This week, we interviewed Sarah Kolbenstetter, Founder of waste management consulting company Little Green Spark. Sarah will host a two-day training on Sustainable Waste Practices for Companies in Cambodia to help teach managers and employees how to better manage waste at their workplace. You can register for this training here:     

EuroCham: What inspired you to take on the challenge of tackling waste in Cambodia?  

Sarah: It wasn’t about Cambodia specifically, I came here for personal reasons and I just thought that the topic fits really well here. There’s work to be done and I thought, well why not? Let’s give it a try and start doing it. When we talk about the environment it’s really difficult to talk about a specific country. We are all in it together. It’s not because Cambodia is doing worse than other countries in terms of waste that I came here and did this. 

It was more about finding a passion for the concept of zero waste. I really, really wanted to work on environmental issues, but I’m not a scientist and I saw the zero waste concept as something very accessible to me and other people, and it can even be fun. 
 
I am finding that there’s a lot of interest in the topic, but unfortunately, it’s still more from the expat community than from the Cambodian side. I would like to change this, and I’ve started communicating on LinkedIn and Facebook in Khmer, and I hope this creates more local interest.  

Many people would like to turn their passion into their job, but not many are able to do it. Why is being an entrepreneur so difficult?  

Sarah: This question gets asked a lot I think but why is being an entrepreneur so difficult? Is it difficult? I don’t know, maybe it’s not. I mean for me, it’s a lot of fun. I am constantly learning and that’s what I like the most actually. Just constantly learning, constantly challenging myself, and getting out of my comfort zone every day. 

Is it challenging? Yeah, it’s challenging because on the days where you feel a bit down, you still have to keep going and there’s no one behind you to give you a salary or motivate you, especially if you are alone. When you’re sick, you’re just losing money and that’s how it works. It’s different but I think it has so many good sides that I don’t regret anything. 

One thing that I find quite funny and a bit annoying also is that because you’re doing something good, people expect you to do it for free. 

People ask, why are you not an NGO? It would make more sense for you. No, actually the idea for Little Green Spark came from an NGO that I encountered when I was working in Senegal. It was called No Waste Senegal and it was staffed by volunteers. They went into restaurants for example, and tried to reduce their waste and provide mentorship for the restaurants. But it was only volunteers, so they did it on Saturdays, not during the week because they had actual jobs.  
 
The whole thing took ages, you know, up to a month. So I thought it was not a good idea to work according to the NGO model. And I’d rather do it as a business, because then I can actually support myself and do this 100%. 
 
What are some things you see in your line of work that you’d really like to change? 

Sarah: I think it’s more the general attitude of people towards waste. It’s not something that they’re used to thinking about and I understand that. But they also sometimes don’t realize that it has a negative impact on their health. 

The way we consume plastic and dispose of it in nature, I find it a bit shocking that people don’t realize that they’re actually hurting themselves through their behavior related to waste. We’re literally threatening our survival at this point. Not only through waste, of course, we’re talking about the environment in general. Global warming and so on, but waste contributes to this in a certain extent. 
 
Another thing that frustrates me is that people talk only about plastic. When I talk about promoting zero waste, people always think, okay, we’re going to learn how to reduce plastic use. But I’m also looking at other waste too, like paper waste. Plastic is a specific threat to our environment and to our health but all kinds of waste has to be downsized. The thinking is that paper waste, napkins for example, is not going to be dangerous if you just throw it out in nature. It’s just going to degrade, not like plastic. But the fact that trees have been cut to make this product is important to consider. 

So there’s also this problem that zero waste is trying to solve,  this issue of prioritizing a reasonable use of the resources that we have. Because we’re currently extracting our resources at faster rates than we can actually replace them. Eventually, we are going to endanger our economy because we need our resources to produce things. When there are no more resources, there’s going to be less stuff. 

For myself, and I think many others, we don’t know what to do with plastic other than throw it away in Cambodia. What other sustainable options are there? 

Sarah: It starts with reducing waste as opposed to disposing of waste. So classic things like tumblers, those are the simplest ones. Theres are many different objects that can help you reduce your waste. If you have a baby, reusable diapers exist, for example. During COVID, there were reusable masks. You can use a handkerchief or cut an old t-shirt for a portable napkin or cloth. 

As far as disposing of waste, we can help waste pickers out by separating cardboard, aluminum cans and plastic bottles. These are the valuable, easy-to-recycle materials that waste pickers seek. So those three things, if you have them at home, just make sure that you separate them from your actual trash. Just because it will make it easier for them to find it, and they won’t have to go through the trash. 

You don’t need to separate the cardboard, aluminum and plastic because it’s going to be taken by the waste pickers. So just keep these three types of waste together in the same bag, and try to make sure the cardboard just doesn’t get too wet. 

Besides recyclable materials, organic waste makes about 60% of our total waste. Even though this type of waste is not dangerous on its own, it can hurt our environment. Placing organic waste in a landfill where it’s left to degrade without oxygen creates methane, which is a potent greenhouse gas, even more potent than CO2.  
 
So, keeping that 60% out of the landfill should be our priority. There’s a company here that sells home composting kits. It’s really just a box with holes in it, but they provide the service and make it easy. 

So you can install this if you have a little space on your balcony or somewhere outside. If you do it properly, it doesn’t smell, it doesn’t attract rats, insects, or other pests. For me, the most important thing is to keep our organic waste separated from the rest of the waste. 

EuroCham: Who is your Sustainable Waste Management Practices class designed for? 
 
Sarah: Managers should definitely be involved because they will be the ones who need to drive the initiative for their companies. It doesn’t mean that they will have their hands on the project all the time and have to do all these little things. But they have to steer it strategically to what do we actually want to reach with this. So I definitely recommend management to participate. 

We can also look at operations managers, if they’re active and want to change things within their company. Generally, anyone who’s interested in working on their waste management within their company would be a good fit. I know that a lot of companies now have green committees now too to promote sustainable practices, and they could benefit from the course as well. 

What are some success stories you’ve seen in your line of work? 

Sarah: I was able to work with Lycée français René Descartes de Phnom Penh, a French school, for a two-month programme. It was the first time I actually worked with children on this, and I was instructing a group of 55 students from ages 6-17. 
 
So that’s challenging, but it was really nice. It was so cool to see the children actually get excited about what we are doing and want to learn more about how to make a difference. Now they have already installed their waste sorting stations, a definite step in the right direction. 
 
Typically these trainings last one month, and we start with an assessment. Then we go into planning. Once we have done the planning, we go into implementation and then I explain to them how to perform monitoring and keep going with the project. This basically what I am going to explain during my training also. 

So I did this with them but it is a bit technical. It is usually more for adults, we are talking about monitoring, communication and technical methods. I thought it would be a bit complicated for the students but they really understood where I was going with this and it just made me really happy. 

At the same time they learned about project management as well because it was not only about waste, it was about setting up the whole project. So now they know that when you do a project, you perform an assessment, then you plan and work out the math. Watching the kids learn the whole process was really rewarding.