New topic: waste separation

Last week, the first of a series of four so-called "hands-on" workshops was held with representatives of four African countries and ETH. Lively discussions revealed differences but also similarities on the challenges associated with motivating households to separate their organic from non-organic waste. In South Africa, problems center mainly around garden waste that gets re-contaminated on the way to the composting facility while in Rwanda and DRC the problem lies more with households that separate their waste individually and how the collection system is organized.

The workshop took place within the RUNRES project of ETH Zurich. Ranas Ltd. supports the project with behaviour change expertise to achieve a high level of separation of degradable from non-degradable waste at household level, which is a precondition for operating composting facilities at reasonable costs.

During the first training, participants learnt how to define the specific behaviour and how to structure the qualitative questionnaires according to the RANAS model.

The RUNRES project aims at improving resilience and sustainability of regional food systems by building waste recycling solutions through locally important value chains. It is rolled out in the city regions of Arba Minch, Ethiopia; Kigali, Rwanda; Bukavu, Democratic Republic of the Congo; and Msunduzi, South Africa.

More information on the RUNRES project: https://runres.ethz.ch/