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Garbage or solid waste seen abundant in the metropolises of the country must be recycled and put into economic gain. Recycling agencies must be set up for this purpose, as in Australia, Singapore and the developed world, Chairman, Chamber of Construction Industry Sri Lanka (CCISL) Surath Wickremasinghe said. Children could be made use of for collection of solid waste, as in the United States, for instance.

Sri Lanka lacked a comprehensive plan and approach for the collection of its solid waste, seen in dumps in Colombo, Kandy and urban locations. The plan should include not only the aspects of collection, but how the garbage could be best handled. In the absence of such, garbage is an environmental hazard.

In the developed world, solid waste is sorted out into plastics, aluminium, organic material, paper, and other materials such as batteries, computer parts and glass bottles. These materials are then recycled, by entrepreneurs, using appropriate technology. Young entrepreneurs should be engaged into this business, which has a high economic potential, Wickremasinghe said.

CCISL Secretary General, Dakshitha Thalgodapitiya said that although the exercise of garbage collection does not directly involve CCISL, the chamber took it up, as a matter of social responsibility.

In Sri Lanka, this burning problem did not have the political will or intellectual vision to address it, Thalgodapitiya said.

He suggested home grown solutions, possibly, obtaining bio gas from the waste, for domestic use, and conversion into fertiliser. Also, mass scale accelerated breaking down into fertiliser.

Chairman, Central Environmental Authority (CEA), Karunasena Hettiarachchi said that on a World Bank initiative, he had visited China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Philippines and other Asian countries to see how solid waste was handled and put into better use. Hong Kong's technology was more advanced to that of China, while Malaysia employed an average technology. But all the waste was put into good economic gain.

Many people thought that the problem of solid waste disposal was the responsibility of the CEA, if so, the CEA would be a policing organisation. The problem was that everyone waited for the policy maker to work out a solution for the disposal of solid waste. The problem could be handled by entrepreneurs, Hettiarachchi said.

In Sri Lanka, local government and entrepreneurs had no understanding of the aspect of social marketing, where commercial strategies of marketing is used to achieve social ends. Bring social marketing close to the people and secure economic ends, Hettiarachchi said.

(EL)

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