RE-USE PRACTICES AND ISSUES IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES 199
It is usual now to find that policy recommendations for municipal solid waste manage-
ment make reference to the need to address the treatment and reuse of organics wastes
specifically (Rosenberg and Furedy, 1996; India, 2000).
In short, a base is being laid for a broad framework for understanding urban organic
solid waste in developing countries. The current emphasis in municipal solid waste
management is upon public-private partnerships (the co-operation of governments,
companies, NGOs and international agencies) (see Baud et al., 2001, and the
concluding chapter of this book). This approach is being applied to organic wastes
with reference to composting.
Nevertheless, this attention to urban organic solid waste has not, so far, produced
systematic or adequate research on the nature and quantities of organic wastes in cities
of developing countries. The positive and problematic aspects of their exploitation in
any one city or region have not been explored and the implications of reuse for solid
waste management are not well understood. Every piece of research that directly
addresses the reuse of urban organic wastes and its system-wide implications helps to
lay the foundation for the needed comprehensive approach. This is the importance of
the project work reported on in this section.
9.2. URBAN ORGANIC SOLID WASTES AND MUNICIPAL SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT
Urban organic solid wastes include not only the organic material in municipal waste
streams, but wastes generated by gardening, urban agriculture, park and road mainte-
nance, livestock keeping, food processing, tanning, and the like. (Although human
excreta are also organic wastes, they are not usually covered in discussion of waste
reuse in solid waste management and are not included in this discussion.) The gener-
ators can be classed as bulk generators of raw wastes (such as green markets, parks,
stables, slaughterhouses), bulk generators of processed wastes (such as food
processing industries, large hotel/institutional kitchens), and small generators of raw
and processed wastes (such as households). Most of the organics in waste streams are
generated by kitchens in the course of daily living.
It is the organics that are put out for general collection and so are mixed in the solid
wastes that most concern municipal managers. Interest in controlling the organic
fraction of waste streams (which typically comprises from 35-70 percent of total
municipal waste generated in large cities of developing countries) has a long history.
Composting and reuse techniques (including use for animal feed, fuel and construc-
tion) have been documented in Africa and Asia, going back hundreds of years The
interest in urban organic solid waste has become more general, however, in the context
of environmental thinking about waste reduction, strategic planning for solid waste
management (see Rosenberg and Furedy, 1996), and greenhouse gas emissions. In