Social Marketing for Waste Separation in Suriname

Does anyone have information on successful social marketing campaigns for waste separation?

Here in Suriname I am involved in a Public Private Partnership between private sector businesses (compost production and recycling), the government (Ministry in charge of waste collection) and the university (waste separation researcher) to design and execute a project to get households and businesses to separate their waste at the source.

The organic waste (which is almost 60% of the waste in Suriname) will be used as input for a large-scale compost production plant.

Other waste such as plastic, metals, and so on will be recycled.

The challenge is to get people to change their behavior and start separating waste in a country where throwing plastic bottles out of your car is normal, where plastic bottles clog canals and nobody cares, and the general complaint is that our city is quite dirty.

Suriname is a multi-ethnic developing country north-east of Brazil where there are pockets of people aware of environmental problems and the willingness to do something about it. However, the majority of the people are struggling to make ends meet and have not much space in their minds and hearts for collective problems such as waste management.

Thank you very much.

Best regards,

Maureen Silos

Maureen  Silos
The Caribbean Institute