Maldives has a long way to go in establishing environmentally friendly waste management practices and segregating waste is the first step towards saving our environment and collectively adopting an environment conscious lifestyle. 

Starting June 2022, WAMCO will be implementing a new policy to encourage waste reduction and recycling from households across the Maldives. According to guidelines publicised by WAMCO households in the greater Male’ area are now required to segregate waste into 3 categories before putting it out for collection. 

The first category is organic waste like food scraps/peel, fish waste, pads, animal waste, plants/grass/flowers, diapers, used tissues etc

The second category has other everyday waste such as:

• Paper goods, books, wrapping paper, envelopes, paper bags, cereal and pizza boxes.
• Glass items, lightbulbs, glasses and dishes, juice and condiments bottles
• Food packaging like bread bags, noodles packets, milk/packets, ice cream/yogurt tubs, canned food tins.
• Disposable cutlery, forks, spoons, knives and containers (rinsed)
• Aluminium foil, cans and pressurised cans like insect repellants, air fresheners, deodorant
• Cosmetics containers
• Medicines, batteries, chemical house cleaners, paint cans
• Fabrics scraps, old clothes 
• Small toys
• Plastic bags
• Sponges
• Pens, pencils
• Shoes and shoe polish

The third category is plastics like detergent bottles, water or soda bottles, body and hair wash bottles.

Changing how you manage waste in the home can be challenging but a few tips can help you manage the transition easily. Here are some ways to simplify waste segregation for your household. 

1. The first two categories of waste are most likely to be produced in the kitchen, so have two waste bags or bins in the kitchen. One for wet or organic waste and one for dry or ‘other’ category. 

1. Quickly rinse and shake out excess water from food containers, tins, bottles that go in the dry or other category before you bin it.

1. Use a plastic bin/bag to store waste in your bathrooms for tissues, pads, diapers and empty the bin/bag into your organic waste bag before taking out the organic waste everyday. 

1. Collect waste that go in the plastics category in a separate bin.

1. Send organic waste out for collection everyday. Send out the dry waste and plastics out once a week or only when the bin is full. This will reduce the amount of plastic or paper bags you need to use to store and throw out this waste. 

1. Have the WAMCO guideline/list of what types of waste goes into which bin written down on your wet, dry and plastics bins until you get the hang of it.