Promoting a community-based solid-waste management initiative in local government: Yala municipality, Thailand

Yala is a city of some 80,000 people in southern Thailand, and is well known for tidiness and clean conditions. However, it has experienced problems in waste disposal and has sought ways of addressing these through alternative techniques, including recycling. A package of new practices was introduced, one of which (“Garbage for Eggs”) is described here. Residents were encouraged to bring recyclable material to exchange for eggs, at monthly exchanges in local communities, with emphasis on poorer communities. The project aimed not only at garbage reduction, but also at community empowerment through self-reliance, establishing new relationships of more equality and less dependence, between poor communities and the municipal administration. The project succeeded initially in promoting clearance of a backlog of discarded items, especially glass, thus improving the environment of the communities; but the quantities brought for exchange then reduced steadily over a year of monitoring, to much lower levels. Various factors accounting for this are discussed, and the impacts of the exchange practice on other poor groups, such as waste-buyers, are analyzed.