RE-USE PRACTICES AND ISSUES IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES 205
ment subsidies, e.g. the autonomous Karnataka Compost Development Corporation
plant in Bangalore (Lardinois and Furedy, 1999; Lardinois and Marchand, 2000) and
the Accra municipal plant (Asomani-Boateng and Haight, 1999). These problems
have led to consideration of privatisation and small-scale units.
Private enterprise in composting urban organic solid waste
The interest of private companies in composting is reviving in South and South-east
Asia. This has been encouraged by the move for public-private partnerships in solid
waste management (cf. chapter 5). The units are often set up by agro-chemical compa-
nies and may receive assistance from municipalities in the form of access to free
municipal wastes, and a rent-free site, as is the case with the Excel Industries plant in
Bombay and some of the company’s franchises (Chakraborty, 2000).
Private companies that invest in research and development are in a better position to
make a profit than any other operation. An example is Terra Firma Bio-Technologies
that is doing vermicomposting in Bangalore (Lardinois and Marchand, 2000).
Neighbourhood-scale composting
International agencies, bilateral aid programmes and NGOs are promoting neighbour-
hood-scale compost plants, which draw their feedstock from area residences, and are
usually run by NGOs or CBOs, with assistance (such as access to land) from munic-
ipal councils. There have been numerous pilot projects of this kind in the past decade.
For instance, UNCHS has supported small-scale composting, particularly in Nairobi
(Harrison & Paumard, 2000); the World Bank continues to encourage composting of
solid waste in Indonesia (Mockler, 1998; Hoornweg et al., 1999; Zurbrugg and Aris-
tanti, 1999); the Dutch government via the foundation WASTE has supported projects
and research in India, the Philippines and Mali (WASTE 1996-; van der Klundert et
al., 2001).
The most recent assessments of experiments in small-scale composting suggest that it
is of limited relevance for the solid waste reduction of larger cities. Lardinois and
Marchand analysed the financial and technical feasibility of three such plants (in
Bangalore, Kathmandu, and Manila) and concluded small-scale plants are financially
unfeasible and usually lack the necessary technical knowledge; they produce little
compost and, consequently, the selling price is very high. For instance, the cost of
compost produced by the Centre for Environmental Education pilot plant in Bangalore
was $US 1,514 per ton, with a hidden cost of another $US 724 (Lardinois and
Marchand, 2000). The problem of small plants being located far from agriculturalists
is noted for African examples (Birley and Lock, 1999). These plants can, however,
play a role in environmental education and employment of disadvantaged persons.