Implementing Resource Recovery and Safe Reuse (RRR) business models in Lima
Project Abstract
The growing demand in urban and peri-urban areas for food, energy and water is challenging the traditional distribution of resources, rural-urban resource flows, and nutritional cycles. For this reason, the recovery of water, nutrients and energy from liquid and solid waste generated in urban and peri-urban sanitation systems becomes an increasing priority for local public authorities. At the same time, sanitation services systems in most emerging countries are barely able to handle the liquid and solid waste generated by households in urban and peri-urban areas. To reduce water, nutrient and energy scarcity, resource recovery in sanitation systems provides a key solution for sustainable natural resource management.
A changing climate and the city’s high annual population growth rate is increasingly challenging Lima’s capacity to satisfy the population’s need for basic goods such as water, energy and food. At the same time, enormous amounts of waste such as waste water, fecal sludge, organic waste, and used frying oil are disposed inadequately every day. Thus, the ‘Resource Recovery and Safe Reuse’ Project (RRR Project) in Lima focuses on rethinking sanitation systems and turning waste streams into physical and financial resource streams by ensuring and promoting safe reuse. It was initiated by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC/Global Programme Water Initiatives). The project aims at implementing business models for recovery and safe reuse and Sanitation Safety Plans in Lima and other cities in Peru as well as promoting cost recovery in the sanitation sector, generating livelihood opportunities for entrepreneurs and increasing food security for target populations, while safeguarding public health and the environment.
The project consists of three components:
Technical
- gathering data on Lima’s sanitation eco-system
- validating and consolidating feasible RRR business models
- building capacities of public and private RRR entrepreneurs
- promoting and supporting the implementation of RRR businesses
Political
- supporting the creation of an enabling institutional environment for RRR businesses
- promoting the use of Sanitation Safety Planning on the institutional level
- incorporating RRR businesses in the political agenda of local authorities
- harnessing synergies with existing programs and initiatives by facilitating inter-institutional coordination
- providing recommendations for policy makers
- identifying promising financial mechanisms
Dissemination
- preparing and disseminating information material on RRR business models
- communicating results from project activities
- organizing events for dialogue and dissemination
- developing recommendations for replicability and scaling-up in other Peruvian cities
Expected outcomes
- Business development is stimulated among concerned local actors through the appropriate promotion of RRR phase 1 results that are relevant to the context of Lima.
- Local entrepreneurs implement financially viable business models for productive and safe reuse of water, nutrients, organic matter and energy from waste streams.
- An enabling environment for RRR activities and Sanitation Safety Planning feeds into the policy and regulatory framework in Peru and raises awareness among authorities and the private sector
- The dissemination of the results of phase 2 among relevant actors in Lima leads to increased waste treatment in safe and financially more sustainable ways, and influences planning in other cities and regions in Peru.
Main Applicant(s)
Co Applicant(s)
Geography
Involved Regions:
Latin America and Caribbean
Involved Countries:
Peru
