Survey Report: Clean Akhurian

BASELINE SURVEY REPORT Within the project:

CLEAN AKHURYAN: contributing to the clean environment through improved solid waste management services

Prepared by: H Tamamyan The Urban Foundation for Sustainable Development

November 2011

Survey Goals and Data Collection In the framework of CLEAN AKHURYAN: contributing to the clean environment through improved solid waste management services the Urban Foundation for Sustainable Development conducted a survey to examine plastic recycling practices in the village of Akhuryan to further set up Program strategy indicators and develop a public awareness campaign encouraging the local community to reduce, reuse, and recycle their waste. In November, 2011 200 interviews were conducted among adult residents of Akhuryan to assess their knowledge, attitude and practices regarding waste management issues in general and their local experiences in particular. The data collection process was administered and supervised by the representatives of the Gyumribased Meghvik NGO. Households to be interviewed have been selected at random to ensure representative sampling and further generalization of the findings. Speciallytrained interviewers conducted face-to-face interviews with a standardized questionnaire, which covered a wide range of waste management related issues and demographic information.

Key Findings The opening question in the Questionnaire was to explore whether there are special places or bins allocated for rubbish collection in the village of Akhuryan. The respondents were asked whether there were special places or rubbish bins for waste collection in their districts. According to findings the village is not well equipped with rubbish bins. Some 37 percent of the respondents answered positively to the abovementioned question, while 3 percent said they had never seen any bins and 60 percent was sure that there were no bins at all. However, quite a few streets/districts seem to be sufficiently equipped with bins, when we are having a closer look at the map of the village: Aygu taghamas district, Deseri shenker district, Dosafi taghamas district, Yeghishe

Charents

street/district,

Germanaharavslavakan

taghamas

Gortsaranayin street, Holandakan street/district, Jrashinararneri street/district,

district, Paruyr

Sevak street/district, Shirak highway. At the same time there are streets/districts, where all respondents reported about not having a special waste collection place/bins: A Grigoryan street, A Isahakyan street, Akhuryan Gyugh district, Akhuryan highway,

Bagheri taratsq district, Gortskomi hetnamas district, Kaghnut highway, Komitas Street, Kulakavvan district, M Mkrtchyan street, Mkhoyan and Teryan Streets.

Akhuryan village also falls short in terms of frequency of waste removal services.

Some 17 percent of the respondents mentioned that waste is being removed from their neighbourhood only once in 2-3 weeks, and 35 percent said that it is never been removed from their district. Only 37 percent of the respondents confirm that waste is removed from their neighbourhood(s) at least once a week.

Table 1: Rubbish collection frequency

Frequency

Valid Percent

At least once a week

74

37

Once in 2-3 weeks

33

17

Never

69

35

No Answer

24

11

200

100.0

Total

Not surprisingly, the satisfaction level with the quality of waste removal services is significantly low in Akhuryan village. Respondents have been asked to report the level of their satisfaction with the quality of waste removal services using a 1-10 scale, where “1” is the lowest and “10” is the highest value. The mean value is 5.38 with the most repeated answer of 1 (mode) and the median of 5. However, there is a statistically significant difference between the groups of respondents that reported existence of rubbish bins in their residential areas (mean=7.62) and those, who said that there was no (or they had not seen any) bins/special places for rubbish collection in their neighbourhoods (mean=4.06).

Respondents have been asked to list any problems they face related to waste management efforts in their districts. Some third of the respondents mentioned that they didn’t face any problems related to waste removal services, the others could indicate a

variety of issues they had to deal with on a daily basis. The vast majority of respondents complained about not having rubbish bins in their neighbourhoods and/or the mess around the bins and places specially allocated for rubbish collection. In their answers they mentioned that the mess might mainly be caused by street animals and birds. Some residents of Akhuryan village referred to the fact that households used to dispose the waste everywhere or very often they had to remove the waste from their residential areas in their own cars. Some households reported that they regularly had to dig the waste in the ground or burn the rubbish somewhere in their gardens or nearby their houses.

The survey participants were asked if they were paying for the waste collection/removal services or not. 54 percent of the respondents reported that they paid the waste collection/removal charges on a regular basis. At the same time, 47 percent of respondents reported of having a contract with a waste collection company. Sure enough, those who have signed a contract with a waste collection company showed absolute commitment to pay for the waste collection/removal services. Meanwhile, 87 percent of those residents that have no contract with a waste collection company are not paying anything and surprisingly enough 13 percent somehow does.

One of the main objectives of the survey was to identify the range for the per person/per month contributions that households would be able to make for good quality waste collection/removal services in their residential areas. Some 44 percent of the respondents reported that they would be able to pay up to AMD100 per person per month (the most popular value) for a good quality service. Overall, the answers ranged from AMD100 to AMD700 with the mean value of AMD230 and median of AMD150. It is worth to mention that the reported amounts of contributions are not correlated with the number of persons in a household (with the mean value of 4.61 and median of 4 for the later).

To explore waste disposal practices we asked our respondents to report what types of waste and how often are produced by their households. Table 2 below shows the main types of household waste and the frequency in which the waste is being disposed:

Table2. Household waste type Waste disposal frequency (%)

Total (%)

Never

Sometimes

Often

Don’t know

Food and catering waste

37

45

17

1

100

Plastic bottles and containers

30

52

17

1

100

Glass bottles and jars

29

59

11

1

100

Metal cans and containers

64

29

2

5

100

Paper boxes

54

42

3

1

100

Newspaper

76

24

0

0

100

Expired medications

81

14

1

4

100

Chemicals/Painting chemicals

90

6

1

3

100

Construction waste

64

32

1

3

100

Old batteries

87

8

1

4

100

Respondents were asked whether they had ever tried to sort the waste before disposal. Only a third of the respondents reported that they had an experience of sorting the waste before disposal. Some 10 percent could not or refused to give any answer to this question. Women (37 percent within the gender group), rather than men (23 percent within the gender group), reported that they had ever sorted household waste before disposal.

Respondents have been asked to express their agreement of disagreement with several statements on waste management practices and the 3R-principles. As Table 3 shows residents of Akhuryan village are keen to the idea of sorting the waste before disposal with or without any compensation for that. Although most of them (strongly) agree to sort the waste in case of a possible compensation, only 8 percent told that they will never consider doing it with no conditions at all.

Table3. Recycle, Reduce, Reuse (%) Strongly disagree

Disagree

Agree

Strongly agree

Don’t know

Total

5

38

48

3

6

100

1

7

75

11

7

100

1

2

55

24

18

100

1

2

66

9

22

100

1

2

74

8

15

100

1

1

79

5

14

100

I will never waste time and/or efforts to sort household waste; it must be done by the communal services.

Everyone can separate plastic from waste, it usually does not take much efforts and time.

Plastic contains chemicals that are harmful to both humans and the environment.

Plastic recycling reduces the waste of natural resources and energy for the production of new plastic.

Using reusable, rather than disposable items will significantly reduce the production and consumption of plastic.

Reusing a plastic product for the same or a different function will significantly reduce the production and consumption of plastic.

Recommendations Based on the analysis and assessment of the collected information the following actions should be taken to improve waste management efforts in the village of Akhuryan:

1. Special attention and efforts are required to improve waste collection and removal services and waste management facilities in the village of Akhuryan. As the findings show some half of the residential areas are lacking rubbish bins and waste collection services.

2. Sufficient number of bins for rubbish collection should be made available in places of easy access.

3. A variety of awareness activities - targeting different age, gender and interest groups within the village - should be carried out to encourage accurate and responsible disposal of waste.

4. Waste separation and sorting practices should be encouraged amongst the population of Akhuryan by providing them with necessary information and waste management kits.

5. Residents of the village are keen to pay for better waste management services and should be encouraged to sign contracts with waste collection services. This survey gives some ideas about the possible service charges and terms/conditions of service agreements, however further studies will provide us with more precise estimates of household budgets and the share of expenses for waste management services and facilities.