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The Candelaria community, like many communities in Honduras, suffers from a shortage of jobs and an abundance of garbage. But unlike other communities, Candelarians’ wanted to know if there were other things they could do with their waste, aside from just burying it.
When the community contacted EWB, through an independent non-governmental organization (NGO), they were already separating their plastics, organic waste, and other materials they thought could be reused.
Material that could not be reused was being dumped. Over time rain falling on the material caused decay that produced odors, damaged the surrounding natural environment, including the groundwater and river, and attracted vultures. The town has asked for EWB’s assistance in designing and permitting an environmentally safe landfill for material that can’t be recycled or composted.
For plastic beverage bottles that could be recycled, a recycler who lived in a town many hours away and had a truck, offered to drive the many hours over unpaved roads to reach the town and haul away the plastic. Because the community had no way to compact the bottles, the recycler wasn’t able to fit many bottles in his truck each trip, and therefore wasn’t able to make enough from the sale to pay the community much.
The leaders in the Candelaria community wanted to know if EWB could help them figure ways to reuse this waste, while possibly even creating much needed local job opportunities. Their primary hope was to create enough revenue from the reuse of waste and recyclables to at least support the two single mothers that separated the plastics and other recyclables from the waste.
EWB visited the community in January of 2010 and again in July of 2010 to assess the situation and more fully ascertain the wants and needs of the community. During the July trip, draft EWB plans for creation of a landfill were reviewed and agreed to by the community. The EWB team is currently finalizing the sanitary landfill design to effectively manage the remaining un-recyclable municipal waste materials.
The design creates an “above grade” landfill comprised of a number of “cells” that can hold a year’s worth of materials. Each cell will be covered annually before the rainy season so that runoff will not impact the nearby river. The site has capacity for at least 20-years of landfill storage, giving the community time to identify additional future properties.
The community also discussed with EWB ways to develop a utility shed to support operations at the landfill site, and possible plans for a revenue-generating plant nursery and composting business at the site were also considered.
The design process for the utility shed is currently underway as are research efforts for the plant nursery design. The EWB team plans to return to Candelaria in February or March of 2011 to begin construction of the first landfill cell and the utility shed.
EWB is also working on two initiatives to help the community achieve their goals of generating more revenue from their waste. EWB and a team of students from IIT are working to adapt a design for a manually powered plastics baler (or compactor) using materials that are available locally in the community.
This could increase the amount of recyclables that can be transported per trip by up to 10 times, thereby dramatically lowering the costs and increasing revenues to the community.
Another team is beginning to examine the possibility of craft projects made from the materials that are harder to recycle, such as plastic bags, glass bottles and tires. Ideas such as creating drinking glasses from used glass bottles and raincoats from fused plastic bags were discussed with the community in July.
In fact, local school students were enlisted to survey over 75% of the community. This survey aims to learn more about what types of products might be needed locally and what might be good ideas for micro-business initiatives. The results from the survey, along with future conversations with the community, should help to direct which designs will be further explored with the community at the next visit.
Project Type: Status: Estimated Project Cost:
Waste Management Design $27,660