The quantity of solid waste is progressively increasing every year in all the municipalities and in emerging towns mainly due to population and economic growth and rapid urbanization. Yet, financial resources as well as trained human resources for the needs of overall management of urban waste are seriously constrained. The major portion of the annual municipal budget is expended just to sweep, collect, transport and dump the waste without any consideration to environmental and social measures. Management of solid waste is extremely sensitive at the operational level, and is often labour intensive, thus resulting in high operating costs, particularly for the collection and disposal activities.

Nepal's municipal waste mainly consists of organic waste (60-70%) which is also considered as one of most difficult to handle element. Municipalities had initiated various household level and community based options like bucket/drum/box composting, vermin composting, and community composting to address the problem. However no significant results have been marked to the date. The major reason behind this may be due to insufficient education and awareness programmes at household level or may be due to the technology/method introduced, is not simple and practical enough in local context.

In this context, UN-Habitat Regional Office for Asia Pacific (ROAP), Solid Waste Management and Resource mobilization Center (SWMRMC), and UN-Habitat Nepal had jointly organized a three day workshop on '' Sharing of Knowledge on Cardboard Composting'' from February 9-11, 2010. The main aim of this workshop is to introduce simple technology of managing kitchen waste through cardboard composting practiced massively in Japan. The workshop was participated by key municipal staff of more than 30 municipalities of Nepal, NGO and private sector.

One of the major outcomes of this workshop is that the participants found this technology/method quite simple to be promoted at their respective municipalities, which is simpler than the methods practiced in Nepal so far. This has brought high level of enthusiasm among the municipal participants and is quite eager to introduce this method in their respective municipalities. Beside the technology/method, the materials required to initiate the composting can be made available locally with very little cost implication utilizing locally available materials.

The knowledge gained by this workshop is very valuable and practical as well as it is the first of its kind introduced for individuals participated in the workshop. The technology itself is quite simple that municipalities of Nepal can easily promote and replicate it to address the most ''difficult to handle'' organic waste. Even during the workshop itself most of the municipalities planned to promote the technology immediately. Baglung municipality had already initiated this technology in 200 households as a pilot programme. Thus, this technology and its promotion at municipal level still requires more strengthening, to adopt the technology with more confidence, to expand it into massive scale. If the municipalities of Nepal can promote this technology in massive scale, larger portion of the generated household waste will be managed at the source itself that will contribute towards urban environment improvement as well as reduce the management cost of municipalities to larger extent.