Dear all,

Concerning Andreas question on source separation at household level, it can be
argued that it is a costly process for two main reasons. And when something
is costly it usually entails problems.

From an economic perspective, implementing source separation system from
zero implies what economists would call a social marketing approach,
refering to a strategy of changing human behaviour in the sense that old
habits must be overcome, and that new ones has to be learnt and maintained.
Clear examples of these strategies are the famous anti-smoking campaigns,
birth control in eg. India etc.

The same holds true for changing our behaviour in discarding wastes. It goes
without saying that such a change doesn't occur overnight and that it
requires large (public?) investments. Investments in public campaigns at
city or neighbourhood level, setting up of pilot projects of organic waste
composting to show the implicit value of organic wastes, facilitate the
collection of organic waste, find uses for the compost produced and make
public its positive results, to name a few.

In sum, knowing that a separation at source system requires time to
implement successfully, and therefore a considerable cost, the question is
who should imburse these investment costs? This is an obvious question, the
answer on the contrary all the more difficult.

With respect to your first question on the competitors, I have to admit that
I don't know. Interesting it would be to include the local researchers in
our discussion to receive a direct feedback on important issues.

Rgards,
Rogier

>you wrote
>>These programmes, however, have problems in obtaining a sufficient
>>amount of clean organic wastes, because there is competition for this
>>type of waste and source separation (e.g. by households) usually cannot
>>be implemented easily
>1. Who are the competitors for the separated organic materials?
>
>2. What are the problems in implementing a source separation system for
>households?
>
>Kind regards
>Andreas Behnsen