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Taking Sanitation to Scale in Vietnam

Parameswaran Iyer's picture
Also available in: Tiếng Việt


Philippines: Owning a Toilet is a Sign of Progress

Karl Galing's picture


Bank Sampah di Indonesia: Menabung, Mengubah Perilaku

Randy Salim's picture
Also available in: English

Bicara soal sampah: kecenderungannya adalah kita tidak terlalu memikirkan apakah sampah yang kita hasilkan itu organik atau non-organik. Kita mungkin juga tidak terlalu peduli ke mana larinya sampah itu. Sementara kenyataannya: di Indonesia, sampah rumahtangga kita akan bercampur dengan sampah jutaan rumahtangga lainnya, hingga terbentuklah gunung-gunung sampah yang tak semestinya di tempat pembuangan akhir (TPA) berbagai kota.  
Bicara soal pengelolaan sampah yang ideal, para pakar akan mengatakan bahwa tanggungjawabnya bukanlah milik pemerintah kota semata, tetapi milik bersama.
Jumlah penduduk terus meningkat, begitu pula pola konsumsi. Volume sampah pun kian meluap di berbagai TPA.
Lantas apa yang bisa dilakukan? Saat ini di Indonesia, Bank Dunia tengah mengkaji berbagai cara untuk memperbaiki sistem pengelolaan sampah. Salah satu pilihannya adalah memperbanyak jumlah bank sampah.  Belum lama ini saya bersama tim proyek pengelolaan sampah Bank Dunia  mengunjungi bank sampah di beberapa kota untuk belajar lebih banyak tentang cara kerjanya.

Waste Not, Want Not : “Waste Banks” in Indonesia

Randy Salim's picture
Also available in: Bahasa Indonesia

When you’ve grown so used to tossing all manner of garbage into the trash bin, without giving a second thought to whether it is organic or non-organic waste, it’s easy to not care where your garbage ultimately ends up. But the reality is that, in Indonesia, your garbage gets mixed together with the garbage of millions of households, creating mountains of toxic waste too large to contain in municipal landfills.
As experts in the field would vehemently argue, solid waste management is not the sole responsibility of a municipal government, but a collective one. As populations grow and consumption patterns increase, more and more solid waste is created– and landfills can only take so much waste!
So what to do? The World Bank in Indonesia is currently exploring how to improve solid waste management, and scaling up ‘waste banks’ is one option.  Recently I went on mission with the Solid Waste team to see these waste banks at work.

How to provide clean water in rural areas: an example from Vietnam

Hoang Thi Hoa's picture
Also available in: Tiếng Việt

Two kids wash their hands with clean water. Their home in Thai Binh Province, Vietnam got access to clean water in 2011. Watch video: Providing clean water in rural areas: an example from Vietnam

Despite Vietnam’s significant economic growth in recent years, there continues to be a gap between urban and rural areas when it comes to access to clean water and hygienic sanitation facilities. Many poor households in rural areas still do not have access to clean water or to a toilet. During one of our earlier field visits for the Red River Delta Rural Water Supply and Sanitation (RRDRWASS) project which began almost 10 years ago, I was struck by what a lady from a community told me. She questioned why people in urban areas have access to good water supply and sanitation services while those in rural areas do not. She said that compared to urban residents, perhaps people in rural areas were happy with a lower level of service and that the demand for better services was simply not there.

At first I thought that she might be right but I later came to realise that this is not the case. There is demand for improved services in rural areas, and more importantly, people have a fundamental right to have access to those services.

So what are the reasons for the gap?


Patricio V. Marquez's picture

Available in English