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Please be aware that the content herein has not been peer reviewed. It consists of personal reflections, insights, and learnings of the contributor(s). It may not be exhaustive, nor does it aim to be authoritative knowledge.
Title
Please provide a name for your action learning plan.
Waste Management in the Capital City of Dili
Challenge statement
Challenge type: If you are working on multiple challenges, please indicate if this is your "big bet" or "exploratory" challenge.
Please note: we ask you to only submit a maximum of 3 challenges - 1x Big Bet, 2x Exploratory. Each challenge must be submitted individually.
BIG BET
Challenge statement: What is your challenge? (Please answer in specific terms: "Our challenge is that...”.)
Our challenge is that rapid urbanization in the capital city of Dili has worsen the waste issue. Limited waste collection point, poor design of waste bin and ignorance of people to separate waste contributed to waste management issue in the capital city of Dili.
Background: What is the history of your challenge? What is causing or driving it? Who is involved? How does the current situation look like? What undesired effects does it produce?
Rapid urbanization in Dili has contributed to excessive waste generated each year. Minimum control in managing waste as well as lack of people participation to solve waste issues have added more complexity to already hard-to-solve waste management issues in Dili. During our preliminary assessment, we found that there is limited data representing how much waste collected each day/week in Dili alone nor types of waste collected in each waste bins currently allocated in most visible spots in Dili. This subsequently contributes to inability to design proper waste collection points based on the needs of the people.
The social experiment on waste management seeks to address the root causes of waste management issues by conducting spatial analysis on the location of general waste bins located in three selected sub-villages in Dili: Farol, Colmera and Caicoli. The analysis will also focus on the current design of waste disposal bins allocated in the said villages. The findings will guide spatial design on where to locate waste bins in each village based on the total population and type of waste generated (organic, and non-organic waste). Access to waste bins and how general waste bins are designed are also considered to be important aspect to ensure that waste management issues is properly addressed at collection points before they are transported to final waste collection points in Tibar. Location of general waste bins also determines how people in villages and sub-villages emptied their household bins. Mostly bins are hardly accessible and visible to people which add another issue to collection points currently designated. Challenges identified based on direct observation in the field: 1. Waste bins are made of concrete and some are made of steels. 2. Most bins positioned nearby the main roads and limited bins are allocated in the sub ways going to sub-villages where mostly poor people live far away from the main roads, 3. Most steel bins indicated separation into green and yellow bins however waste are still mixed. these bins are poorly designed. 4. In most cases, waste is not filled up properly inside the bins and scattered alongside the edges of the roads. 5. Lack of maintenance and care for most general bins
Another critical issue associated with waste management in Timor-Leste is the continuous use of plastic products within our consumption practice. Based on latest report done by Asian Development Bank on plastic waste, there is approximately 68.4 tonnes of plastic waste are mismanaged daily and is about 54.4 tonnes of plastics is likely to enter marine environment if it is not treated properly. It is also said that about 20,690 tonnes of plastic waste entered the waters in 2010 and if it is not managed properly then it will increase to 64,205 tonnes by 2025. Households and retailers are the main drivers of plastic waste mostly in the capital city of Dili. There is almost no data on how plastic products were segregated at households’ level and at Tibar Dumping Centre. In addition, the latest government decree law 37/2020 has been issued on 23 September 2020 declaring zeroing single-use plastics products includes plastic bags, cutlery, spoon, plates. Major supermarkets and shops in Dili have altered the use of single-use plastic bags and opted to replace it with cloth bags. However, single-plastic bags are still in use by people when purchasing goods at kiosk and at the local markets. Despite notable challenges, UNDP Timor-Leste has been promoting awareness on recycling plastic waste product through UNDP Recycling project since 2017. About more than five community’s groups from five villages in the capital city Dili were trained on recycling, reuse and repurpose plastic products. TLS Accelerator Lab will tap into these community groups in the selected villages mentioned above during our social experiment to test how their knowledge on segregating waste can mitigate the impact of excessive waste production by solving the source of waste at household level.
Quantitative evidence: What (official) data sources do you have on this challenge that better exemplifies the importance and urgency of this frontier challenge? You can add text, a link, or a picture.
APSN | Burning ambition: Timor-Leste's waste management problem (asia-pacific-solidarity.net),
Solid Waste Management in the Pacific: Timor-Leste Country Snapshot (adb.org)
Qualitative evidence: What weak signals have you recently spotted that characterizes its urgency? Please provide qualitative information that better exemplifies the importance and urgency of this frontier challenge. You can add text, a link, or a picture.
Value proposition: What added value or unique value proposition is your Accelerator Lab bringing to solving this challenge? Why is it your Lab that needs to work on this challenge and not other actors within UNDP, other stakeholders in the country respectively? Why is it worth investing resources to this challenge?
we aim to co-design solutions with people to experience the result immediately and provide feedback to refine the solutions and make it work. People will understand their responsibility in managing waste at their household level and separating the waste. It is worth to invest in this challenge because people behaviors are deemed to be one of the root causes which need to be addressed.
Short “tweet” summary: We would like to tweet what you are working on, can you summarize your challenge in a maximum of 280 characters?
Waste in the capital city of Dili are becoming source of issue for our society and the environment. Limited access to waste bins at villages and sib-villages to general waste bins and no separation of waste at household level has impacted Dili severely.
Partners
Who are your top 5 partners for this challenge? Please submit from MOST to LEAST important and state Name, Sector and a brief description of the (intended) collaboration.
Please state the name of the Parter:
Edificio Municipio de Dili, Secretario de Estado dos Asuntos da Toponimia e Organizacao Urbana, Ministerio da Saude, Grupo Joventude Brigada Ambiental, NGO Mercy Corps
What sector does our partner belong to?
Government (&related)
Please provide a brief description of the collaboration.
For Waste Management in the Capital City of Dili, we will collaborate with Dili Municipality Office (as our first and main partner) to better understand the challenges of managing waste in the capital city of Dili and how we better tackle them. We will do series of consultative interviews with Dili Municipality Office staff who are responsible for Waste management as well as members of the community in the selected villages in Dili. The information needed from the interview will include how waste has been collected and how the waste are being treated.
Is this a new and unusual partner for UNDP?
No
Learning questions
Learning question: What is your learning question for this challenge? What do you need to know or understand to work on your challenge statement?
How we can separate the waste at household level before it reaches general bins and what are the access to the current locations of the general waste bins?
To what stage(s) in the learning cycle does your learning question relate?
Sense, Explore, Test
Usage of methods: Relating to your choice above, how will you use your methods & tools for this learning question? What value do these add in answering your learning question?
The collective intelligence method will allow us (the lab) and the community reps to better understand the root causes of waste management and who are the responsible. The Design thinking method will allow us to design solutions in progress based on the findings during the design process. While prototyping will also allow us to create solutions that we can test rapidly the solutions that we created. These are very important methods for this challenge.
Existing data gaps: Relating to your choice above, what existing gaps in data or information do these new sources of data addressing? What value do these add in answering your learning question?
These new sources of data will provide new information about people experience related to waste collection issues at their household until
Closing
Early leads to grow: Think about the possible grow phase for this challenge - who might benefit from your work on this challenge or who might be the champions in your country that you should inform or collaborate with early on to help you grow this challenge?
The benefit of completing this challenge will be people in Dili will have sensibility on their responsibility to manage their waste properly while the local government - Dili Municipality office will start to gain more data on wastes, ease waste collection by the waste collector and land degradation as a result of contamination will be reduced.
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