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Providing good solid waste management (SWM) services while also ensuring financial sustainability of the system continues to be a major challenge in cities of developing countries. Bahir Dar in northwestern Ethiopia outsourced municipal waste services to a private waste company in 2008. While this institutional change has led to substantial improvement in the cleanliness of the city, its financial sustainability remains unclear. Is the private company able to generate sufficient revenues from their activities to offset the costs and generate some profit? This paper presents a cost-revenue analysis, based on data from July 2009 to June 2011. The analysis reveals that overall costs in Bahir Dar's SWM system increased significantly during this period, mainly due to rising costs related to waste transportation. On the other hand, there is only one major revenue stream in place: the waste collection fee from households, commercial enterprises and institutions. As the efficiency of fee collection from households is only around 50%, the total amount of revenues are not sufficient to cover the running costs. This results in a substantial yearly deficit. The results of the research therefore show that a more detailed cost structure and cost-revenue analysis of this waste management service is important with appropriate measures, either by the privates sector itself or with the support of the local authorities, in order to enhance cost efficiency and balance the cost-revenues towards cost recovery. Delays in mitigating the evident financial deficit could else endanger the public-private partnership (PPP) and lead to failure of this setup in the medium to long term, thus also endangering the now existing improved and currently reliable service. We present four options on how financial sustainability of the SWM system in Bahir Dar might be enhanced: (i) improved fee collection efficiency by linking the fees of solid waste collection to water supply; (ii) increasing the value chain by sales of organic waste recycling products; (iii) diversifying revenue streams and financing mechanisms (polluter-pays-, cross-subsidy- and business-principles); and (iv) cost reduction and improved cost-effectiveness. We argue that in a PPP setup such as in Bahir Dar, a strong alliance between the municipality and private enterprise is important so that appropriate solutions for improved financial sustainability of a SWM system can be sought and implemented.

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Abstract:The majority of residents in low-and middle-income countries are served by onsite sanitation. Equitable access to sanitation, including emptying, collection, and transport services for the accumulation of faecal sludge remains a major challenge. Comprehensive information on service coverage by mechanical faecal sludge emptying service providers is lacking. The purpose of this study is to analyse the spatial distribution of service coverage and identify areas without faecal sludge emptying services in Kampala, Uganda. The study uses GIS (geographic information systems) as a tool to analyse real-time data of service providers based on GPS (global positioning system) units that were installed in a representative number of trucks. Of the total recorded 5653 emptying events, 27% were located outside Kampala city boundaries. Of those within Kampala city boundaries, 37% were classified as non-household customers. Areas without service provision accounted for 13% of the total area. Service provision normalised by population density revealed much greater service provision in medium-and high-income areas than low-and very low-income areas. The employed method provides a powerful tool to optimise faecal sludge management on a city-wide scale by increasing sustainability of the planning and decision-making process, increasing access to service provision and reducing faecal sludge transport times and costs.

The poor state of solid waste management in Dar es Salaam (DSM), Tanzania, the large fraction of organic waste generated and a high charcoal consumption by city residents has triggered this research on carbonization of municipal biowaste. Char produced by the thermochemical conversion method of slow pyrolysis can be briquetted and used as cooking fuel alternative to wood-based charcoal. To explore the potential of biowaste carbonization in DSM, the most suitable organic wastes were selected and pyrolyzed in a simple, externally heated carbonization system developed as part of this study. A Multi-Criteria Analysis framework allowed to assess prevailing biowaste types regarding availability and accessibility, and respective suitability in terms of physical-chemical properties. The assessment, using data from a survey and lab analysis, revealed the following biowaste types with highest overall potential for char production in DSM: packaging grass/leaves (PG) used for transportation of fruit and vegetables to the markets, wood waste (WW) from wood workshops, and cardboard (CB) waste. Best practice carbonization of these biowastes in the pyrolyzer showed satisfactory char yields (PG: 38.7%; WW: 36.2%; CB: 35.7% on dry basis). Proximate composition (including volatile, fixed carbon and ash content) and heating value (PG: 20.1 MJ kg(-1); WW: 29.4 MJ kg(-1); CB: 26.7 MJ kg(-1)) of the produced char also compare well with literature data. The energy and emission-related aspects of the system still require further research and optimizations to allow financially viable and safe operation.