Gender and Waste Nexus: Experiences from Bhutan, Mongolia and Nepal

Nepal

Stakeholder snapshot

Households and communities

• Men monitor and oversee the landfill and are landfill operators.

• Women are often responsible for cooking and are also the main household waste managers. • Women are more active in community initiatives. • Women are more open to waste management initiatives, such as composting.

building and training for community leaders and has implemented various pilot projects. The training varies from simple awareness-raising about waste disposal to waste segregation practices and composting. Some of the centre’s work is aimed solely at women, sincewomen are more willing to carry out such practices than men. Voluntary household waste segregation is well under way in Kathmandu Valley and is mainly stimulated by reimbursement schemes. Door-to-door scrap waste collectors account for about 41 per cent of the total recyclables collected (Luitel and Khanal 2010). 16 This huge contribution of household waste in Nepal’s recycling efforts, driven by informal workers, could be an incentive for the Government to recognize and/ or formalize the informal sector’s contribution towards achieving the national target of zero waste. A recurring problem in Kathmandu is the mixing of hazardous household waste, such as batteries, domestic chemicals and mercury-containing goods with other non-hazardous waste. The awareness of these waste streams remains low among most people, though there are insufficient data available to establish whether women are more exposed to hazardous wastes Informal sector laborers (unwaged) • Waste collectors by bicycle are exclusively Indian men. • Waste pickers at landfills tend to be women. • Waste pickers at the transfer station are predominantly women. Small-scale enterprises • Scrap dealers that sell goods from street pickers are run by men. Administration • Managers, advisors, supervisors and other similar positions are mostly filled by men. Small-scale enterprises • Small-scale enterprises, such as composting, are mostly taken on by women. • Crafts from waste materials are mostly created by women. Informal

Policy and governance

• Men are largely in high decision-making positions at the national and municipal levels. • Women’s participation at the political, administrative and economic leadership levels is limited.

Operational levels

Formal

Formal sector laborers (waged) • Women collect money for waste services. • Women mostly fill the role of street sweeper. • Men are exclusively truck drivers, loaders and mechanical maintenance workers.

A recent waste minimization project in Kathmandu offered training and provided 8,000 subsidized compost bins to households. Although the available data are not disaggregated by gender, the general observation was that women were the principal target group and participants of the project.

“Women are more efficient.” – Municipality representative talking about participation in community-based training.

Several non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have promoted composting among households. The Federation of Women Entrepreneurs’ Associations of Nepal has trained about 1,000 individuals (men and women) on a specific organic decomposition method known as vermicomposting. According to the federation, most trainees were women. As the result of the training, 25 women and 10 men were encouraged to start their own vermicomposting enterprises. Women’s responsibilities also extend into the public sphere,where theyare active in community initiatives. The Nepal Pollution and Control Environment Management Centre, a non-profit organization, provides capacity-

48 Gender and waste nexus