How DRRS experts help turn waste into resources

Miriam Klinkenberg, a mechanical engineer with humanitarian and sustainability expertise, explored this potential during her latest Dutch Disaster Risk Reduction and Surge Support (DRRS) deployment. For 9 months, she supported the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). During this time, she did research from the Netherlands and visited settlements in Ethiopia, Chad and Mauritania to study the situation and find sustainable solutions. With her deployment coming to an end, pilot projects are ready to take off.

DRRS provides tailor-made technical support to humanitarian actors and foreign governments during all phases of a water-related disaster. In this case, RVO deployed Miriam along with Niels Lenderink, a water resource management specialist, to help UNHCR address a gap in its environmental strategy.

Assessing challenging environments

The project focused on refugee settlements in eastern Chad, the Somali region of Ethiopia and south-eastern Mauritania. These areas represent some of the most difficult humanitarian environments. They are remote regions where displacement has continued for many years. In these locations, waste management systems are minimal or do not exist at all. UNHCR decided to use these locations as a baseline for piloting sustainable waste value chain solutions. A positive outcome in such challenging environments would allow UNHCR to take a similar approach elsewhere.

Miriam and Niels conducted detailed studies to see how materials move through these areas. Miriam saw the results of minimal waste management during her field visits. In the camps, animals often eat plastic waste. Because these animals are a primary investment for families, their death is a major economic loss. In Chad, where thousands of refugees are arriving from Sudan, Miriam found the amount of waste lying around to be shocking.

Still, people in the settlements were already seeking value in waste through informal practices. In Mauritania, Miriam met a private businessman collecting plastic bottles to sell across the border in Senegal. In Chad, the local Red Cross was already turning collected plastic into latrine slabs. Valeria notes that such existing practices are the basis for future work. "We need to understand those practices before designing solutions," she says.

Co-creation and the WISE CIRCLE

After the assessments, the project moved into a co-creation stage. The experts organised workshops in all 3 countries, bringing together humanitarian actors, local authorities, refugees, host community representatives and the private sector. Miriam found that although many organisations worked in the same country, they often did not know what others were doing. Through the workshops, they sat together and explored ways to better use and share resources.

The workshops confirmed how humanitarian organisations cannot solve waste management alone. They need communities, local authorities and the private sector to make the systems work. Building on this understanding, the workshops initiated the creation of the Waste Innovation for Sustainable Emergencies & Collaborative Initiative for Resource & Circular Economy (the WISE CIRCLE). This informal group comprises UNHCR, WFP, UNHRD, HULO and the Global Logistics Cluster/WREC Coalition working together to promote better coordination and resource sharing. The goal of WISE CIRCLE is to create national working groups on sustainable waste management working across sectors and clusters.

Connecting with the local economy

The deployment also showed that waste management must eventually connect with the local economy to be sustainable. The team identified several private businesses during their missions. In Ethiopia, an informal market already collects certain plastics and sends them to Addis Ababa for recycling. The project aims to create a self-propelling business model. In the past, humanitarian groups often paid wages for waste collection. When the funding stopped, the cleaning stopped. The new model aims to connect refugee workers with local economies so they can earn an income by developing financially sustainable business models.

The programme seeks ways to connect international technology with local needs. The team is also working to connect interested Finnish private companies with the local private sector in Chad for technological knowledge exchange. Instead of bringing in high-tech systems that might not work in remote settlements, the focus is on working together to improve solutions that already exist in Chad.

Implementation and future goals

The DRRS deployment of Miriam and Niels ended in August 2026. However, the project will continue. UNHCR has recruited Miriam to stay on as implementation manager starting in September. She will work with the country teams to start the pilot stage. The upcoming pilots will test specific solutions. In Mauritania and Ethiopia, the team is exploring the use of innovative UNHRD solutions (containerised 'mini factories') to recover waste. Settlement residents can use the units to turn plastic waste into useful items such as construction materials that they can sell at a profit.

The long-term goal is to move from managing waste to preventing it entirely. "Waste management is actually avoiding waste for me more than anything else," says Miriam. "It should be part of the process from the beginning: When you bring something in, how do you get it out?" Valeria also believes this way of thinking must be built into every humanitarian response from day 1. "Humanitarian interventions need to be designed from the outset with that long-term in mind, so that what we put in place during the emergency makes it easier for other actors to build on it later," she says.