Solid Waste Management In Sri Lanka

The Local Authorities (LAs) are responsible for the collection and proper disposal of waste generated by the people within its territory. Except for the Municipality of Colombo which has a separate Solid Waste Management Unit, the public health department of the Local Authority is responsible for solid waste management in addition to their other responsibilities including health and sanitation. Hence there is not much priority given to solid waste management within the Local Authority and the budget allocation is also limited.

Sri Lanka has 309 local authorities. Among those 15 are Municipal Councils (MC), 37 are Urban Councils (UC) and 257 are Pradeshiya sabhas (PS). The daily collection of MSW in the country is about 2683 tons. However comparing

It was not a concern because of the free availability of degraded land. However, nowadays a major problem faced by local authorities is lack of abandoned land for the disposal of solid waste. Therefore finding land for MSW disposal is becoming much difficult. More than 95 % of country’s solid waste is disposed in open dump in Sri Lanka. Open dumps are generally low lying degraded land which are state owned and are used only for flood retention. In some parts of the country even privately owned lands are used for open dumping in instances where landowners allow dumping on a certain payments. Majority of these dumps are left open while a few lands are applied with a thin soil cover on top due to public opposition. This is the only protective measure taken in Sri Lanka. These dumps are used to dispose all kind of waste such as industrial waste, municipal solid waste, hospital and clinical waste, house waste altogether without any segregation. Some of the privately owned dump sites had been sold for construction purposes later on. Therefore nowadays there is a scarcity for lands to dispose the wastes. In the central part of the island, most of the time, waste is disposed along road embankment thus contaminating water streams at the bottom of the

Street garbage collecting procedures are carried out to collect main street garbage daily through the hand cap and tractors. They instruct to public divide the disposes in 3 categories such as organic compounds, inorganic compounds and recycle compounds. They collect the divided garbage from schools, shops and organizations through the small charges. Inorganic garbage dump is in kallundai .They collect recycle things and sent to Colombo for efficient recycling. In the hospital they collect only polythenes, papers and food wastes. They instruct hospital staffs and doctors to burn the surgical parts and harmful things through intelator. They clean the canals and spread sterilizers.

But this system doesn’t achieve 100% success, because of irresponsible public, scarce of vehicles, lack of improved technological methods and not having native dumping place. So they hire the vehicles like tractors, compact track to organize some vigilant program and awareness programs to give awareness among the public about MSW management through the notices. Municipal system appoints a team to observe and to find the irresponsible public and take proper actions against them. They encourage the people to dispose the wastes in the 3 categories properly and warn them not to dump the garbage in public