programs in developing countries in an economical manner is several-fold worse due to lack of, and competition for, financial resources.
The feasibility of processing source-separated materials has a partial grounding in the need for separation of materials by the generator and the storage of the materials on the generator’s premises. To fulfil this need, not only must the generator be motivated and trained in the separation of materials, but he or she must also have a separate container and space to store it. In North America, in many cases, the containers are provided at no cost to residential generators, as part of the motivational process. The supply of containers to householders in developing countries, the additional storage space requirement, and behaviour modification are among the reasons that collection and processing (the subject of this chapter) will have limited application in the short term for many developing nations.
Also confounding the feasibility and application of the processing of source-separated materials in developing nations is the circumstance that some of the highly mechanised designs presented in this chapter may be too costly and complex for many communities. However, despite the current limitations of applicability of highly mechanised designs, the concepts and designs are presented in this chapter for completeness and because the design process is relevant to less complex source separated programs, e.g., waste separated into wet (i.e., putrescible) and dry (i.e., non-putrescible) fractions. Communities in some developing countries are testing or have instituted forms of wet/dry collection and processing of wastes, e.g., Guatemala and the Philippines.