Present Situation of

Solid Waste
Management in
Yangon City

Nirmala Menikpura, PhD

Sustainable Consumption and
Production (SCP) Group
Institute for Global Environmental
Strategies (IGES)

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 General background of Yangon City
 Yangon is the former capital of Myanmar and remains as the most
important centre of commerce, politics and culture.
 Total area of Yangon city is 759 km2 and the population is 4.72
million (as of December 2012)
 There are 33 townships in Administrative boundary of Yangon City Development
Committee

Yangon region and divided

into four districts – North,
South, East and West

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Source :YCDC
 Waste management in Yangon City

Pollution Control and Cleansing Department (PCCD)

is responsible for waste management in Yangon city

Responsibilities of PCCD in Waste management

Daily Management Pollution Control (progressing)

-Waste Collection -Final disposal sites management
-Waste Transportation -Recycling
-Disposal at the final disposal -Green composting
sites -Awareness raising

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Waste generation and composition in
Yangon
1690
tonnes/day
0.4

0.35
1540
tonnes/day others ,
0.3 10 %
kg/capita/day

Paper & Plastic

0.25 textile 10 %
0.1%
0.2

0.15 Organic
waste , 76%

0.1

0.05

0
2001-2002 2003-2004 2006-2007 2010-2011 2011-2012

 Total waste generation - 1,690 toness/day

 Total waste collection - 1,550 tonnes/day
 The remaining 140 tonnes share the recycling and illegal dumping
 More than 75% of waste is organic 4
Monthly fee for waste collection service

Satellite TSP 300 Kyatkyat

Old suburbs-300 per day
per
month/household

Sub-Urban - 450 kyat per

month/household

Central Business District - (600) kyat per

month/household

Charges from commercial

centers, hotels etc. are
based on sizes, kind of
facilities, waste types and
others 5

Picture by YCDC
Waste collection methods in Yangon
1. Bell Ringing System
By Trucks
By carts

2. Collection at a street Dumps Yard

3. Kerb side collection

Pictures by YCDC 6
 Waste separation at Yangon
Waste is mainly separated into two parts: Wet and Dry
However, all the separated waste is loaded to the
same vehicle for transportation

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Pictures by YCDC
 Waste collection vehicles
 There are 13 kinds of trucks are used for waste transportation
 No. of trucks available 297 and capacity of trucks varies 2-8
tonnes/trip
 Many trucks are too old and often, vehicle breakdown do happen.

Pictures by YCDC
 Existing dumping sites in Yangon
Hlaw Gar
57

Shwe Pyi Thar

6 Htawe Chaung
2
Htain Bin
Kyi Su
1
3

30 Km 26 Km

Da La
9
4
 Present situation of open dumpsite at HtainBin
 This is the biggest open dumpsite in YCDC
 847 tonnes of incoming waste is disposed per day

Future
PCDC is planning to implement a landfill gas-to-energy recovery plant to
replace this open dumpsite

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Present situation of open dumpsite at Htwei Chaung
 This is the second biggest open dumpsite
 612 tonnes of incoming waste is disposed per day

Future
YCDC is considering installation of incineration plant (with electricity
recovery)

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Present situation of small open dumpsites
Dumpsite at Shwe Pyi Thar Dumpsite at Hlaw Ger
Disposal capacity – 50 tonnes/day Disposal capacity 25 tonnes/day

Future
YCDC is considering installation of small incineration (without electricity
production) plants to replace these dumpsites .

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Situation of waste recycling in Yangon
 YCDC has estimated that 86 tonnes/day generated waste is
recycling
 Valuable recyclables are stored at household level and sell to the
nearby junkshops
 YCDC is also running a small-scale plastic recycling plant and
green and blue plastics bag is produced using the waste plastic.

Composition of recyclables
in Yangon

Plastic recycling activities at YCDC 13

 Estimation of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions
from current waste management in Yangon
IGES GHG calculation tool was used to estimate the climate impacts from
current waste management in Yangon
GHG emissions from Waste Transportation
YCDC uses 128,704 L diesel and 900 L of gasoline for waste transportation
GHG emissions from transportation 7.51 kg of CO2-eq/tonne of waste
Monthly GHG emission from transportation 349 tonnes of CO2-eq/month

GHG emissions from open dumping

Emission of CH4 from open dumping 22.88 kg of CH4/tonne
Direct GHG emission from mixed waste open dumping 480.48 kg of CO2-eq/tonne of mix waste
GHG emission from open dumping from monthly disposed waste 22,342 Tonnes of CO2-eq/month

4
monthly disposed waste)
CH4 generation (Gg from

3.5
3
2.5
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
Year (after disposal) 14
 Estimation of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions
from current waste management in Yangon
GHG emissions from recycling activities in Yangon
Direct GHG emissions from recycling 866.42 kg of CO2-eq/tonne of mixed recyclables

Avoided GHG emissions from recycling via materials recovery 2646.79 kg of CO2-eq/tonne of mixed recyclables

Net GHG emissions from recycling (life cycle perspective) -1780.37 kg of CO2-eq/tonne of mixed recyclables

Monthly total GHG reduction from recycling -4,593 Tonnes of CO2-eq/month

Overall GHG emission from waste management in

Yangon
25000
22,342

20000 18,098
Tonnes of CO2-eq.month

15000

10000

5000
349
0
GHG emissions from GHG emissions from GHG reduction from Overall GHG
-5000 transportation opendumping recycling emissions from waste
-4593 management
-10000
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 YCDC plan for future waste management
Landfill gas-to-energy recovery and incineration would be the two major
technologies in the intended waste management system in Yangon

Our suggestions to improve the climate benefits and other co-benefits

from waste management
 Careful planning is very important in the designing phase to avoid the
failure that may happen after the implementation

 Improving the efficiency of the landfill gas recovery is the key to mitigate
GHG. That can be done by starting gas recovery soon while waste tipping
continues, and extending the duration of gas recovery project to cover
the peak production period of methane

 Composition and the moisture content of the waste can be greatly

effected on the efficiency of the incineration plant. Pre-treatment would be
necessary to reduce the moisture content waste prior to combustion

 Despite all the waste-to-energy technologies, development of proper

recycling scheme in Yangon would contribute for significant GHG reduction
and then to attain the target of low carbon city
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Points to be discussed for further improvements
 How to select a appropriate set of technologies
(especially pre-treatments) to match with waste
characteristics of Yangon city?
 How to establish a capacity of local governmental
officials to plan and operate integrated approach for
long term sustainability of waste management?
 How to secure operational costs for upgraded
technologies and approaches?
 How to improve the efficiencies of proposed waste-to
energy technologies to extract maximum amount of
energy from waste?
 How to reduce running costs including fossil fuel input?
 What are the possibilities for applying JCM?
 How to improve recycling activities in Yangon to divert
waste flows going into landfill and reduce GHG?
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THANK YOU VERY MUCH
Nirmala Menikpura, PhD
Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) group,
Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES)
Email: menikpura@iges.or.jp

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