human excreta, and wastewater management, respectively. Section four focuses on the modelling of carbon-based GHG emissions. The subsequent Section five turns to the modelling of nitrogen-based GHG emissions.

52 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 CHAPTER 4 FIELD INVESTIGATIONS AND RESULTS FOR THE CARBON CYCLE

This section is a summary of both the input information and resultant GHG emissions estimates of the researchers who conducted the analysis of such carbon-based emissions from the management of the communities’ solid waste. The initial section will focus on waste generation and composition input data into the IPCCC model as reflected by the following algorithm. Table 9 Algorithm for methane emissions Methane Emissions (Gg/yr) = (MSWt x MSWf x MCF x DOC x DOCf x F x 16/12 – R) x (1-Ox)

The core assumption upon which this modelling approach rests is that any material, which is not recovered, goes to a landfill (disposal) site from which GHG emissions would emanate. It is this “un-recovered” material that becomes the primary input (MSWf) into the IPCC model.

The waste generation and composition information, combined with each community’s population data, provides an estimate of GHG emissions that is reflective of the specific community in which the research was conducted. Many of the other input assumptions into the IPCC model are default values provided in the IPCC guidelines.

4.1 Materials Generation and Composition The GHG emission model being utilized in the four case study cities was developed under the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) guidelines for greenhouse gas inventories (1996). This IPCC model is based on a number of input assumptions; however the data that will be most reflective of the specific case study location is the waste generation and composition coefficients. Many of the other input assumptions into the IPCC model are default values provided in the IPCC guidelines. Thus, this section focuses on input data developed in the four case studies regarding waste generation and composition values. The subsequent section discusses the modelling effort and the other assumptions utilized by these four studies.

Variability in waste generation and composition values amongst the four case cities can be partially attributed to differences in climate and physical land attributes; regional and local economic, culture and historic development. Variability can also be as the result of the methodology for developing the input data and the quality of that data.

Environmental Research 53 WASTE, February 2005 Specifically, this section considers the sources of the information used to generate the waste generation and composition coefficients. It summarizes the generation numbers utilized so as develop the input coefficient in the IPCC GHG algorithm (see Section 4). It then proceeds to summarize the waste characterisation from the four cities in the same way.

Sources for Information A general understanding to all the researchers was that, at a minimum, research was based on the best available waste data that currently existed in the public domain, supplemented by information generated within each community, some of it within the context of the UWEP programme.

Knowing how input data to the GHG modelling efforts was collected is key to demonstrating the transparency of the LCA approach. It is important to understand what is an estimate and what has actually been measured in the field. Moreover, specific knowledge about the point of data collection is critical to understanding what the numbers mean. For household waste, for example, quantities measured at the point of generation, set-out, transfer, treatment, final informal reuse, formal or informal disposal, all have different implications for the interpretation of the results.

The table below summarizes how the information was collected to create the generation and composition inputs to the GHG model. Table 10. Summary of Source Information for waste generation and composition Prior UWEP Other Studies Current Field Estimates Research Research (weight/volume measurements) Tingloy X X La Ceiba X X X Bamako X X X Bangalore X X

4.1.1 Waste Generation Rates Waste generation is reported as the quantity (usually weight, sometimes volume) of material generated per household or per capita. The generation of waste is best calculated at the household, before any is diverted by scavenging or illegal disposal, and even before it is brought to the street for setout or collection.

As previously mentioned, it is necessary to make a methodological decision regarding the quantity of material that is actually treated or managed on-site, that is, within the household or home compound. Treatment may be through composting, burning, backyard burial, feeding to domestic animals, or reused for its original or a supplemental purpose. Materials treated on site are counted as part of the generated waste stream, but they never reach disposal, so they are considered to have been prevented from entering the formal/informal waste management system.

Table 11 reflects the per person waste generation, on a daily basis, as reported by the four case studies.

54 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 Table 11. Summary of Waste Generation Coefficients Tingloy La Ceiba Bamako Bangalore Kg/capita/day Kg/capita/day Kg/capita/day Kg/capita/day 0.54 0.51 0.60 0.33

La Ceiba & Bamako In the La Ceiba and Bamako reports, it appears that the generation rate per capita was developed by dividing the overall community waste generation estimate by the population of the community. It is not clear where the overall waste generation figures were measured, and if in fact they relate to waste generated, collected, transferred, disposed, or only legally disposed.

Tingloy & Bangalore Tingloy and Bangalore used referenced sources cited to develop their estimates. In this case, actual data collected in the field was used to provide a useful proxy for the community as a whole. The generation coefficient developed in the study is multiplied by the population to get a community wide generation rate. In Tingloy, one set of analyses was done directly at the household and one was done at the disposal site. The Bangalore information implies that this also occurred in the various studies that they referenced.

As the denominator of the fraction that produces a figure for waste generation, it is necessary to develop a figure for household waste generation per capita, and for this, it is necessary to record or estimate the number of persons per household, or to get this information from a national statistical bureau. Table 12 summarizes the persons per household as reported by the four city cases.

Table 12. Reported Persons Per Household Tingloy La Ceiba Bamako Bangalore Cap/hh Cap/hh Cap/hh Cap/hh

4.6 4.5 6.45 Not Reported

4.1.2 Waste Generation Details by City What follows is some detail gathered about the four case studies’ generation rate estimates, which should provide some context for understanding the results of the studies.

Tingloy This was the only study that developed actual field measurements under the C-N initiative. The reported 0.54 Kg/cap/day reported by the carbon researchers was about half of what was obtained by the nitrogen research group. This may be explained in that the two different research teams had different waste classification categories. For example, the carbon team had the category of yard wastes while the nitrogen group had a category of miscellaneous organics, without defining the components of this category. The nitrogen group did not measure bottles, while the carbon group included this category.

Environmental Research 55 WASTE, February 2005 However a major factor that may explain the discrepancy is that the carbon group’s field research was done in the dry season, implying the nitrogen group’s analysis was done in the wet season.28

Tingloy did record actual generation rate ranging from of 0.51 Kg/cap/day to 0.55 Kg/cap/day depending on the density of population. It appears that they developed the .54 Kg/cap/day figure by creating a weighted-average, which reflected the segregation of the community’s population base for the different areas on Tingloy.

La Ceiba The researchers referenced two previous studies (IPESH and ACEPESA) in the development of their waste generation rate. The IPESH data was based on “a survey”, and the ACEPESA study used generic Central American and Honduran waste generation rates developed by the Pan American Health Association (PAHO). Neither case provided any detail about the methodology used to derive the estimates, nor on the expected accuracy of the data. The La Ceiba’s KaR report stated that the municipal staff provided an estimate for La Ceiba, as a whole, of 75-80 tonnes/day. This is almost certainly based on reports of waste collected by the private waste collecting firms, which are managed by the municipal staff. That report implied that the household generation rate (read: quantity of waste collected) was derived from the total by dividing the population into this figure to get a per capita generation rate of 0.51-0.54 Kg/cap/day. The KaR study also referenced an IPESH conducted survey (1997) under the UWEP I Programme, the same as referenced above. This survey resulted in a calculated household waste generation rate of 59 tonnes/day corresponding to a per capita generation rate of 0.49 Kg/cap/day. It is likely that this is a report of tonnes disposed, not tonnes generated or collected.

Bamako A general statement by the UWEP partner overseeing the Bamako carbon analysis was that the majority of figures used were estimates29. They also indicate in their report that the .60 Kg/cap/day generation rate is an estimate, without any explanation on how the estimate was reached. However, if one refers to the Bamako’s Commune VI KaR report, Table 3 of that report references an APUGEDU study.30 This referenced study indicates that during the dry season .8 Kg/capita/day generation rate and .5 Kg/cap/day generation rate during the wet season.

This may seem counter-intuitive: measurements during the wet season tend to be on average heavier due to the generated moisture content in the waste. It can nevertheless relate to the quantity of sand and grit in the Bamako waste stream from households with packed dirt floors: during the dry season more is swept up from households and disposed, while during the wet season the pack is tighter and there is less to sweep. Secondly, in the wet season there are more fruits and vegetables used, so the other components of the waste stream are higher. In addition, the dry season adds to the waste in Bamako due to the increase of wind blown sand and grit that finds its way into the household solid waste stream.31

28 Correspondence August 11, 2003. 29 Correspondence August 6, 2003 30 Although the KaR Study in Bamako was conducted in Commune VI, not Commune IV for the C-N study, this particular table does reference Commune IV. 31 The reported composition of Bamako’s household solid waste stream characterised a sand and dust component as comprising almost 38% of the total waste stream. In the referenced APUGEDU study, inerts made up almost 41% in wet season and 68% in dry season.

56 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 In looking at the four case studies’ generation rates reported, the .60 Kg/cap/day reported in Bamako is within two standard deviations of the mean, and, thus, can be expected as a reasonable coefficient within the reported variability of the four case studies.

Bangalore The Bangalore project does not specifically state how the generation information was developed but implies that the sources it references did fieldwork to develop the waste generation coefficients. A previous KaR report for Bangalore reflects a previous Australian Aid waste management study (referenced as “TIDE”), which derived its estimate, based on a citywide generation rate provided by the government, divided by the population.

In looking at the four case studies’ generation rates reported, the .33 Kg/cap/day reported in Bangalore is beyond two standard deviations of the mean, and, thus, raises questions regarding specific factors that would develop such an outlier.

What is of interest is the waste generation discussion in the previous Bangalore KaR report, which states that waste generation in Bangalore has been traditionally over-estimated at .5 Kg/capita/day. This KaR report referenced Baud & Schenk (1994) who stated that daily waste generation in larger cities within the South could be significantly less than that widely reported32. But what is apparent from the current carbon research in the other case studies is that they all approach .5 Kg/cap/day waste generation rate.

4.1.3 Waste Composition and Characterisation The composition, or characterisation, of the waste streams are important to the GHG modelling analysis, because different components of the waste stream may follow different routes through the waste management system, and so may contribute differentially to GHG formation. This may be less true in the baseline and status quo scenarios, but for projected ISWM scenarios, having different components of the waste stream moving towards the most appropriate recovery options is at the crux of an ISWM management approach.

In reviewing the characterisation of the four case studies, it is quickly apparent that that the different studies had different classifications for the household waste stream. La Ceiba had a total of twenty categories, disaggregating plastics, metals, paper into sub-categories. Conversely, Bangalore had classes of waste, which aggregated the different grades, or types, of paper, metals, plastics and organics.

All, except Bamako included an “other” or “miscellaneous” category, but this was not well defined. One would assume that this would be the unrecognisable inert or decayed material in the waste stream.

There were also unique categories, not referenced in the other case studies, such as Bamako’s sand, dust and gravel and medicine categories, or La Ceiba’s diapers, crockery and sheet metal categories.

32 Field research for UWEP and other projects in Eastern Europe also indicates consistent over-estimation when motorized vehicles, especially closed trucks are used and there are no weigh-bridges. In these cases the design volume of the collection vehicles is the benchmark for estimating quantities, but few collection routes are optimised to fill trucks completely, and even when they are filled, few attain the design capacity.

Environmental Research 57 WASTE, February 2005 In order to compare waste characterisations, the case studies’ categorization was condensed into five basic material categories; Organics, Plastic, Metal, Glass and Other. For purposes of this comparison, paper has been included in the organics fraction. Table 13 reflects this summary. Table 13. Waste composition summarised Tingloy La Ceiba Bamako Bangalore Material % % % % Organics 43 67 48 65 Plastic 7 9 6 8 Glass 9 2 5 6 Metal 4 3 15 6 Other 21 16 25 12

Total 100 100 100 100

It is worth re-emphasising that the variations in waste characterisation can be partly explained by location, cultural differences in how waste materials are viewed at the household level, and whether domestic animals are kept in the household compound, as when this is the case, much organic waste can be eaten by animals. Also, it should be remembered that any variability in one compositional category has ramifications across all the categories’ percentage composition.

4.1.4 Detailed Comparison of Waste Composition It should be noted that waste generation and composition coefficients are, in part, dependent on the moisture content of the waste. In addition, when and where generation and composition analyses were performed will drive the resultant coefficients. Figure 13 provides an example of the composition of a municipal waste stream – in this case Bangalore’s - before and after removable of recyclables by scavenging.

Urban waste in bin before Urban waste after rag-picking rag-picking

Misc. (15.00%) Misc. (12.00%) Metal (0.00%) Metal (3.00%) Glass (1.00%) Plastic (2.00%) Glass (6.00%) Paper (4.00%) Plastic (6.00%)

Paper (8.00%) Fermentable Fermentable matter

Fermentable (65.00% Fermentable (78.00%)

Figure 13 Bangalore’s - Pre and Post-Scavenging Waste Composition

By statistically comparing each category across the four case studies, one can begin to focus on any data that seem to vary significantly from the mean.

58 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 What can bee seen in reviewing the detailed composition information reported by the four case studies is that for the organics, paper and glass categories, the average (mean) compositions are 54.5, 7.4 and 8.0 percent, respectively. All values reported by the four case studies for these categories are within two standard deviations from the mean. Thus, they should be considered values expected within the variability of the data set observed.

However, if we look at the detailed information regarding the plastic category, the average for the four case studies is 4.8 %. Except for Tingloy, all the values are within two standard deviations of the mean. Tingloy is within three standard deviations of the mean, indicating it is somewhat on the boundary of what one could expect for this percentage composition, but still within the universe of expected variability.

Others Food Waste 15% Textile 25% 6% Metals 4%

Paper Glass/Bot 7% 15% HDPE LDPE Yard waste 4% 5% 19%

Figure 14. Tingloy's waste composition

Similarly, in analysing the details of the “Other” category, Bamako has a value outside two, but within three, standard deviations, from a mean of 18.1%. However as previously mentioned, this outlier may be explained by the impact of wind blow dust and sand during the dry season that finds its way into the household solid waste stream.

Table 14. Bamako's waste composition Composantes Compositions % Matières Organiques Organic matter 48.11 Papiers Paper 6.90 Verre Glass 0.15 Métaux Metal 0.74 Piles Batteries 0.03 Plastiques Plastics 4.83 Caoutchouc Rubber 0.01 Os Bones 0.67 Médicaments Medicines 0.62 Textiles Textiles 0.63 Charbon Charcoal 0.37 Sable, poussière Sand, dust 31.03 Gravier Stone 6.47 Total Total 651

Environmental Research 59 WASTE, February 2005 Bamako’s reported 15% percent for the metal category is beyond three standard deviations from a mean of 5.7 percent. This only indicates that this characterisation may need to be further analysed so to ascertain why Bamako’s metal category is so skewed. It may be because a waste stream other than household waste was included in the analysis or that this is a peculiarity specific to Bamako.

4.1.5 Summary and Conclusions What follows is an attempt to summarize major points developed in this section. In terms of source of waste generation and characterisation data, it appears that the researchers utilized what would be considered the best available information, given limitations of resources, including time and budget, to develop the model for GHG emissions.

Tingloy collected data specifically for this project; as such, the data collection methodology was somewhat transparent. In contrast, for the other case studies that used previously documented waste characterisation work, there is less transparency to the methodologies.

For the most part, reported residential waste composition shows some similarity across the four case studies. When analysing the variance, there is some questions regarding the reported values for some of the waste characterisation categories. Again, this variability may just be attributable to geographic, cultural and historical development of the waste management systems. This is also a possible area for future study to provide a more consistent categorization and quantification of the waste stream components across the areas. To do so field measurement protocol needs to be clearly defined and similarly instituted in different urban settings.

4.2 Baseline Scenarios The baseline analysis can be visually characterized by a process flow diagram. The process flow diagrams developed by the researchers can be found in the Annexes.

The overall logic to modelling the GHG impacts from the “current” waste management system is to be able to assess the extent to which materials not being recovered through recycling or composting or other pathways like animal feeding are in fact already contributing to GHG emissions.

The core assumption upon which this IPCC modelling approach rests is that material not recovered goes to a landfill (disposal) site, and, via methanogenesis, produces GHG emissions. It is this “un-recovered” material that becomes the primary input (MSWf) into the IPCC model. And, although this is the overriding approach to the four case studies, there is quite a bit of variability on how this methodology was applied in the individual analyses.

Tingloy The Tingloy carbon researchers went beyond the IPCC guidelines and also relied on US EPA methodologies to estimate carbon equivalents of GHG emissions for material source reduced, recycled, composted and burned. They reserved the IPCC methodology and related coefficients for those materials that are ultimately disposed of in a landfill or dumpsite. Thus Tingloy’s analysis looked at both CH4 emissions from dumpsites, but also at GHG emissions from burning as well avoided “carbon equivalents” applied to recycling and composting.

60 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 In effect, the Tingloy modelling is reflective of a more detailed compartment analysis of the material process flow then the other studies were able to use. It is a more complex model, but it shares with simpler analyses the limitation that the results are only as accurate as the inputs.

Utilizing US EPA-generated assumptions allows for a more detailed analysis, but these coefficients were based upon material processes found in the United States and may not accurately reflect the processes in the countries of the case studies.

La Ceiba In a manner somewhat similar to the Tingloy team, the La Ceiba researcher used the IPCC model for disposed material, but utilized avoided carbon equivalents for material recycled. The researcher referenced a non-US EPA source for the development of these recycling emission factors. But unlike Tingloy, this analysis did not consider carbon equivalents for composting nor targeted burning of waste as GHG emitter.

Bamako Bamako has listed “recovery” options as recycling, composting and direct land application of materials to gardens and fields. In Bamako, the combination of crop practices, climate and the composition of the waste means that the “waste stream” consists mostly of the organic fraction and dust and dirt. Farmers consider the other components to be irrelevant, so they actually buy the waste and apply it directly to crops. The non-degradable material that ends up on the fields and in the gardens is, in-effect, a contaminant, and the farmers remove it and dump it on the unused land. Although this deposition on the land is characterized as a form of recovery totalling 67% Bamako’s annual waste generation, in fact the non-organic component of this material (approximately one-half) does not appear to be recovered. Thus it is dumped and subsequently burned or piles up.

This allocation of material to the surrounding “peri-urban” agricultural landscape can be seen in some form in all the other studies. Such movement of material out to the peri-urban sites is characterized by the other studies as illegal dumping or going to non-managed dumpsites and not recovered. However, also in these other situations, the organic fraction is partially recovered through animal grazing on landfills, human waste picking, and anaerobic and aerobic decomposition over time; moreover, there may be subsequent agricultural activities on these sites based on residual nutrient or bulk material value of the sites themselves.

Thus, when looking at the baseline scenario analysis for Bamako, one may see a significant difference in potential GHG emissions due to the characterization of waste going to the fields and gardens as already being recovered.

Bangalore This study utilized the IPCC approach almost exclusively; although the analysis ventured into the commercial waste stream, including market wastes and wastes from hotels and restaurants. However, the household waste is disaggregated, so that the GHG calculations could apply separately to this component.

4.3 Key Assumptions For Baseline Algorithm The population base, waste generation coefficients and waste composition of the four city studies differed from each other, as did the extent of recovery of materials through recycling

Environmental Research 61 WASTE, February 2005 and composting. Taking these differences into account provided some additional specificity for each of the studies. However, other aspects of the modelling efforts relied upon default coefficients that were provided by the IPCC guidelines. What follows explains how these default values were utilized in the UWEP Plus research.

4.3.1 MSWt & MSWf From the IPCC algorithm, one sees MSWt and MSWf. The former is the household waste generated, and the latter is the amount of that material generated that ends up being diverted to a disposal site.

As previously stated, the greatest variability to be seen amongst the four case studies lies in the methodology deployed to develop the total amount of household waste generated, by component, over a year’s time (MSWt). In addition, due to the specific historical development of a recycling and composting infrastructure within each of the communities, the amount of waste that ultimately reaches disposal (MSWf) will also vary amongst the four case studies. Table 15 summaries the MSWt and MSWf for the four case studies and indicates the percentage difference between the two. This percentage difference is the materials recovery rate utilized in the baseline scenarios.

Table 15. Estimated Recovery Rate Used In Baseline Scenarios (Tonnes/Year) MSWt MSWf Recovery Rate (%) Bangalore33 284.700 229.220 19.4 Bamako34 61.977 43.384 30 La Ceiba 27.057 26.422 2.34 Tingloy35 3.536 3.436 .96

4.3.2 MCF From the IPCC algorithm, MCF is the methane correction factor, which takes into account a range of actual performance results from open dumps to sanitary landfills. Rather than distinguishing between “landfill” and open dumps, the IPCC methodology corrects for a range of methane generation rates associated with the differing performance characteristics of different types of disposal sites with different levels of management. The MCF factor is associated with the following four management levels.

33 The Bangalore study looked at a total of 1450 tons/day or 529250 annual tons including commercial waste. The household waste comprised 53 percent of this total waste stream. The numbers in this table just reflects the residential waste; there was another 7300 annual tons that were characterized as “slum” waste. 34 For this analysis here the MSWf reflects 55% of material going to disposal sites plus another 15% illegally disposed for a total of 70% going to disposal and 30% being recovered. However based on the text. The recovery rate, when we include what is recycled, composted and sent directly to fields and gardens the number is closer to 40% recovered. This assumes only the organic material going to fields and gardens are actually recovered. 35 The Tingloy report actually modelled the “current” situation and then modelled what they called a “baseline” scenario w/out any recovery of material (a “baseline” scenario that had no recycling nor landfilling and then a ISWM scenario). This table reflects the current situation, where the MSWf is all material not indicated to be recycled, composted or source reduced (reused).

62 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 Table 16 MCF landfill management classifications Level Description Factor Comment 1 managed sanitary landfill standard description 1 little decomposition 2 unmanaged deep dumpsite excess of 5 m depth 8 high methane generation 3 unmanaged shallow dump waste up to half metre depth 6 moderate methane gener. 4 uncategorised disposal site default value 4 low methane generation Factors explained 1 = managed sanitary landfill (= little decomposition) .8 = unmanaged deep dump site with waste in excess of 5m depth .6 = unmanaged shallow dump site with waste up to a half metre depth .4 = uncategorized disposal site (default value)

Table 17 summarizes the default values utilized by the four case studies in the IPCC algorithm. Table 17. MCF Factor Utilized in Case Studies

La Ceiba Bamako Tingloy36 Bangalore MCF .8 .4 .4 .4 .6

Except for Bangalore, some proportion, if not all the waste disposed in and around the case study communities is done so in an unmanaged fashion and the waste accumulates on the surface of open urban or peri-urban sites. Most of these sites are considered, at least nominally, to be transfer points rather than real waste fill sites, so there is no attempt to cover or bury the waste, and in most cases it is removed regularly or occasionally. Without burial, the waste does not accrue at any great depth at these sites, and is either eaten by animals, or decomposes naturally or in some combination with open burning.

Bangalore is unique in that it views these shallow waste disposal locations as formal dumpsites that may subsequently be utilized for agricultural activities. La Ceiba is the only one of the four with a formal landfill or, more accurately, dumpsite.

4.3.3 DOC and DOCf Under the IPCC guidelines, the DOC factor represents that portion of the generated waste that contains degradable carbon, the DOCf is that part of the degradable carbon that is easily decomposed and released to the atmosphere. In order to calculate the amount of DOC one needs to disaggregate the waste stream into various organic constituents. The IPCC guideline gives default values for representative organic waste streams.

These IPCC default percentages for DOC are:

Paper and textiles 40% Yard Waste (garden and park) 17% Food Waste 15% Wood and Straw waste 30%

36 .8 was used for the large landfill and .4 was used for the small informal dump sites

Environmental Research 63 WASTE, February 2005 All the studies utilized the IPCC default values for DOC, except for Bangalore, which utilized actual lab analysis of various components of the wastes stream based on a previous study in Bangalore.

The IPCC default value for DOCf, or the amount of DOC readily converted to GHG gas is .77. All studies utilized this default value.

4.3.4 F, R & Ox All the studies utilized the default values of .5 for the percentage of methane in landfill gas (F), zero (0) for the amount of recovered methane (R) and zero (0) for the value of oxidized methane in deep landfills (Ox).37

4.3.5 Summary of IPCC inputs Table 18 reflects the summary of the inputs to the IPCC for all the research, with the exception of Tingloy, in the Philippines

Table 18. Calculating Methane Emissions for Baseline Scenario Symbol Meaning Units La Ceiba Bangalore CIV Bamako MSWt Total Household MSW generated Gg/yr 27.01 722.70 82.7 MSWf Fraction of MSW disposed to fraction 0.98 0.60 0 SWDS MCF Methane Correction Factor fraction 0.80 0.6 0.4 DOC Degradable Organic Carbon fraction 0.16 0.18 0.15 DOCf Fraction DOC dissimilated 0.77 0.77 0.77 F Fraction of CH4 in landfill gas 0.50 0.50 0.50 R Recovered CH4 Gg/yr 0 0 0 OX Oxidation Fraction fraction 0 0 0 Methane Emissions (Gg/yr) Gg/yr 1.50 24.04 2.55 Methane Emission (Tonnes/yr)38 Tonnes/yr 1500 24040 2550

The Tingloy researchers expanded the LCA analysis by incorporating coefficients from the US EPA’s Warm model.39.

Table 19 summarizes the methane generation based on their analysis.

37 For this analysis the Ox equals 0 because it is assume all the methane generated is released from the dumpsites. 38 Gigagram (Gg) equals to 1000 tonnes. 39 See the discussion of the Warm model in Section 3 of this report.

64 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 Table 19. GHG Emissions (MT CO2E) Landfill AMOUNT Source Open MATERIAL Burning Compost TOTAL (MT) Reduction Recycling Soil Dump Decomposition Storage

Food Wastes 1061.0 0.0 0.0 177.8 6.0 -33.5 150.3 Paper 311.5 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 149.0 21.0 170.0 Yard Trimmings 834.0 0.0 0.0 13.1 86.8 0.0 99.9 Plastic, Films 227.7 0.0 0.0 74.0 74.0 Hard Plastics 174.3 -201.6 0.0 6.7 -194.8 Glass/Bottles 481.9 -180.0 0.0 0.0 -180.0 Tin 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 Aluminium 0.0 0.0 0.0 Mixed Metals 120.5 0.0 0.0 0.0 Clothing 79.1 0.0 93.0 0.8 93.8 Others 245.3 0.0 0.0 0.0 Diesel (Transport) 24.2 0.0 Total 3535.3 -357.4 0.0 0.0 0.0 432.9 195.3 -33.5 237.3

4.4 Building the ISWM Scenario The projected ISWM scenario analysis necessarily varied amongst the four case studies due to the premise of an ISWM approach, which necessitates stakeholder input into planning and implementing future solid waste systems.

Like the baseline scenario, the ISWM scenario follows a similar modelling logic. The most significant difference between the baseline and ISWM scenario was an increase in the amount of material recycled and composted as opposed to being landfilled.

The researchers identified the possible changes in the waste management system could result in possible reductions in GHG emissions. Table 20 Modelling ISWM Effects Possible Management Changes under ISWM Bamako La Ceiba Bangalore Tingloy Food waste source reduction X Improvement of waste collection at household X Improvement of waste recycling X X Enhanced Composting activities X X X Improvement of waste collection at temporary dumping/transfer sites X Construction of a sanitary landfill, X X X Closure of open dumps X X

Again, the core assumption upon which this modelling approach rests is that all material not designated and modelled as recovered goes to a landfill (disposal) site, undergoes methanogenesis, and produces GHG emissions. It is this “un-recovered” material that becomes the primary input (MSWf) into the IPCC model.

And as was true for the baseline scenario, there was some variability in how the IPCC model was applied to each ISWM scenario analysis.

Environmental Research 65 WASTE, February 2005 4.4.1 Completion of Scenario Analysis Tingloy & La Ceiba Of the four case studies, Tingloy and La Ceiba developed an ISWM scenario that clearly showed an increase in the recovery rate40 of materials. Table 21 and Table 22 below, show the change in the percentage of material between the baseline and the ISWM scenarios. Table 21 Change in Waste Recovery in Tingloy Tingloy

Baseline (%) ISWM (%) Food Waste 18.0 18.6 Paper .8 2.6 Yard trimmings .6 7.7 Plastics 3.6 5.8 Glass 9.6 10.6 Metals .6 1.0 Clothing 0 0 Other 0 0 Total Percentage Recovered41 33.2 40.0

Table 22 Change in Waste Recovery in La Ceiba La Ceiba

Baseline (%) ISWM (%) Putrescible 0 7.2 Paper 1.2 5.4 Textiles 0 .5 Aluminium .2 1.5 Ferrous 0 .04 HDPE 0 0 PET .4 .2 Glass .5 .2 Total Percentage Recovered 2.4 15.0

There are clear issues in comparing these two analyses. First, it was not clear how these two studies defined source reduction/waste prevention. Also, due to the very nature of the ISWM approach, the projected configuration is specific to the situation at hand.

For La Ceiba, the projected 15 % recovery rate was developed as part of the strategic planning for material recovery. Tingloy actually projected a 30% recovery rate through recycling alone. This rises to 40% when composting and source reduction are added.

Tingloy’s future recovery rates were assumptions. However, it was noted that Tingloy residents have historically been cooperative with new initiatives. In Tingloy, the researchers also noted that some institutional systems would need to change if materials are to be aggregated and marketed for higher prices off-island.

40 For Tingloy, recovery included source reduction. 41 Recovery included source reduction.

66 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 Bamako & Bangalore Bangalore’s analysis was unique in that the researchers did not project an ISWM scenario. The focus of this particular analysis was to compare the IPCC approach, when one utilized the default coefficients provided within the IPCC Guidelines, to site specific coefficients developed for waste generation and characterization.

As the researchers based the waste characterization data upon a previous report (Rajabapaiah, 1988), they did provide what appears to be their characterization of the percentage component for each fraction of the wastes stream, corrected for moisture content and carbon content. Then they applied an assumption regarding the percentage of material decomposing anaerobically (which produces methane).

Bangalore went beyond the other studies in quantifying the waste from both the market and restaurant/ hotel commercial sectors, as well as in disaggregating street sweepings and materials from slum areas. Table 23 Change in waste recovery, Bangalore Baseline (%) Wet organic (food, etc) 71.50 Paper & Cardboard 8.39 Polyethylene bags 6.94 Rags, Rubber, PVC 1.39 Glass & China 2.29 Metal Cans .29 Dust & Sweepings 8.06

Bamako’s analysis developed a baseline composition for solid waste and then provided mass balances for captured materials to be recovered, but did this as in the aggregate and not by item. This resulted in 1.22 % being recycled, .61 % being reused and 8 % being composted. In addition, the Bamako analysis indicated that a total of 18% of the household waste generated (including that material composted) ends up being recaptured by agricultural activities in the field and gardens.

Bamako’s scenario analysis looks at future ability of removing the waste by the Highway Department. The researchers assumed a removal of 50% to 100% of the illegally disposed material within the City for their projected scenarios. A third scenario employed assumptions from the Malian national government’s policy on management of peri-urban solid waste. All three of Bamako’s scenarios had as key assumptions that education, combined with composting and regulations, will be able to achieve such ends.

4.4.2 Results of Modelling Table 24 summarizes the net GHG emission avoidance based on the specific approach that each of the four case studies took. Of interest is comparing the projected ISWM recovery rate with the reduction in GHG emissions.

La Ceiba La Ceiba projected that the ISWM scenario increased their recovery rate of materials in the household waste stream from 2.4% to 15%. This increase in recovery rate by over 500 percent resulted in a decrease of GHG emissions by 19%. A large part of this GHG decrease can be

Environmental Research 67 WASTE, February 2005 attributed to decomposable organics being recovered through composting and enhanced recycling of paper products. Table 24 GHG emission avoidance in the four cities % Reduction GHG Loading GHG (As Carbon Equivalents) % Change Tingloy 300 % La Ceiba 19% Bamako 67 % Bangalore N/A

Bamako Bamako did not present a waste composition for the baseline nor for the ISWM scenario. For their ISWM scenario, Bamako indicates the greatest reduction of illegally disposed household waste would be achieved asunder the PeriUrban Waste Management Strategy adopted by the Malian national government. And although they showed a 66% reduction in waste disposal, and a comparable reduction in GHG emissions, the specific assumptions of how such a recovery would be accomplished were not well described.

Tingloy Tingloy substantially exceeds the other studies in net GHG emission reduction, even though the recovery rate through recycling and composting only increases from 33% in the baseline scenario to 40% under the projected ISWM approach. This 300% GHG emission reduction can be explained by the fact that Tingloy utilized US EPA’s GHG emission coefficients, which reflect not only GHG emissions within the waste management sector but also in the resource extraction and manufacturing sectors.

Bangalore Bangalore’s approach to this modelling effort was somewhat unique in that they did not project an ISWM scenario. The focus of this particular analysis was to compare the IPCC approach when one utilized the default coefficients provided within the IPCC Guidelines against developing site-specific coefficients for waste generation and characterization. What they showed was that the IPCC guideline default coefficients, overestimated the net GHG coefficients by approximately 50%

4.4.3 Summary It is clear that the IPCC greenhouse gas emission model provided a basis for all the studies’ approaches, and this makes some degree of cross-city comparison feasible. Bamako and Bangalore chose to adhere strictly to this modelling approach. However, the former provided less quantified detail regarding what component of the waste goes where. The latter compared two aspects of the IPCC approach in their scenario analysis and failed to develop a clear concept of a projected ISWM scenario.

Tingloy and La Ceiba both used the IPCC methodology but combined this with non-IPCC coefficients to ascertain specific emission quantities. Tingloy also significantly increased the boundaries of this analysis by utilizing USEPA coefficients developed for recyclables, which reflect net avoided extraction and manufacturing GHG emissions from recycling.

68 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 To summarize the overall intent of this effort, the research hypothesis was that the difference in GHG emission loading between the baseline and the project ISWM scenarios would show a net decrease in GHG emissions with the introduction of the ISWM approach.

La Ceiba attempted most closely to address the overall goal of this analysis in that they developed somewhat transparent input data and assumptions and developed an ISWM scenario based on what they had found out as realistic goals for recovery.

Tingloy and Bamako also developed a construct reflective of the overall goal of the research effort. However, these two studies did not provide any justification for their allocation of materials to recovery under their ISWM scenario. In short, there appeared to be no ISWM process to develop these assumptions. However, Bamako did have as one of their ISWM scenarios a Malian national approach to the management of peri-urban waste within the country.

For the Tingloy analysis, because the researchers expanded the analysis to include net GHG impacts in the manufacturing/ extraction sectors, the final results were much greater than in the other three analyses.

And although Bangalore developed interesting information and raised a number of points that could be the basis for additional research, they did not develop a clear baseline and ISWM scenario analysis that can be considered comparable to the other projects’ approaches.

4.5 Conclusions One conclusion that can be drawn by this UWEP research effort on carbon cycling is to be wary of comparing the results of these the four studies, or indeed, of comparing across cities and regions at all. This is primarily due to: 1. The inherent principle that an ISWM approach that requires development of a solid waste management strategy with input from local stakeholders, 2. The environmental, historic and cultural variability that influences both the waste characterization and the formal and informal waste management systems,and 3. The variability of the modelling efforts undertaken by the various researchers under this UWEP C-N initiative.

In spite of the lack of comparability, it is clear that these four city studies developed and aggregated important information regarding the management of household waste within these targeted communities. This information can provide a strong foundation for subsequent analyses that expand and refine this current work.

The IPCC modelling approach was appropriate in complexity and detail to allow local researchers to develop projected GHG emission reductions for their specific communities. However, there was not a consistent approach utilizing the IPCC guidelines across the four studies, and the inconsistent use of factors and defaults introduced significant discrepancies.

All except Bangalore developed a common approach to assessing net GHG emission from instituting an ISWM approach, in that there was an established baseline of the current waste management system and then development of a projected ISWM scenario with enhanced recovery of material through recycling and composting.

Environmental Research 69 WASTE, February 2005 The detail of what specifically was to be recovered in the ISWM scenarios was quite varied across the studies. In addition, the justification for the increase capture of materials through composting and recycling was somewhat lacking across the board. La Ceiba provided a sound basis for their projected waste recovery, by utilizing increased diversion rates based upon the ISWM approach developed through a previous UWEP KaR initiative. To a lesser degree Bamako, in one of their ISWM scenarios, utilized a national waste management strategy. The other ISWM scenarios, for the most part, utilized assumptions that the researchers felt were reasonable.

The IPCC model is limited in that it only accounts for a change in degradable (decomposable) being recovered versus being disposed. Within this model, the recovery of additional non- decomposable recyclables does not impact the GHG emission results. Tingloy’s analysis went beyond the IPCC model by utilizing US EPA emission coefficients to address the net impact to GHG emissions from increased recycling of non-degradable materials. However, a criticism by other researchers is that these US EPA coefficients were created to address solid waste management within developed economies and have limited application within the developing world.

The IPCC model’s focus upon methane (CH4) generation from disposal sites ignores the generation of carbon dioxide (CO2) generation from landfills. In fact net CO2 emissions, and the impact of global green house gas, was ignored in these analyses, with the exception of the Bangalore study that discussed, but did not quantify, the net contribution from CO2.

It does appear that all reports treated that diversion of putrescible (organic) material to composting as a recovery option and thus a removal of carbon from emissions under the IPCC approach. However, no study quantified the release of CO2 during the composting process as a potential contributor to net GHG emissions. Similarly, CO2 emissions that occur in illegally disposed organic waste, outside the formal or informal dumps, was not separately quantified as contributor net contributor to GHG emissions, although the Bangalore analysis did stress the decomposition of material both during transport (within the temporary dumping sites) as well as once materials have been disposed of within the peri-urban area.

Finally, burning of waste appeared to be underestimated by many of the studies. Thus, concurrent GHG impact by CO2 emission was also significantly underestimated.

Based on the developed process flow diagrams and associated mass balances, it is clear that the researchers had a good foundation of understanding of how to develop a modelling effort utilizing a life cycle analysis approach. However, the boundaries of the life cycle analyses varied across the four studies, which limits comparison and curtails the use of these analyses as a foundation for developing a clean development mechanism as defined under the Kyoto initiative.

Other than Tingloy, the specific methodologies for collecting field waste generation and characterization data were not clarified sufficiently to allow the reader a clear understanding of what these specific coefficients reflected. This compromises the associated transparency of the overall modelling approach, which would limit the usefulness of these analyses as a foundation for developing a clean development mechanism.

The next section will summarize the results of estimating nitrogen-based GHG emissions.

70 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 CHAPTER 5 FIELD INVESTIGATIONS AND RESULTS FOR THE NITROGEN CYCLE

The focus of the assessment of nitrogen-based GHG emissions was human excreta and wastewater. However, this was expanded by some of the researchers to include both organic solid waste and animal manures generated within the community. This section summarizes the results of estimating nitrogen-based GHG emissions.

The IPCC guidelines only reference to N2O generation within the Waste sector comes from sewage treatment in centralized facilities. This simple model can be summarized as:

Total Annual N2O Sewage Emissions = PR * Pop * FracNPR * EF6

PR average annual per capita protein consumption Pop population on sewage treatment system FracNPR fraction of nitrogen in protein EF6 emission factor

With this model, the population size is required to provide an estimate of N2O emissions for a specific community. The IPCC guidelines provide defaults for other coefficients. To refine the model, data can be collected on the average protein consumption by the population. The actual movement and transformation of nitrogen-based compounds requires one to look for modelling methods that can estimate GHG emissions as the nitrogen-based compounds move into and through the water and soil environments.

This one IPCC algorithm fails to capture the mix and complexity of centralized and decentralized approaches to waste, excreta and wastewater management systems reflective of the four case study communities. A generic process flow diagram reflecting the combination of possible solid waste, excreta and wastewater management strategies can be seen below.

With no clear guidance from the IPCC guidelines on how to treat the variety of methodologies for the disposal of human excreta and wastewaters in the developing South, and because of the deficiencies of utilizing the IPCC Waste sector guidelines, the research teams took a variety of approaches to addressing the LCA modelling of the nitrogen flow and transformation with the following initial guidance provided.

For example, researchers turned to calculations developed under the Agriculture sector of the IPCC guidelines for calculating nitrogen generation from solid waste, excreta and waste water that enters the soil and water environment due to decentralized or incomplete management of these waste streams.

5.1 Nitrogen Generation To summarize the similarities in the approaches for the four studies, one can say they all addressed the generation and eventual pathways taken by household excreta and wastewater, although some of the research expanded the analysis to include manures and organic solid waste. Table 25 summarizes the sources of nitrogen produced wastes targeted by the various studies.

Environmental Research 71 WASTE, February 2005 Table 25 Nitrogen Sources Identified By Researchers Bamako La Ceiba Tingloy Bangalore Nitrogen from human 100% 100% 70% 60% excreta Nitrogen from excreta from -- - 28% large animal Nitrogen from excreta from - - 20% 12% small animal excreta Nitrogen from domestic -- 7%- solid waste Nitrogen from domestic -- 3%- wastewater

As can be seen, the primary focus was upon human excreta. Based on the IPPCC guidance, the size of the population obviously determines the amount of material generated. Table 26 summarizes the nitrogen-based wastes generated within the four targeted communities. Table 26. Human Excreta Generated Nitrogen Produced from Bamako La Ceiba Tingloy Bangalore Daily Nitrogen production 15 grams 13 grams 11.4 grams 1.8 grams per inhabitant Total inhabitants 230 504 156 565 2 255 7 200 000 Total Nitrogen per day 3.45 2.03 .025 13 (tonnes) Total annual nitrogen 1,260 741 9.1 4,745 (tonnes)

Both in Bangalore and Tingloy, researchers also included nitrogen sources from animals. In both these cases, the researchers felt this was a significant source of nitrogen that would be released to the soil and water environment and contribute to the eventual generation of nitrogen-based GHG emissions.

Table 27 indicates that for Bangalore that manure generation within and around Bangalore is a significant contributor to overall nitrogen loading into the environment. Many of these animals freely move throughout the city, with no institutionalised management system to capture and recover this material. Table 27. Bangalore’s Large Animal Manure Generated Nitrogen Source No. Total Solids N% / kg TS Total (kg) (kg)/head/day Cattle 185087 1.660 1.25 3841 Buffaloes 27429 2.500 1.25 857 Sheep 108317 0.132 3.00 429 Goats 41392 0.132 3.00 164 Total - - - 5291

In Bangalore, this 5.2 tonnes of nitrogen generated per day is approximately thirty percent of the total nitrogen produced within the city environs. If one adds the additional 2.5 tonnes from smaller animals, this rises to approximately 40% of all nitrogen produced in Bangalore on a daily basis.

72 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 Similarly, one can see from Table 28 that in Tingloy manure generation totals 3.8 grams per day, or .45 tonnes per year. Table 28. Tingloy’s Animal Manure Generated Nitrogen Animals Poblacion area Animal/ gN/day/ gN/day/ person person animal Dogs 0.0686 1.59 0.1091 Cats 0.0057 1.59 0.0091 Chicken 0.9665 2.85 2.7545 Ducks 0.0343 1.65 0.0566 Pigs 0.0515 11.07 0.5700 Goats 0.0629 5.14 0.3235 Carabaos 0 14.63 0 Cows 0 92.68 0 Total 3.8227 Total per year .451 tonnes

The researchers estimate that this generated manure comprises approximately 22 % of the nitrogen released to the environment in and around Tingloy.

5.2 Process Flow/Management Systems All of the case study reports disaggregate the flow of human-generated, nitrogen-based compounds into different management alternatives, which could include: toilets with and without septic tanks, latrines/pit toilets, cesspools, open defecation and centralized sewage treatment. The nitrogen process flow diagrams developed by the researchers from the different communities can be found in the attached Annexes. Table 29 summarizes the management alternatives utilized by the different communities. These management alternatives determine where and how nitrogen-based compounds enter the soil and/or water environment. Table 29. Human excreta & Wastewater Management Systems Bamako La Ceiba Tingloy Bangalore Open defecation 27 % 10% Pit latrine and latrine with fixed 54% 10% 73% pit Flushable latrine 8% Cesspools 37% Communal Septic Tank 0.5% Individual septic tank+ soak pit 9% 41% 29% Public-private sewage treatment 39.5% 60% plant Sewage with outlet to lagoon 1% and river or sea Composting latrine 0% 0% 0% 1% Urine diversion latrine 0% 0% 0% 0%

By tracking the separate flow of nitrogen based materials, researchers were able to make decisions of how to best intervene so to develop alternative management approaches that ideally would attain comparable water quality while reducing the potential of greenhouse gas emissions.

Environmental Research 73 WASTE, February 2005 All the reports qualitatively and/or quantitatively addressed the post-management deposition of the nitrogen compounds in the natural environment. Such nitrogen finds its way into the soil, ground water and/or surface water. What follows is a brief overview of the approach to tracking materials, and associated nitrogen, flow for the four communities.

Bangalore Bangalore looked both at household sewage and animal manures, based on their experience that within their community, manures often find their way into the sewage system. For this particular analysis, organic food waste was not considered within the boundaries of this LCA. The diagram below summarizes the process flow for this study.

Bangalore views human and animal wastes to follow three general process pathways in and around the city. First, segments of the city’s population, especially in the rapidly expanding slum areas, have no formal access to decentralized or decentralized centralized waste treatment systems. The common practice within this population segment is to find the nearest open space for defecation. Based on personal hygiene habits, human excreta is often free of extraneous carbon (paper) and not generally deposited in a wet environment, cleansing is done away from the point of excreta deposition. The 300 days of high temperatures and lack of precipitation leads to rapid drying of the excreta with a short-term release of N2O. The resulting organic matter is then consumed by micro and macro-fauna, beetles, worms, etc. This consumption again ties up the nitrogen compounds as organic nitrogen.

A large segment of the population utilizes sanitary facilities that represent a complex mixture of centralized sewage treatment and decentralized soak pit/septic tanks systems42. There is also a segment of the population of cattle, buffaloes and other animals, which significantly increase the extent of this type of organic waste generation. The researchers make the observation that very often the human and animal waste streams do get mixed and enter these conventional sewage treatment systems. The material following this pathway quickly results in anaerobic situations that lead to N2O generation via denitrification.

Finally, the researchers indicate that there is a portion of this material that finds its way back to the agricultural fields, either directly or via an intermediate composting step.

Tingloy The Tingloy researchers did not develop a process flow diagram but based their analysis on a tabulated breakdown of total nitrogen generation. For this purpose, the Figure 15 was constructed. Of all the LCA models developed for the N analysis, Tingloy’s was the most expansive and detailed.

As can be seen, the Tingloy researchers not only addressed human excreta and wastewaters, but also targeted organic solid wastes as a nitrogen source. And like Bangalore, they included manures from animals within the environs of the residences, supplemented in the Tingloy case by manure from the agricultural husbandry generation. Finally, what makes the Tingloy study somewhat unique is its status as a small island, in close proximity to the ocean and having the ability to direct waste, excreta and wastewater to this receptor. La Ceiba also has

42 The researches estimate that 89% of the nitrogen fraction being generated within the City and its environs is subject to treatment via anaerobic digestion.

74 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 this relationship to the ocean, and Bamako has it with the river Niger, but it still appears that this is a large factor for Tingloy.

Figure 15: Nitrogen balance in Tingloy

La Ceiba Unlike Tingloy and Bangalore, the La Ceiba researchers exclude manures from their analysis, consistent with the lower frequency of loose cattle or other animals in their environment (even though pigs and chickens are commonly kept in households outside the city centre.) Also, the nitrogen generation from organic solid wastes is treated as being beyond the boundary of the LCA, as it is for all the reports, with the exception of Tingloy. It appears that for La Ceiba report, the boundaries set for the LCA are similar to that chosen by the Bamako researchers.

In La Ceiba, thirty-nine percent of the population has access to municipal/private sewerage destined for a excreta and wastewater treatment facility. An additional 41 % of the population has access to septic tanks. Although not recorded, in Honduras it is highly likely that the rest of the population use normal latrines (that is, not pit latrines).

Bamako Unlike Tingloy and Bangalore, animal manures generated at or near the household are not considered within the boundaries of the LCA. Nor is the nitrogen emission for organic waste tracked as part of the process flow. This approach is very similar to the La Ceiba approach to modelling nitrogen greenhouse gas emissions, but unlike La Ceiba, there is no centralized

Environmental Research 75 WASTE, February 2005 sewerage treatment in place for Bamako’s residents, many of whom use puisards, or pit-tank latrines. Nor are septic tanks as prevalent as one sees in La Ceiba, Tingloy or Bangalore. Only 9% of the population has access to septic tanks. An additional 37% have cesspools.

Also, like Bangalore, and consistent with Islamic practice, paper is not utilized for cleaning after defecation, instead water is utilized for this purpose. Such cleaning water does not necessarily follow the same pathway as the human excreta. It should be noted that Bamako has a dry climate, and although desiccation is not formally addressed in the LCA, as was done for the Bangalore analysis, there is qualitative reference to such drying of waste in the text of the Bamako report.

5.3 Baseline GHG emissions. The overall intent of the modelling effort was to utilize a LCA approach to GHG nitrogen emissions form existing and projected waste/excreta and wastewater management systems. It was hypothesised that the difference in GHG emission loading between the baseline and then projected scenarios would show a net decrease in GHG emissions with the introduction of the ISWM and EcoSan approaches. Table 30 lists annual atmospheric nitrogen releases reflecting current (baseline) practices for the management of waste and wastewaters.

Table 30. Baseline Estimates of Nitrogen Release to the Environment (tonnes)

Total N N20 Emissions Percentage of N20 to Total N annual tonnes annual tonnes % Bangalore 6742 55.0 0.8 La Ceiba 825 15.5 1.8 Bamako 1017 - - Tingloy 105 1.1 1.0

These figures of total nitrogen released into In each of the studies, with the exception of Bamako, releases of N to soil and water under current practices (baseline) within each community are translated to the release of nitrous oxide (N2O). If were are to assume that that a similar percentage can be applied to Bamako’s total nitrogen estimates as was used by researchers in the other communities, one can project that Bamako’s N2O annual generation to be approximately 10 tonnes per year.

All the research reports presented an understandable approach to developing a baseline for managing waste/excreta and wastewater management within the various communities. The Tingloy report is the most transparent in illuminating the underlying assumptions and clarifying the source and nature of the input data to various compartments of the LCA. Bangalore and La Ceiba also presented tabulated data that was used as inputs into the LCA model but did not break down the pathways of nitrogen transformation as extensively as the Tingloy report. Bamako was quite clear on how they structured their LCA approach, but there was less transparency in understanding which specific data was used to develop their final analysis.

76 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 5.4 Scenario Development Once the “baseline” scenario was developed, the researchers made decisions of how to redirect nitrogen to new pathways and management alternatives, with the hope to concurrently reduce GHG nitrogen emissions, while maintaining, or improving, surface and groundwater quality.

From a theoretical perspective, the relative amount of N2O generated can be reduced as result of nitrogen-based waste compounds being directed to a particular nitrogen management pathway that: 1. Reduces the nitrification/denitrification biologically mediated transformations; and/or 2. Maintains nitrogen in the form of ammonium or nitrates, which subsequently become inputs into creation of new biomass; and/or 3. Limits the moisture content of the environment, into which the waste are deposited, to the point that biological activity, and thus biologically mediated transformations of nitrogen compounds, are substantially reduced; and/or 4. Reduces unwarranted nitrogen emissions to the environment by shift to alternative decentralized waste/waste water treatment systems and/or improve the operation and maintenance of the existing systems that are in place; and/or 5. Ties up nitrogen in an organic form that then is deposited in an environment that has minimal ability to be decomposed, often termed a “nitrogen sink”.

The intent of the above-mentioned approaches is to better manage the various nitrogen streams so to capture targeted nitrogen wastes and direct them to the most appropriate management strategies that result in a net reduction in GHG emissions.

Table 31 summarizes how the different researchers approached the scenario analysis in regards to these theoretical strategies for reduction of nitrogen based GHG impacts.

Table 31 Existing or Proposed Alternative for Reduction of Unwarranted Releases of Nitrogen Compounds to the Environment Recycling as a Recycle Limit Improve Create soil nitrogen moisture management nitrogen amendment/ directly into sink43 fertilizer plants Bamako X X X Bangalore X X X La Ceiba X X X Tingloy X X X X

5.4.1 Alternative Approaches to Reduce N20 Emissions What follows is a brief description of how each theoretical approach was addressed by the researchers, either in their baseline LCA or a proposed scenario analysis to improve to concurrently improve the water quality treatment and reduce the potential nitrogen emissions as GHG.

43 Only indirectly as the result of associated management decisions

Environmental Research 77 WASTE, February 2005 Reducing Nitrification/Denitrification This first approach is to divert the nitrogen-based waste product to a management strategy that tries to ensure application to the soils at the rate of uptake by vegetation. This minimises the amount of available ammonium to be oxidised through the process of nitrification to nitrite and nitrates and subsequently denitrified to produce nitrous oxide. This can be accomplished by utilizing human excreta by-products as a substitute for synthetic fertilizer, or more commonly, transforming the nitrogen components to a more stabilized form that inherently releases nitrogen to the soil at a slower rate and over an extended period of time. Developing a compost product is a common strategy to achieve this.

Bangalore estimated that 1% of human excreta and the majority of the animal manures currently are directed to a composting alternative. Bamako had as their third scenario the addition of an excreta and wastewater treatment scenario with a faecal waste composting alternative. La Ceiba and Tingloy stated that there would be a “recovery” of nutrients through ecological sanitation techniques, but without specifically identifying a direct deposition or composting pathway.

A different alternative is to direct the waste materials to an anaerobic digestion alternative, where anaerobic conditions prevent the creation of nitrogen based compounds such as N2O. Anaerobic digestion also results in a compost-like by-product, which then can be applied to the soil.

Tingloy modelled an actual farm-scale anaerobic digestion alternative for swine manure. They determined that close to 99% reduction of the influent nitrogen content is achieved. Based on their mass balance of this specific sub-stream, they infer that the digester output, stabilized sludge and wastewater, is returned as nutrients for agricultural purposes. Increasing Absorption Another management strategy, which could reduce N2O release, may be directing pre-denitrification nitrogen compounds such as ammonium to a system, such as a duckweed pond, so that the available nitrogen is absorbed by these plants. Subsequently this plant material is either used as a food source or put into the soil as green manure. As a result the nitrogen becomes cycled as a closed loop through an agricultural-food-waste-agricultural pathway, reducing potential GHG release to the atmosphere.

Both La Ceiba and Tingloy proposed as a possible improvement in waste/excreta and wastewater treatment some sort of recycling of nutrients through bioaccumulation in plants followed by use as feed or directed to a process to create a soil amendment.

La Ceiba suggested that that a duckweed pond be utilized for post treatment and nitrogen recovery from the collection of sewerage in a centralized system. They indicated that up to 77% of the nitrogen could be captured through this method and recycled back into agriculture. Tingloy researchers proposed also the innovative ideas of culturing algae, specifically in farm effluents, and then recycling the material back through the animals and avoid importation of commercial feed.

Limiting Moisture This strategy is similar in concept to a previously mentioned strategy, but in this case, moisture is limited rather than oxygen. This results in a reduction of microbial activity

78 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 responsible for the nitrogen transformations in the environment. Such microbial populations require a moist environment for both biochemical reactions and to support population growth.

The Bangalore researchers raised this as one of the pathways for nitrogen cycling. They calculated that due to the Bangalore climatic conditions, 10% of the human generated excreta, and a significant component of the animal manure stream44, is subject only to very brief decomposition via nitrification and de-nitrification. Due to drying, these biological processes cease, and the organics are consumed by a combination of roaming animals, insects, annelids, etc, which results in the transformation of nitrogen back to an organic form.

The Bamako team also inferred that due to their dry climate this desiccation of the organic wastes does occur to some extent, but there was no quantification of what effect this has.

Improved Approaches to Waste/Waster Treatment Under this approach one can either improve maintenance procedures so the existing system is maintained as designed, or change procedures so that the system redirects certain fractions of the waste/excreta and wastewater stream along different pathways; finally one can change or add to or existing systems. All three approaches can have a significant positive impact on water quality and concurrently may reduce nitrogen emissions.

It should be noted that the partners did understand and propose that improvement of water quality be obtained implementing an Ecological Sanitation (EcoSan)45 approach, and some of the scenarios developed did specifically reference and utilize EcoSan-associated waste/excreta and wastewater management strategies.

Bangalore Bangalore’s recommended improvements focused on a mix of both centralized and decentralized strategies. The researchers indicate that a significant component of the excreta and wastewater stream is already tapped for nutrient recovery by agriculture. They add that there is still room for improvement to manage the application of excreta and wastewater to agriculture so to maximise recovery by plants.

For the three centralized systems servicing a portion of Bangalore, adding secondary treatment could allow for a greater reuse of the organic sludges on surrounding agriculture. They estimate it may be a long as 10 years before as much as 30% of the population can be connected to centralized sewerage. As such, the researchers targeted this segment of the population for an EcoSan approach.

44 One would also assume that a significant portion of the organic solid waste that is deposited at temporary dumping sites would also be desiccate to the point that microbial decomposition would cease. For further information about the quantity of this organic solid waste stream refer to the Bangalore team’s document, GHG Footprint of a Developing Country City- Bangalore: Urban Solid Waste Management & Implications for Carbon Cycle. 45 Ecological Sanitation is based on the idea that urine, feces and water are resources in the food chain. Ecological Sanitation refers to 'dry toilets', approaches to managing urine and feces without water. It is an approach that saves water, protects water quality, and prevents pollution and returns valuable nutrients into the loop on which our food security depends. Important characteristics of ecological sanitation are:  Efficient destruction of pathogenic organisms  Separation at source: no mixing of water, urine and faces  No drinking water, or very little drinking water, is used  Recycling of urine, faeces and grey water  Emphasis on logistics instead of infrastructure

Environmental Research 79 WASTE, February 2005 Bamako Bamako foremost recommendation to reduce unwarranted nitrogen emissions to the environment targets the losses of nitrogen through infiltration to groundwater due to latrines and cesspools that are leaking, poorly maintained and seldom serviced. Thus, the researchers modelled as a scenario, upgrades or replacements of the existing, less than adequate, decentralized storage and treatment systems. This could be combined with an efficient collection and deposition infrastructure that serviced the systems in timely manner.

The researchers do indicate, as part of such a strategy, there would be an associated treatment of urine and excreta in a way to maximise its use on agricultural fields. An infiltration ditch that separated the liquids from the solids is proposed. The solids would desiccate and subsequently be directed to agricultural use.

As an alternative scenario, the researchers considered capturing all residentially generated liquid and solids from latrines/cesspools/septic tanks and diverting this material to a treatment/composting alternative, with the composted end-product directed to agricultural uses. Under this scenario, only the liquid fraction emanating from the septic systems, latrines or cesspools would be a source of unmanaged nitrogen release.

La Ceiba La Ceiba’s initial scenario analysis utilizes an EcoSan approach, in that pit latrines are replaced with a urine separation system, with subsequent reuse of urine in agriculture. Combined with this, the researcher proposed an upgrade to the centralized excreta and wastewater treatment plant so that the effluent could be cycled through a duckweed lagoon, with subsequent utilization of the duckweed in the agricultural sector.

Tingloy Tingloy researchers proposed a number of possible improvements to the existing waste/excreta and wastewater infrastructure and management system. One of these was to utilize an EcoSan approach to supplement the current mix of toilets and septic tanks.

Concurrently, they indicated that although 97 % of the households had toilets, with an estimated 51 % of those having septic systems, these septic tanks are not being maintained and have filled with solids to the point that septage is overflowing.

A final recommendation is the separation of urine and faeces to better manage the nitrogen loss from the management system. It is inferred that this would result in more efficient recovery of useful nitrogen based nutrients through use of these materials as fertilizers.

Avoiding Decomposition of Organic Nitrogen A final alternative, which may reduce possible GHG emissions, would be to avoid the decomposition of the organic nitrogen in the first place by depositing the organic form of nitrogen in a strongly reducing natural environment46. A variation on this approach would first be to transform the nitrogen compounds into organic nitrogen through plant absorption and then direct this material to the strongly reducing environment.

46 This is similar to the previous suggestion of directing material to an anaerobic digester, but in this instance, the low oxygen (reduced environment), would be one naturally found in nature, with the intent to avoid any further biochemical transformations of the nitrogen.

80 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 In essence, this naturally occurs in wetland environments, where there is a build-up of organic sediments as peat. As long as this peat is continuously saturated and oxygen is limited, decomposition will slow substantially. Until the peat is disturbed, such locations act as a temporary storage sink for the nitrogen compounds.

None of the researchers considered this approach a viable alternative on its own, although both Tingloy and La Ceiba teams proposed artificial wetland approaches to recovering nutrients in plants. In such a situation, some deposition of organics at the bottom of these aquatic systems may result a temporary nitrogen sink. However, the impact of such deposition of material into this form of nitrogen sink was not quantified.

5.5 Scenario Results It is clear that there was no single modelling approach taken by the four research teams. Although the IPCC greenhouse gas emission model provided a basis for calculating GHG emissions from nitrogen compounds for that material destined for sewerage treatment. There was no set protocol within the Guidelines to address more decentralized waste, excreta and wastewater management. Where manures were considered within the boundaries of the LCA, protocols found in the agricultural sector were substituted.

Where the reports did significantly diverge was the development of alternative scenarios that would allow one to project potential impacts to greenhouse gas emissions. Both Tingloy and Bangalore put a good deal of effort in understanding the current cycling of nitrogen through the existing systems for managing human and animal waste/wastewater. While both suggested qualitatively what alternative systems may be employed to enhance the protection of water quality and concurrently reduce GHG emission, neither developed a workable model for these recommendations, so there was no quantification of such possible GHG reductions.

Both La Ceiba and Bamako developed multi-scenario analyses for possible improvements to the current systems in place to manage human excreta/wastewater. These scenarios compared nitrogen emissions from projected alternatives against existing (baseline) infrastructure and management systems. Both considered changes in decentralized and centralized infrastructure, and both considered improvements and changes to how such systems are managed and maintained. Table 32 summarizes the scenario projections. Table 32 Scenario Projections of Nitrogen Release to the Environment in Bamako and La Ceiba Baseline ISWM % change Centralized w/ % change Scenario47 from baseline nutrient from baseline recovery Annual tonnes Annual tonnes Annual tonnes Bamako 1018 678 (33%) 254 (75%) La Ceiba 825 504 (39%) 202 (76%)

As can be seem from the Table 32 above, just the introduction of an ISWM approach utilizing EcoSan principles could potentially deliver approximately a 30% reduction in unwarranted nitrogen-base emissions to the environment. Combining this with an enhanced

47 Incorporates EcoSan concepts

Environmental Research 81 WASTE, February 2005 centralized system, with an added nutrient recovery process step, unwarranted nitrogen-based emissions to the environment may be reduced by 75%.

5.6 Conclusion The researchers for these analyses were successful in structuring an approach to identify and quantify the pathways for nitrogen transformation and release as nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas. Based on the modelling of projected reductions of nitrous oxide, researchers demonstrated the potential of utilizing an ISWM/EcoSan approach to reduce such GHG emissions.

While the city studies are interesting in their own right, there is insufficient comparability for an adequate basis to compare the results of these the four studies. This is due both the environmental, historic and cultural variability that has influenced the formal and informal waste/excreta and wastewater management systems and to the variability of the modelling efforts undertaken by the various researchers under this UWEP nitrogen initiative.

In reference to this latter point, unlike the associated carbon analyses, the nitrogen research had no definitive template in which to structure the LCA approach. The IPCC guidelines only reference N2O generation within the Waste sector resulting from the treatment of sewage. Under this Waste section of the guidelines, there is no guidance on how to model and define the compartmentalisation of nitrogen chemical species and their associated transformation pathways via an alternative, decentralized approach.

In response to this lack of guidance, different researchers approached such LCA construction from different perspectives. In many cases this required referencing the Agricultural sector of the IPCC guidelines so to try to capture the nitrogen transformations in water and soils. The benefit from such an exercise, demonstrated that there is potential to use the IPCC guidelines to develop a logical approach to calculating net nitrogen based green-house gas release. Concurrently, one may conclude that due to such variability in the modelling efforts, it is not possible to compare the results of the various reports. However, one can hope based on the current research, a foundation has been created to better inform the current IPCC guidance by addressing decentralized waste/excreta and wastewater alternatives.

Under the current UWEP construct, the nitrogen analysis is primarily related to human excreta/excreta and wastewater management and the associated carbon releases are not considered. Similarly, the associated carbon analysis focused on carbon based gas releases and did not address associated nitrogen based GHG releases. If further research is considered, it might be to restructure the entire C-N approach by not artificially separating the carbon and nitrogen GHG impacts by chemical species. It might be efficacious to look at both the carbon and nitrogen GHG carbon equivalents together from implementation of an ISWM approach. Then as a separate analysis consider both the carbon and nitrogen impacts from human excreta/excreta and wastewater management through an EcoSan lens.

As was the case for the associated Carbon analysis, there is room for improving the research design so that there could be some cross study comparisons made. This would be accomplished by developing a single approach to constructing the LCA for the nitrogen modelling. This necessarily implies that the definitions need to be clearly defined. In addition,

82 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 the boundaries of the LCA need to be clearly established, such as does one consider including organic solid waste or non-agriculturally generated manures.

Associated with developing a clear modelling protocol is an agreement regarding the level of primary research required to produce useful results. Tingloy researchers spent a good deal of time in the field collecting primary data pertaining to both materials handling practices and generation rates. Other researchers gave more weight to utilizing previous research. In such cases, the researchers were required to develop key assumptions based on past research.

Both approaches are viable but considering the overall projected use of the information, one may tend to utilize one over the other. In this case an associated objective stated for this UWEP research was to support the argument that an ISWM and/or EcoSan approach can be considered a viable Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) under the Kyoto Protocol.

A necessary condition for CDM is that the data and associated assumptions be transparent. From reviewing the researchers’ reports, such transparency is somewhat elusive. In those cases where key assumptions and/or data were built upon from previous studies, there were instances where citations were lacking that referenced specific sections of the referenced reports.

There is also a practical aspect of better defining the research approach. This is related to budget and time constraints. Those researchers that spent more time in conducting primary research were limited in their ability to clearly define and quantify projected scenarios that incorporated ISWM and/or EcoSan tenets.

The next section discusses how the Partner’s efforts met the stated research objectives. In addition, specific recommendations are made on how to build upon and expand the current research effort.

Environmental Research 83 WASTE, February 2005 CHAPTER 6 SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS

This discussion will focus on what one can learn from the results of this multi-community effort and assess how well the stated project goals and objectives were meet by the research endeavour. This section will end with specific recommendations on how to build upon both the carbon-based and nitrogen-based research.

6.1 Meeting The Research Goal The goal of the C-N research is to assess whether it is possible to provide municipal managers in charge of urban waste and wastewater management with insight into how an Integrated Sustainable Waste Management approach (ISWM) contributes to reduced GHG emissions and at the same time it contributes to increased reuse of nitrogen and carbon in agriculture. By doing so ISWM contributes to the overall objectives of the convention on climate change, which are: preservation of the atmosphere, poverty alleviation and securing food production. To attain this stated goal, the following objectives were identified: 1. At community level, to determine to what extent waste and wastewater management practices contribute to creation of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). 2. To determine what impact the institution of an Integrated and Sustainable Waste Management may have in changing a community’s GHG emissions. 3. To ascertain whether the results from the research could support proposing that institution of an ISWM approach within a community could be designated as a Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).

Researchers succeeded to develop community specific profiles and subsequent analyses to meet the first objective of how the existing waste and wastewater management systems contribute to GHG emissions. Even though, due to the variability of project location, cultural and historic differences and that fact that the boundaries of the analyses were different, the results from the individual studies have limited comparability, the results do provide a range of data on specific baseline emissions information specific to each location.

The attempt to project an ISWM approach for each studied community and project the level of greenhouse gas emissions also showed great variability across the research projects, but for a number of reasons, this should be expected. First, the projected ISWM scenario is built upon the existing (baseline) infrastructure, and because the existing infrastructure was inherently different across the four communities, one would expect the ISWM scenarios to be different.

Second, variability in projected scenarios is inherent in the ISWM methodology, where context-sensitive stakeholder involvement and local decision making is an integral component to introducing sustainable practices. Thus, the research design could not and did not prescribe the structure of the projected management system nor require specific technological approaches.

All the research teams projected future possible ISWM scenarios; however due to time constraints, partially attributed to the amount of effort demanded by on-the-ground research to meet the first objective, not all the research teams were able to finalize their quantification of future GHG emissions. This was truer for the nitrogen than the carbon analyses, due to the additional challenge of developing a modelling approach for the former, where the model was already available for the latter.

84 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 Thus, individual projects did meet the second objective of estimating community GHG emissions from instituting and ISWM approach for the waste and wastewater management systems. It also follows that, within the previously stated limitations of this research, the initial research hypothesis can be said to be true. The research does support a conclusion that the implementation of an ISWM approach in managing waste and wastewater results in a net reduction in GHG emissions.

6.2 The Potential of ISWM Leveraging a CDM Could the research, both as it was conducted and as the results now stand, support the concept that institution of an ISWM strategy for the management of a community’s waste and wastewater be a candidate for a Clean development Mechanism (CDM) as conceived under the Kyoto Protocol?

For the CDM to fulfil its mandate of reducing GHG emissions in comparison with a baseline scenario, it is essential that confidence should exist in the number and value of its certified emission reductions (CERs). To improve the chances of establishing and maintaining confidence in the CDM, third party entities acting as CDM project facilitators or auditors are required to review the methodologies and results in developing the CERs.

Section 12, sub section 5 - 75 of the Kyoto Protocol states:

5. “Emission reductions resulting from each project activity shall be certified by operational entities to be designated by the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to this Protocol, on the basis of: a. Voluntary participation approved by each Party involved; b. Real, measurable, and long-term benefits related to the mitigation of climate change; and c. Reductions in emissions that are additional to any that would occur in the absence of the certified project activity. 6. The clean development mechanism shall assist in arranging funding of certified project activities as necessary. 7. The Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to this Protocol shall, at its first session, elaborate modalities and procedures with the objective of ensuring transparency, efficiency and accountability through independent auditing and verification of project activities.”

Box 4 Kyoto Protocol on emissions reduction

It must be remembered that the CDM is a financing tool that utilizes a market mechanism that allows funds to flow from Annex 1 countries to establish sustainable practices in developing economies. As such, the CDM must meet the requirement of any venture capital endeavour.

Inherently, small CDM projects currently represent a higher risk compared to more conventional projects because they have all the standard risks associated with any new venture plus additional risks posed by the mechanisms themselves. Most of these additional

Environmental Research 85 WASTE, February 2005 risks stem from the fact that the Kyoto Protocol is yet to be fully ratified.48 Others result from the fact that associated rules and procedures are still being developed and tested, and the corresponding market and value for CERs is not well established. Nonetheless, it should be noted that a well-designed CDM has the potential to generate a higher payoff for the project investor.

Specifically, the financial (or business) plan of any proposed CDM must prove the venture's economic, technical and environmental feasibility, and at the same time reassure the investor that the initiative can meet its financial obligations and generate financial returns commensurate with the risk profile.

To reduce the potential of risk inherent in a small CDM project, there must be a transparency in the projection of GHG emission savings. This necessarily includes documenting the data that is utilized to develop projections and a clear understanding of any, and all, assumptions that are at the root of any projected GHG reductions.

6.2.1 Transparency, Assumptions, Comparability The four UWEP Plus C-N city studies developed and aggregated important information regarding the management of household waste within these targeted communities. This information can provide a strong foundation for subsequent analyses that expand and refine this current work.

Use of the IPCC modelling approach for estimating carbon-based GHG emissions may have been appropriate to allow local researchers to develop projected GHG emissions reductions for implementing an ISWM approach within the communities. But the heavy dependence by the researchers on assumptions and default values found within the IPCC guidelines may not provide the specificity required to mitigate the risk perceived by investors in a small CDM project.

Tingloy’s analysis went beyond the IPCC model by utilizing US EPA emissions coefficients to address the net impact to GHG emissions from increased recycling of non-degradable materials. Use of the EPA’s Warm model provides a more comprehensive approach to modelling GHG emissions; however, a criticism by other researchers is that these US EPA coefficients were created to address waste management within developed economies and have limited application within the developing world.

Thus, one may conclude that the IPCC guidelines, mass balance approach for carbon-based GHG emissions may have a potential to provide the specificity required for developing a small CDM project. And it is true that the researchers did utilize community specific information regarding population, waste generation and composition. But the use of other IPCC guideline default values loses the value of that specificity for development of a marketable small CDM. Moreover, when reviewing the nitrogen-based GHG emissions there is insufficient transparency in the modelling approach.

48 Certain points made herein regarding CDMs and associated risk were adapted from information from the Canadian Department of foreign Affairs and International Trade in their Executive Summary: Structuring and Financing Considerations for CDM and JI

86 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 It should be noted Tingloy researchers spent a good deal of time in the field collecting primary data pertaining to both materials handling practices and generation rates. Other researchers gave more weight to utilizing previous research. In such cases, the researchers were required to develop key assumptions based upon past research.

Both approaches are viable but considering the overall projected use of the information, one may tend to utilize one over the other. From reviewing the researchers’ reports, transparency is somewhat elusive. In those cases where key assumptions and/or data were built upon from previous studies, there were instances where citations were lacking that referenced specific sections of the referenced reports.

Thus, one must conclude that based on the current effort, the research does not demonstrate that institution of an ISWM approach at the local level would rise to the level of a viable small CDM.

6.3 Recommendations Regarding Continued Research What follows is specific recommendations regarding building upon and expanding the current research effort. These recommendations apply to both the current carbon-based and nitrogen- based research efforts.

6.3.1 Carbon These recommendations are logical outgrowths from the conclusion raised in Chapter 4. They can either provide guidance when similar research is undertaken, and/or indicate new areas of research that can be pursued that expands upon this initial work.

There are a number of areas in which the initial lifecycle analysis can both be expanded upon and better defined.

 As an expansion of the LCA, one can look to the work on Tingloy and La Ceiba to develop defined boundaries that include net GHG emission impacts from avoiding extraction and manufacturing of virgin materials as opposed to recyclables. This would necessarily require abandoning the IPCC GHG guidelines in lieu of other possible global GHG emission modelling. The benefit would to show a greater net avoidance of GHG loading. However, it would sacrifice the relative simplicity of use inherent with the IPCC approach. In addition, such a modelling effort would undoubtedly be more complex, with additional assumptions, which, in turn, would make it just that much more difficult to maintain a transparency to the overall approach.

 One can look to the Bangalore study to raise two areas where further study might allow for a more refined understanding of waste materials flow. Bangalore researchers raised the issue of how best to quantify street sweepings, which often is household waste that is moved onto the street, especially in lower income communities. In addition, animal grazing on garbage and the subsequent deposition of organic faecal matter might be investigated to understand what impact such organic waste transformation has on the overall mass balance of the LCA.

 Bamako’s study raises an area for further study regarding informal deposition of waste in and around the community. Their report indicates that a large majority of this deposited

Environmental Research 87 WASTE, February 2005 material is organic and that the deposition sites eventually become locations for agricultural activities. Through communication with the Bangalore UWEP researchers, it is possible to state that this is also a common practice seen in that city and cultural context. This practice is an area of further study, since under IPCC guidelines, if the diverted material eventually enters the agricultural sector, this deposited material falls out of the waste sector’s LCA for assessing net emissions of GHG.

 Any expansion or refinement of the current work needs to address the GHG emission impact of carbon dioxide (CO2). On a per unit basis, methane has a 21 times greater impact on global GHG then carbon dioxide. But since CO2 emissions were not quantified under the IPCC modelling guidelines, the relative impact from the loading of CO2 from the various waste management scenarios can not be ascertained. Such quantification would occur not only as a component of landfill gas emissions but also from the burning and composting of the ort of the waste materials.

 One area of expanded research could be to address the issue of how best to model composting and to incorporate the net GHG impact from this waste management option. The current IPCC guidelines do not address this waste management approach. Even more sophisticated modelling approaches, such as US EPA's Warm model give organics recovery options a cursory treatment.

 LCA analyses that build upon the current work will need to first clearly define all the waste management concepts and terms so that they can be comparably applied across different regional studies. This includes, but is not limited to, the concepts of reuse, recycling, waste prevention and source reduction. This is particularly pertinent in regards to the burning and composting of waste by the household. Although outside the formal and informal waste management system, there is still a net impact to GHG emissions. Thus, this also becomes a possible area for further research and quantification under future LCA efforts.

 The current research effort has re-enforced the recommendation for any subsequent LCA initiative to strive for maximum clarity of approach and transparency in the development and use of all assumptions. This pertains not only to the clear definition of terms but also to the application of a chosen modelling approach, the definition of internal and external boundaries of the associated mass balance and the targeting of specific waste streams. And although due to historical, climatic and cultural differences that are inherent differences across study regions, an attempt to standardize the LCA approaches will better lend the results to some cross community comparisons.

 One issue raised by the Bangalore researchers, that may warrant further study, includes a more accurate quantification of a per household, or per person, waste generation coefficient. The researchers work, combined with previous KaR initiatives, imply that the .5 Kg/cap/day, which is reflected as a default value in the IPCC guidelines, over estimates the generation of waste. To clarify this, a statistically valid field research approach would need to be developed to measure waste generation at the point of origin. This would necessarily require careful weight measurements and accounting of household size. At a minimum, this would need to be conducted during both the rainy and dry seasons to account for the added impact of moisture to the weight of the materials measured.

88 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005  Bangalore researchers also raised one other issue that also could warrant further study in any subsequent LCA analysis. This is the issue of whether to include the decomposition of waste before it reaches a final deposition site in the LCA quantification. They indicate something which as been observed in the other communities, that waste from the household often is temporarily deposited at transfer points in and round the community, either waiting for the city to remove it or because the muscle-traction collection vehicles cannot reach the official transfer sites. This waste can remain within the locations for an extended period of time, in Bamako up to a year, before being transferred to authorised disposal locations. During this time at the temporary deposal sites, decomposition of the organics does occur and results in a release of GHG. And, although not mentioned specifically by the Bangalore team, this long residence time also provides lots of opportunity for organic materials to be eaten by animals. Any further research of this phenomenon would need to determine not only the rate of consumption or decomposition, which would vary depending on the animals on-site, the moisture content due to seasonal differences, and also the amount of anaerobic versus aerobic digestion, which is tied to garbage depth and moisture content.

6.3.2 Nitrogen The following recommendations are logical outgrowths from the conclusion raised in Section 5 report. The following list references specific Partners’ efforts where additional research could expand or refine the general understanding of nitrogen based greenhouse gas emissions.

 The Tingloy research is very detailed and transparent in showing how a baseline (existing) quantification of GHG nitrogen emissions was reached. This approach can be utilized to now expand their qualitative treatment of for projected scenarios to quantify the net GHG emissions from instituting these EcoSan recommendations. Of interest was Tingloy’s proposal of instituting an algal based organic nitrogen recovery system for treating animal manure waste; the algae, in turn, would become a food source for these animals. This could be an interesting closed loop cycle to investigate further.

 A similar comment can be made about the research by the Bangalore team. In addition, Bangalore raised a very interesting point about the role of desiccation and direct consumption of solid fraction of the human waste stream by macro-invertebrates, which in effect, recycles the material back into the soil matrix. This points to an area of research so to expand the knowledge of the extent this waste stream pathway is utilized in arid climates in the South. Concurrently, to what extent the nitrogen/de-nitrification process is reduced due to lack of moisture needs further study within such climates.

 Due to its desert climate, Bamako would be ideal to also study the extent of desiccation and macro invertebrate consumption of human generated wastes. In addition, like Tingloy and Bangalore, a creation of soil amendments is one projected alternative to reducing net nitrogen gas releases by recycling the into the soil-agricultural crop- consumption cycle. There is room to expand this research to understand the avoided synthetic nitrogen addition by such a diversion of human generated nutrients to the agricultural sector and the associated net reduction in nitrogen based compounds.

 Centralized wastewater treatment combined with a supplemental method for nutrient recovery was the core of La Ceiba’s projected scenario analysis. This was also the case,

Environmental Research 89 WASTE, February 2005 but to a lesser extent, for the Bangalore and Bamako researchers. Based on the current conditions within La Ceiba, where 39% of the residents are already on a centralized sewerage system and another 41% utilize septic systems, this is a reasonable projection for current human waste/wastewater management system. However, for the remaining 20 % of the population, located mostly in the peri-urban new land “invasions” called colonias, who either have conventional latrines or septic systems which have not yet been registered by the City. Under these circumstances, the proposed improvement strategy, which focuses on a centralized system, may not be the most appropriate nor sustainable. There is room for further analysis in La Ceiba to compare the net N2O generation if the remaining 20% of the current population followed EcoSan recommendations utilizing a decentralized model as opposed to building the infrastructures to bring that 20% on to a centralized system. Such analysis could concurrently project growth is such peri-urban\ barrios to model how the comparison of centralized versus decentralized EcoSan approach compares.

 One aspect of the La Ceiba analysis, which could be replicated by the other research projects, was the associated cost impact analysis of different projected scenarios. Such information would be critical in requesting funds through the CDM approach under the Kyoto protocol. However, La Ceiba applied such analyses to an improved centralized treatment, with associated nutrient recovery components. Such an economic analysis would be much more complicated when applied to a decentralized approach that develops an institutional framework and associated employment impact based upon an EcoSan/ISWM approach.

 Most of the research did specifically mention, or imply, some form of intermediary composting step to recover the nitrogen in its organic form by applying it as a soil conditioner within the agricultural sector. Further research and analysis could be directed quantifying the net release of nitrogen based greenhouse gas during the composting process.

 For those that indicated that a wetlands system could be used to recover organic nitrogen, which would be destined for the agricultural sector, further research could expand the understanding of these nitrogen LCAs by researching the net reduction of nitrogen as organic nitrogen that has settled into a reducing environment, when utilizing wetland recovery alternatives.

90 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 ANNEX 1 RATIFICATION AND ACCESSION

What does it mean when a country signs a treaty? Signature constitutes a preliminary and general endorsement of the treaty by the country in question. It is not a legally binding step, but it is an indication that the country intends to undertake a careful examination of the treaty in good faith to determine its position towards it. Signing a treaty does not commit a country to proceed to ratification, but it does create an obligation to refrain from acts that would defeat its objectives or take measures to undermine it.

What are accession and ratification? A country can become a State party to a treaty either by ratification or accession. Both of these acts signify an agreement to be legally bound by the terms of the treaty. Most commonly, a country will sign the treaty shortly after it has been adopted and follow this up with ratification when all procedures required by domestic law have been satisfied. Countries that have not signed can become State Parties directly, through accession.

What procedures are involved in ratification and accession? Both ratification and accession involve two steps: 1. The appropriate organ(s) of the country (Parliament, Senate, the Crown, Head of State/Government) make(s) a formal decision to be a party to the treaty in accordance with relevant domestic constitutional procedures. 2. A formal letter, under seal, referring to the relevant decision, signed by the country's responsible authority is prepared. This is the instrument of ratification or accession. The government (normally the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) deposits the instrument of ratification or accession with the Secretary-General of the United Nations. This original document is submitted to the UN Office of Legal Affairs in New York.

The treaty will specify the length of time, after receipt of the instrument of ratification or accession, that it will take effect.

What precedes ratification or accession? The formal procedures vary greatly between countries. Each country has its own process of ratification or accession to a treaty.

In some countries, the Head of State/Government is constitutionally empowered to ratify or accede to a treaty of his or her own accord. In others, the agreement of the legislature is required. In many cases, a combination of these two processes is used. Normally before actually ratifying or acceding to a treaty, a country undertakes a detailed review of the treaty's requirement and gives careful consideration to the most appropriate and effective means to promote compliance.

Environmental Research 91 WASTE, February 2005 ANNEX 2 CALCULATIONS OF THE DEGRADABLE ORGANIC CARBON IN LA CEIBA (HONDURAS)

Household Waste Composition Projected Waste Generation and Physical Composition in La Ceiba, 2000[1] Baseline Scenario ISWM Scenario Type of Waste Household Household Household kg/day % kg/day % kg/day % ORGANIC Cardboard 3 187 4.3 2 944 4.0 1 912 4.0 Newspaper 1 772 2.4 1 772 2.4 1 063 2.2 Mixed paper 1 646 2.2 1 322 1.8 987 2.1 Rags 2 320 3.1 2 320 3.2 2 320 4.8 Leather 1 319 1.8 1 319 1.8 1 319 2.7 A Paper and Textile 10 244 13.8 9 677 13.3 7 602 15.8 B Garden or Park Waste 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 Putrescible/Organic 48 960 66.1 48 960 67.3 26 903 55.9 C Food Waste 48 960 66.1 48 960 67.3 26 903 55.9 Wood 660 0.9 660 0.9 660 1.4 D Wood and Straw Waste 660 0.9 660 0.9 660 1.4 A+B+C+D 59 863 80.8 59 296 81.5 35 165 73.1

Calculation of Methane from a Solid Waste Disposal Site

Model 1: Theoretical Gas Yield Methodology

Calculating Methane Emissions

Methane Emissions (Gg/yr) = (MSWtxMSWfxMCFxDOCxDOCfxFx16/12-R) x (1-OX)

Symbol Meaning Units Baseline for La ISWM Model Ceiba MSWt Total Household MSW generated Gg/yr 27,01 27,01 MSWf Fraction of MSW disposed to SWDS fraction 0,98 0,60 MCF Methane Correction Factor fraction 0,80 1,0 DOC Degradable Organic Carbon fraction 0,16 0,15 DOCf Fraction DOC dissimilated 0,77 0,77 F fraction of CH4 in landfill gas 0,50 0,50 R Recovered CH4 Gg/yr 0 0 OX Oxidation Fraction fraction 0 0 Methane Emissions (Gg/yr) Gg/yr 1,70 1,26

Calculating DOC (by Weight)

Per cent DOC (by weight) = 0.4(A) + 0.17(B) + 0.15 (C ) + 0.30 (D)

Type of Waste Household fraction Household fraction (%) (%) Paper and Textiles (A) 13,29 0,13 15,80 0,16 Garden and Park Waste (B) 0,00 0,00 0,00 0,00 Food Waste (C ) 67,26 0,67 55,93 0,56 Wood and Straw Waste (D) 0,91 0,01 1,37 0,01

92 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 ANNEX 3 PROCESS FLOW DIAGRAMS FOR CARBON

Bamako: Materials/Carbon process flow

Environmental Research 93 WASTE, February 2005 Bangalore: Materials/Carbon Process Flow

Households

USW in bins Ragpickers (%)

Small animals Recyclers & Re-users

Decomposition, drying, (anaerobic and aerobic) (30% carbon + 30% moisture loss) Recycled material pool

Street Collection

Transportation Transportation losses

Dumping of USW Ragpickers (%)

Small animals In situ decomposition

Enrichment of soil C Release of CO2 & CH4.

Atmospheric poolof CO2 & CH4

Carbon fixation by crops

94 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 Tingloy: Materials/Carbon Process Flow

Households

Outside Poblacion Burned

Burned Within Pablacion

Recycled Composted Uncollected Disposal Site Reuse

Back yard Dumping Reuse (source reduction) Buried Illegally dumped

Environmental Research 95 WASTE, February 2005 ANNEX 4 NITROGEN EMISSION PATHWAYS

Wastewater Private Treatment Sewerage Plant

Municipal Wastewater Sewerage Treatment Plant

Household

Septic Tank Surface Water

Latrines Soil

Groundwater

96 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005 ANNEX 5 NITROGEN INFLUX AND EFFLUX IN BANGALORE

Influx Efflux (sewage)

Human excreta Human (residential) (residential) (60%, 5.6t) (9.36t) Human non-residents Human excreta (60%, 1.26t) (floating population) (1.8t) Major animals' waste (28%, 1.5t) Animal excreta (major) (5.29t) Bangalore city Minor animals' waste (9.7%, 0.25t) Animal excreta (minor) (2.52t) Composted Human waste (1%, 01t) In situ drying Human wastes Major animals (10%, 0.94t) (42%, 2.2 t)

Major animals Minor animals/birds (30%, 1.59t) (52%, 1.3 t)

Minor animals (19, 0,48) Soak pits Human waste from residents (29%, 3.24t)

Environmental Research 97 WASTE, February 2005 REFERENCES AND WEBSITES VISITED

References:

- India’s National GHGs inventory for 1990. Asia Least-Cost Greenhouse Gas Abatement Strategy: India National Report, ADB/GEF/UNDP, 1998. - Integrated Sustainable Waste Management, A set of five tools for Decision-makers – Experiences from the Urban Waste Expertise Programme (1995 – 2001). Arnold van de Klundert, Anne Scheinberg, Maria Muller, Nadine Dulac and Lane Hoffman, WASTE, Gouda, 2001

- N2O conversion when human wastes enter the sewage stream and are treated anaerobically from the IPCC-GEF guidelines 1996. - Revised 1996 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories - Tracking greenhouse gases, the Manila Observatory, Philippines, 1994 - Understanding climate change: A beginner’s guide to UN Framework convention and its Kyoto Protocol, UNEP & UNPCCC, 2002 - WHO data for total solid human discharge from 1984

Websites visited

Internet search on the following key words: - Cycle of N, - Cycle of C, - Pit latrine + nitrogen balance - Sustainable strategies and nutrient recycling - Emissions of GHG and plastic burning - Emissions of GHG and incomplete combustion http://unfccc.int/cdm/

98 Environmental Research WASTE, February 2005