What is the problem?

Vientiane, the capital city of Laos, home to almost 1 million people, is facing a waste management crisis. Trash is littered everywhere and anywhere; the sight of illegal dump sites is more apparent in just a short drive from the city center. The action of littering is seen worst during festivals and traditional events. This action has posed an extra burden to a city cleaning committee. Our previous experimentation on awareness-raising during the festival have informed us some key interesting insights  which we shared with  Vientiane City Office for Management and Services (VCOMs) for consideration.

Figure 1. Trash at a festival in November 2019

Littering and illegal dump sites may seem to be an issue when looking through a wider lens. However, if we take a closer look, from neighborhood and household, we could see that the open burning of trash is as prevalent as littering.  Grey smoke is visible throughout the city at dawn and dusk daily. The harmful smoke from open burning permeating through streets, gardens and houses could cause various reparatory diseases for people, especially vulnerable ones.

Open burning is not a recent issue; people burned their household waste a few decades back when waste collection services were not advanced and as prevalent as today. With the expansion of the city as well as the increasing of Vientiane dwellers, waste collection service has been running slow to keep up with this significant growth of urbanization. As a result of such missing service, among other factors, people find open burning the fastest and cheapest way to get rid of their household waste. Even with the regulation on open burning being imposed and widely circulated among communities, people still practice such a hazardous habit.

Figure 2. Open burning around Vientiane in broad daylight

UNDP Accelerator Lab in Lao PDR wanted to understand what motivates people to burn their waste. Our initial assumption was geared towards the missing of waste collection services.  However, according to our media scanning on an open burning report from social media platforms combined with our observation through field visits, we learned that majority of people burning their trash reside within the areas where the collection service is in place. With this information, we wanted to know more about the issue through the approach of CI.

Figure 3. Social media scanning and field observation

To understand the issues on open burning, we have used novel data such as satellite imagery and Air Visual Quality Index (AQI) as well as citizen involvement through informal meetings and mobile reports. To identify locations for our study, we used GIS data to explore the areas where open burning is prevalent. Upon consultation with Vientiane City Office for Management and Services (VCOMS), we selected three sample villages (Nongping, Champa, and Mai) that represent: 1. Urban congested areas; 2. Suburban areas with vast empty land; and 3. Riverbank areas with major agricultural activities. These three areas represent the geographical characteristics of Vientiane Capital. In these three villages, even with the presence of waste collection services, data from GIS showed  that trash burning is still active. Further, data from AQI reports (UNDP Lao PDR May 2020) also confirmed that air quality in these three villages is unhealthy, with a high level of PM2.5 particle, especially in the morning and evening.

Figure 4. Sample villages

To better explore the challenge, we realized that data from GIS and satellite imagery are not sufficient to capture small open burning activities, especially at the household level. Acknowledging the constraints, we decided to work with a local GIS expert and a group of volunteers to design a mobile application that helps us track the small scale of burning activities, especially the ones that couldn’t be captured by satellite. To illustrate, we developed a user-friendly mobile app that has elements to fill in the information (location, compositions of waste, time, etc.) and could add a real-time picture to report open burn and its residue. We tested this application among our team by doing a transect walk around three sample villages. We then trained local volunteers to help us map hotspots and report open burning activities in their communities. Data from the transect walk combined with volunteer’s mobile reports for three weeks helped us see a clearer picture of burned trash and littering patterns among these villages.

Figure 6. Citizen generated data combined with GIS and AQI shows significant burning activities

Key findings

Throughout nine weeks on the CI journey, we have gained significant data on open burning around the three villages. We have learned that people burn their trash because of:

1: Low frequency of waste collection services with a slightly higher price: Waste collection trucks come only one time a week and most of the time at dawn. People have to take their trash out the night before. Often time, stray dogs, chicken and goats in search of food attack the bags and scatter  trash everywhere. Trash that is left outside of the bags will not be taken by waste collectors; as a result, people burn them. Moreover, the service fee is relatively high (4 USD/month) when compared to a minimum wage of local people (80 USD/month).

2. Waste collection service doesn’t accept organic waste such as food waste, dried leaves, and tree branches: Waste collection trucks often time refuse to take organic waste due to its volume and size. Households wishing to have this type of garbage taken are likely to pay more. To reduce unnecessary costs, as a result, people burn their organic trash, either at the back of their yard or an empty field nearby.

3. The waste collection trucks do not go to small alleys: Households located at the end of small streets often miss the opportunity to access waste collection service; as a result, people get rid of their trash by burning.

Cheerful lights inside the harmful smoke

Another significant finding is the Positive Deviance. We learned that some households create a simple compost tank for their organic waste. At the village temple and school, we could also see simple incinerators with smoke filters where people would burn organic waste twice a month. Some households are also upcycling plastic waste, while some build a waste bin with a lock with a key attached (as to prevent stray dogs and animals) for the waste collectors to take out.

Technology and digital transformation would significantly help improve citizen participation. From this CI exercise, we also could see the potential of community involvement and ownership through online platforms. Local volunteers are eager to take part in reporting data and be a watch person informing unsolicited activities at the same time, generating some useful insights and practice to deal with open burning issues.

Next steps:

This exploration exercise on waste management allows us to see the good, the bad, and the best fit on how CI could leverage community participation and the use of novel data to understand the problem from new lenses. Armed with useful information and community commitment, we are now ready for our next step of CI, which is to seek solutions. In the next few weeks, we will be working closely with experts and the communities to design a portfolio of experimentation that aims to mitigate open burning.

To read the first part of this blog series, please click here.

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Written by:

Khavi Homsombath, Head of Experimentation, Accelerator Lab, UNDP Lao PDR

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the United Nations Development Programme.