The Dambulla Waste Management Facility, once hailed as a national model for recycling and wildlife-friendly innovation, has collapsed into disuse, reviving the garbage crisis in central Sri Lanka. The Rs. 650 million project, built with Japanese technology and branded Pivithuru Arana, now lies abandoned, with its infrastructure crumbling and garbage once again dumped in forest reserves.
Launched as an award-winning initiative, the facility once symbolized a breakthrough in modern waste management. It featured an organic fertilizer program, a polythene incinerator, and a dedicated hospital waste disposal system. A bamboo plantation supplied compost material, while electric vehicles ferried tourists around the site to observe elephants in a controlled environment. The project blended environmental protection with eco-tourism, offering an image of how Sri Lanka could manage waste while protecting wildlife.
That image has disintegrated. The iron fence built to keep elephants away from garbage has been dismantled, the bamboo plantation destroyed, and the electric vehicles left to decay. With the site shut down, waste from Dambulla and surrounding districts is again being transported to the Digampathaha reserve, where residents say elephants and other wild animals now scavenge through heaps of plastic and food waste. Environmentalists warn that this practice has already led to deaths among elephants and poses wider threats to forest ecosystems.
Dambulla Mayor Wasantha K. Rajamanthri has acknowledged the failure, attributing it to poor management under the previous administration and the difficulty of operating the facility with serious staff shortages. He said the municipal council lacked the capacity to sustain the project, which has been without proper maintenance for years.
The Dambulla collapse is part of a wider national crisis. Sri Lanka generates more than 8,000 metric tonnes of solid waste daily, with the Western Province accounting for the majority. Yet official data shows that less than 20 percent is recycled, while the rest is either openly dumped, burnt, or left unmanaged. A 2024 National Plastic Waste Inventory estimated that the country generates nearly 249,000 tonnes of plastic waste annually, but only 11 percent is recycled. Nearly 70 percent is mismanaged, with plastics leaking into rivers, oceans, and forests.
The Central Environmental Authority, along with the Department of Wildlife, the Department of Forest Conservation, and the Dambulla Municipal Council, has announced plans to restart the project. But experts caution that without professional management, secure financing, and continuous oversight, any revival will be short-lived.
The Dambulla case underscores a larger truth: Sri Lanka’s waste crisis is not due to a lack of projects or investment, but to weak operations, poor governance, and political discontinuity. Until those flaws are addressed, ambitious recycling initiatives risk ending where Dambulla has — in ruins, leaving wildlife and communities to pay the price.
