Sustainability for Seychelles brings together key partners to discuss better waste management 

The main goal is to support waste sustainability initiatives in Seychelles with a focus on diverting the amount of green or organic waste going to the landfill. (Pete, Flickr) Photo Licence: CC BY 2.0

Sustainability for Seychelles (S4S), a non-governmental organisation, has brought together different stakeholders in waste management for a public lecture to discuss how this could be improved in the island nation.

The public lecture on Thursday included presentations from S4S, the Landscape and Waste Management Agency (LWMA), the Environment Department, and a foreign expert, Simron J. Singh, who is a professor and university research chair at the University of Waterloo, Canada.

Using the analogy that islands function like living organisms, he analyses how small island economies utilise materials, energy, water, and infrastructure.

Professor Singh told the press, “We need to talk about the big picture and not only focus on waste. How it is created, its origin. I take a systems approach where I analyse what is called the metabolism of islands. That is the name of my research programme. This analogy uses the term metabolism, just like humans, islands also metabolise resources whether it is biomass, energy, different materials, or water to provide for the residents.”

The lecture is part of a bigger project headed by S4S to tackle the issue of waste management in Seychelles. The project started in May 2024 and will continue until May 2026 at a cost of $150,000. It is funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) Small Grants Programme under the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

The project’s main goal is to support waste sustainability initiatives in Seychelles with a focus on diverting the amount of green or organic waste going to the landfill.

By supporting pilot studies of different methods for home composting and introducing composting in tourism establishments, S4S aims to help residents and businesses to be mindful of their waste and to think about composting as an alternative to landfills.

Through the project, the NGO will work with local communities to establish collection systems for biodegradable and other forms of waste for use by composting or recycling initiatives. There is also a component to help train and support potential entrepreneurs interested in circular economy ventures.

An S4S representative, Iris Carolus, said that people need to start seeing waste as a resource that can be used especially in terms of business opportunities and “Through this event today, we want to see what everyone has – we’ve had several people from the private sector who’ve come forward to express their interest.”

Carolus added that S4S is currently in the planning phase for the project and meeting different stakeholders. One of the outcomes is to educate the public and change their mindset regarding waste.

“As an NGO, we believe that civil society and the public have a big role to play. We also have the Ocean Project here today presenting. They are more involved with the youth and this is a component of our work; to work with the youth, to empower them and see what they can do in this domain. We also want to work more with farmers. There’s already work that’s been done especially with food waste from tourist establishments that a farmer used to feed pigs,” she said.

A technical consultant at the LWMA, Camille Mondon, said, “I think such an event is really important because our landfill is almost full if we can say already full and so this is an urgent situation that we need to figure out the next step. One of them is to divert the waste going to the landfill and find a solution, as well as work on the circular economy concept. We need to make people and businesses conscious that there is a value in waste and this is the moment when they can think about it and try to invest in it.”

The S4S initiative is a response to the Solid Waste Masterplan for Seychelles (2020-2035), which identified biodegradable waste as a priority waste stream, representing approximately 50 percent of the country’s total waste.