Tuvalu sees opportunity in organic waste in effort to survive triple planetary crisis

1 August 2024, Funafuti Tuvalu - The impacts of the triple planetary crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution is evident in every aspect of life in Tuvalu. 

While the rising Pacific Ocean threatens shelters and homes of communities across the narrow coastline of the atoll nation, soil salination has adversely affected the land and non-resistant food plants such as taro, bananas, breadfruits, and vegetable gardens.

Mr Siliako Letueti and his family who are amongst less than 12,000 residents in the country have seen and experienced the impacts of this scenario over the years. 

But they are not just sitting idly and letting the impacts get the better of them. Mr Letueti works for the Tuvalu Department of Waste Management (DWM) as the Waste Education and Awareness Officer. In this role, he has made the work to recycle food and other organic waste into compost an essential part of his mission. 

“For us in Tuvalu, we have to be innovative and look at other ways to cultivate our land,” he said.

“Anyone who has been to our country would already have seen the struggles we have when it comes to gardening and farming. So composting in Tuvalu is very important for people here because our soil is very poor in terms of the nutrients required for it to work. For the Tuvalu Department of Waste Management, we put a lot of work into encouraging our community to utilise organic waste and not just discard them.”

Composting is the natural process of recycling organic matter, such as vegetation and food scraps, into a valuable product that can enrich the soil and increase crop yield. It provides a range of environmental benefits, including improving soil health, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, reducing leachate, and increasing climate resilience. 

“Due to the low-lying nature of our island, the sea water is not just a threat over the land but it is also now coming under the soil which affects the quality of trees, crops and vegetables we plant. The soil has become salty,” said Mr Letueti. “So for us this is a matter of survival. We have to use everything at our disposal, including chicken manure, pig manure in our compost mixing and we try to promote this here in Tuvalu for people to use in their home gardens for fresh vegetables and fresh fruits for healthy living.”

The Tuvalu Department of Waste Management has been working with the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme, through the Pacific – European Union (EU) Waste Management Programme (PacWastePlus), to build the capacity of the Pacific nation to understand and manage organic waste. PacWastePlus Technical Waste Project Officer, Ms Hillary Boyes, said the challenge is about changing the narrative that organics is waste.

“Organic materials are not a waste, they are a resource and we can do beautiful things with it like we are seeing here in Tuvalu today,” said Ms Boyes. 

On Day 2 of the PacWastePlus pre-Steering Committee Meeting programme in Funafuti, representatives from Pacific countries visited the Tuvalu Department of Waste Management composting site where they were given a demonstration of how the atoll nation is turning organic material into a valuable resource. 
“Here in Tuvalu, it’s a sandy atoll, the soil is very saline and nothing grows without a boost of nutrients. Using organics to improve soil quality means they can use it to grow crops, their food and most importantly they can use it to keep their economy going.”

The message about organic waste is one that Ms Boyes and the PacWastePlus project are keen to reverberate across all Pacific countries. 

“Organics make up 50 percent of landfills across all the Pacific islands. In a landfill, organic material is what turns into methane, it’s what makes the odour, and when it’s mixed with all sorts of plastics and other wastes, it can be a real problem for landfills. In fact our landfills are rapidly overfilled with organic materials,” Ms Boyes added. 

“What we are encouraging our Pacific countries to understand is that they should see organic material as a resource, it’s a very valuable resource. By using a composting system which is low tech, low investment and a little bit of training and using our traditional knowledge, we can turn that into a valuable resource that we can use to grow plants and grow our food.”

The PacWastePlus’s pre-Steering Committee Meeting activities precede the 4th Clean Pacific Roundtable scheduled in Tuvalu from 5- 9 August 2024. Delegates from Pacific countries embraced the push to view organic waste as a resource. 

After the visits to the Tuvalu Department of Waste Management (DWM) composting facility and the Taiwan Technical Mission’s Fiafia Garden nearby where the idea is put to use, one participant said: “I never understood the importance of composting and the impacts of organic materials until today. This is definitely an eye opener and one I would like to explore further for my country.”

ABOUT PACWASTEPLUS
The Pacific-EU Waste Management Programme (PacWastePlus) is a 72-month project funded by the European Union and implemented by Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) and will address both the cost effective and sustainable management of waste and pollution as well as broader impacts including human health and wellbeing, climate change, disaster management, biodiversity conservation and resource recovery. Priority waste streams include hazardous wastes (specifically asbestos, E-waste and healthcare waste), solid wastes (specifically recyclables, organic waste, disaster waste and bulky waste) and related aspects of wastewater.