Kathmandu’s floods expose a deepening garbage crisis

Image by Suman Nepali via Nepali Times. Used with permission.

It took the Great Nepali Floods of September 28, 2024, for the residents of Kathmandu to fully grasp the extent of the trash being dumped into the Valley’s sacred rivers.

Even three weeks later, plastic bags still hang like flags from the high branches of trees in Teku and Sankhamul suburbs in the Nepali capital, stark reminders of how high the water rose on that fateful day. Pieces of cloth, Styrofoam, plastic bottles, and other debris remain scattered along the damaged pavements and embankments on the banks of the Bagmati river.

This was the revenge of the rivers. The Bagmati, Vishnumati, Manohara, and Nakkhu struck back at the city dwellers for treating the once sacred rivers as dumpsites. The rivers threw the trash right back where it came from.

“If we do not want such garbage being washed away during the monsoon, we should prioritise waste management. We should focus on every aspect of waste generation,” says Shilashila Acharya of Avni Ventures, a recycling company in Kathmandu. “Dumping sites are often near the riversides. So, we might also want to rethink the locations of the dumping sites.”

Image by Suman Nepali via Nepali Times. Used with permission.

Single-use plastic is the largest source of trash in Kathmandu Valley, with an estimated 5 million plastic bags used daily. About 800 tons of this non-biodegradable material is dumped in the river or in landfill sites every day.

Thicker plastics, such as bottles and other discarded household items, are collected by waste pickers for recycling. However, plastic bags thinner than 20 microns — often used just once to carry vegetables or other food — are simply discarded. One plastic bag takes 500 years to completely biodegrade, and microplastics contaminate drinking water and find its way into the human food chain.

Plastics thrown carelessly into rivers can clog drainage systems, disrupt the water cycle and poison aquatic species and wildlife. Waste collecting companies have realised that there is money in trash, and are doing good business recycling the plastic bottles and large items. However, since thin plastic bags aren’t recyclable, they often end up being swept down the Bagmati River towards the plains.

Image by Suman Nepali via Nepali Times. Used with permission.

“Cleaning campaigns are not enough. When we clean, we pick up the waste from one site and throw it off in another likely a landfill. This does not deal with the main problem of waste,” says Nabin Maharjan of Blue Waste to Value (BW2V) which recycles waste and turns them into sellable products such as cooking utensils.

He adds: “But what we can do instead is pick the waste in a segregated form, reduce them to products and sell them. And that is how a circular economy can thrive. The government and local authorities should be involved.”

Nepal’s governments has attempted to ban polythene and single-use plastic bags thinner than 20 microns several times in the past, but these regulations were quickly repealed due to lobbying by plastic pellet importers with political connections.

Hanging from railings on the Bagmati banks, and swinging from trees at its confluence with the Vishnumati in Teku are at least seven types of plastic. The lowest grade are single use thin plastic bags that need to be banned at source.

Image by Suman Nepali via Nepali Times. Used with permission.

But half-buried in the silt of the Bagmati’s floodplain are PET (polyethylene terephthalate) bottles, which can easily be recycled. While waste collectors do remove most of these and other recyclables before disposal, many still end up in the river. Without extended producer responsibility, the Nepali government does not require manufacturers to ensure proper recycling.

“The first and foremost step of waste management starts is the segregation of biodegradable and non-biodegradable trash at source. Secondly, there should be more planned landfills within a community. While we prefer landfills to be away from the city, planned smaller landfills help better manage the waste of a community,” adds Acharya.

“Third is the partnership that can exist between government authorities like Kathmandu municipalities with private organizations who are already working in waste management. This collaboration can help them better manage the waste,” she says.

Image by Suman Nepali via Nepali Times. Used with permission.

The Kathmandu Valley produces an estimated 1,200 tons of waste every day, most of which ends up unsegregated at the landfill site at Banchare Danda of Nuwakot, after the previous site at Sisdole got filled up in 2022. Nearly 65 percent of it is still organic household waste, and can easily be turned into compost and need not end up in landfills at all.

Much of the paper, plastic bottles, metal and glass can also be recycled easily if they are segregated at source — as Mayor Balen Shah promised in his election campaigning. This could reduce the volume of garbage that has to be sent in fleets of tipper trucks every day to the landfill.

Residents living near Banchare already suffer serious health risks from water contaminated by leachate from the dumpsite.

Says Nabin Maharjan: “We have to start working on minimising the waste generation. Until waste prevention is not taken seriously, this cycle of people throwing waste and people cleaning it up will never end.”