Governmental activities : Laos
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Governmental activities Lao PDR

Environmental Education and Awareness is one of the activities, which aims to encourage the public to gain a good insight, knowledge and skills and environmental value for active participation in environmental value and natural resources conservation. That’s why Environmental education and awareness raising has been important and crucial. Activities of the Strengthening on environment management project, which have been successfully implemented include: formulation of strategy and action plans for EEA, capacity building for concern sectors, public awareness through media campaigns, among others.

Organizer of activity: Environmental Promotion Division, Department of Environment, Science Technology and Environment Agency.

The Environment Education and Awareness–raising: Sectors Implementation

  • Various media, including radio, television, newspaper and magazines have been employed to disseminate environmental awareness and education. This has been achieved thought partnership with the ministry of information and culture.
  • A technical working group for EEA has been established, in order to develop the curriculum and to incorporate environment into formal education in schools and teacher training colleges.
  • An environment and development research centre has been established to upgrade environmental education to the university level.
  • The environment education sector’s member has established a sub-working group to work on EEA within their sectors.
  • The six-monthly environmental newsletters have been published.

Public Environment Awareness Raising

  • Training for mess media staff on public dissemination of information relating to the environment has taken place during the period 2001-2005.
  • A media working group team has been established.
  • The trained mass media have planned in order to carry out their responsibility, according to their roles and target groups for their work.
  • Environmental management programs have been regularly broadcast to the public as part of dissemination.
  • Many activities and much information related to the each year’s Wold Environment Day celebrations have been publicly disseminated and evaluation workshops for the mass media have taken place.

SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT IN URBAN AREAS OF VIENTIANE CAPITAL CITY

Backgrounds
Vientiane is the capital city of Lao PDR and has a land area of 3,920 square kilometers. The population of Vientiane is 639,326 (Vientiane Capital City, 2003) and is increasing at a rate of 4.7% (STEA, NORAD, UNEP, 2001). Vientiane Capital City consists of nine districts, but the waste management infrastructure currently mainly services the wards (ban) in four of these districts: Chanthaboury, Sikhottabong, Sisattanak and Xaysettha Districts. Waste collection at the landfill was 41,489 t/year in 2001 and 42,704 t/year in 2002 or about 200-250 t per day. This equates to on average 0.75 kilograms of solid waste per capita per day (UDAA, 2004). There is one dumping site in Vientiane. The composition of waste collected by the waste pickers’ is different from waste found at the landfill, informal sector, recycling, using in home gardens, burning and dumping (please refer to photograph 1).

The key issues of solid waste management in Vientiane Capital City are:

  • Lack of awareness on the proper disposal of solid waste.
  • Excess of waste collection taken to the dumping sites.
  • Problems arising due to poor waste management include bad odors, numerous flies and no separation of waste into different containers;
  • The generally dirty urban city and environment;
  • Solid waste-related activities for poor waste pickers posing a serious threat to public health as well as an aesthetic problem in the city.

Purposes
The objectives of the solid waste management in urban areas of Vientiane Capital City project are as follows:

  • To survey about waste data collection, composition of waste and recycling for the economy;
  • To establish waste data for monitoring using GIS.
  • To increase public awareness;

How can reduce waste in Vientiane Capital City

Tips to reduce waste are the following:

Reduce:
The amount of waste production, source reduction, waste prevention, consuming and no throwing away. It can be as complex as redesigning a product to use fewer raw materials in production or to use material again and dissemination awareness to people about the proper disposal of waste.

Reuse: Reusing items by repairing or giving to someone who can repair it, donating and selling also reduces waste.

Recycle: Recycling is one of the best for the environment. Recycling includes buying products with recycled content. After collection, materials (e.g., glass, metal, plastics, and paper) are separated for sale also creating jobs, reducing pollution, reducing waste to the landfill, incinerator and increasing income

Outcomes
The number of people in urban areas in Lao PDR is beginning to grow more rapidly and the amount of waste is increasing. Therefore, good methods of waste management and also appropriate new technologies for monitoring need to be developed. Promoting waste markets and recycling would also create awareness to reduce the total volume of waste at the landfill. There is a need to improve the data system of solid waste for the monitoring and management to support environmental reports has been improved.

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