When moving to implementation in the pilot areas, the project encountered a number of technical issues. Two are worth noting in particular, namely scale and connections. Regarding scale, the pilot areas lacked scale to create a recycling business model in their own right. Not enough separated waste could be collected from each of these areas alone to make any serious money.
Regarding connections, the project experienced many problems at its interface with the collection and recycling industry. Some examples follow. In some instances separated household waste was 'stolen' by private collectors hours before the community volunteers were due to collect it. When volunteers began collection of separated waste in other areas they discovered that a Buddhist charity had been collecting paper, glass and other separables from these households for many years already. Households preferred to give waste to this charity, and the Buddhist group did not want to join the project. In other places the existing waste clearers objected to new collection activities through the project. The private recycling company that had agreed to collect and buy recycled waste from pilot areas did not do so for several months. These examples all illustrate that the PPP arrangements did not 'fit' appropriately within the local industry, wider services and financial systems, and hence were unlikely to be sustainable.