USAID Building Capacity for African Agricultural Transformation (Africa Lead II) Project
Pesticide Container Disposal/Recycling/Re-use Concept Study
CONSULTANT
SCOPE OF WORK
Location: Kigali, Rwanda and home based
Period of Performance: TBD – APRIL / MAY / JUNE
Level of Effort: 40 workdays / 6 day workweek
TRAVEL DAYS : + 4 travel days ?
Africa Lead II is a capacity building program. It contributes to the Feed the Future (FTF) goals of reduced hunger and poverty by building the capacity of African Champions. The program also supports and advances agricultural transformation in Africa as proposed by the African Union Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP) and Rwanda Strategic Plan for the Transformation of Agriculture in Rwanda – Phase III (PSTA III). To achieve this, Africa Lead II supports capacity building of champions to cultivate a cadre of leaders across the spectrum of agriculture, food security and agribusiness stakeholders. These leaders will then champion the cause of increased innovation in agriculture, greater agricultural productivity, and greater food security.
This concept (pre-feasibility) study seeks to determine if there is an opportunity to improve pesticide container disposal, either through strengthening of existing procedures or systems, modifying those systems through rebates for container return by end-users (farm, industry, public health, and retail), and/or the recycling and/or the re-use of pesticide containers into the agricultural, pest control, and related chemical supply chains in Rwanda.
Disposal of used pesticide containers became the object of serious environmental stewardship research in the mid-1990s to explore ways to reduce the amount of pesticide containers that were accumulating throughout the chemical supply chain, on-farm, in near-farm environments, and in land-fills or burned in incinerators. Disposal-only solutions transfer end-of-life-cycle environmental risks either to end-users and second hand exposure in uncontrolled settings (fields, roadsides, household and small business waste dumps and burnsites, streamsides, etc.) or to some form of collection that aggregates and separates formerly toxin-holding containers into a concentrated toxic waste material long-term storage, land fill, or incineration site. These are generally public facilities partly or wholly maintained by public budgets. Two alternative pathways to reduce the total environmental and public cost burdens for these waste streams have been pursued.
One is the development of supply chains that deliver and recover larger containers that are designed for re-use primarily by commercial applicators, industrial users with in-house pesticide applicator services, and public health agencies who operate their own applicator services or contract them out. The second approach is the sorting out from mixed waste streams or the end-use segregation and return of pesticide packaging to input dealers and suppliers or to toxics handling facilities. These facilities then accumulate and deliver pesticide containers that have been adequately cleaned and verified to reduce pesticide residues to nearly negligable levels before these are used in the manufacture of a list of approved products that pose no pesticide-related health or environmental hazards. Both of these waste-stream volume reduction solutions have been pursued with substantial chemical manufacturer involvement since their inception, first in industrialized countries but increasingly in emerging and developing economies.
This pre-feasibilty study will include a desk review of literature on relevant tropical and sub-tropical nations’ programs of pesticide container disposal, re-use, recycling, and disposal in the agricultural, public health, industrial, and general public retail sectors; identify and interview key actors in the programs located in the ECA space; and investigate with Rwanda public and private sector actors and stakeholders to assess – at the pre-feasibility level – potential improvements in the current processes and systems for pesticide container disposal that may optimize the reduction of pesticide exposure risks to humans and the environment, and the viability of a container re-use and/or recycling program that would be self-supporting. Special consideration will be given to the potential use of rebate schemes to improve the recovery of pesticide containers from end-users.
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