How Women in Nepal Turn Forest Waste Into Fertilizer and Jobs

Early in the morning, Meena Poudel bends down under the Sal and Beech trees in Nawalpur District's forests. She moves her hands through the dried leaves and plant material on the forest floor. Around her, other women work quietly together, cutting through the tangled branches and dead wood with their blades. As they clear away this material, they are doing something important: they are collecting forest waste that once caused dangerous wildfires and turning it into organic fertilizer.

Meena is 41 years old and leads the Binayi Community Forest User Group, a local organization that manages the forest responsibly. What Meena and the other women are doing shows a new way of thinking about environmental problems. The fertilizer business has changed Meena's life and the lives of many women in her community. She now earns enough money to pay for her son's university education in Kathmandu and to manage her household without depending on others. She explains: "We women have developed the capacity to manage our households, cover family expenses, and educate our children."

Twenty women from the Binayi Triveni area collect forest waste and turn it into organic fertilizer. Local farmers and government plant nurseries buy this fertilizer. The group produces more than 60,000 kilograms of fertilizer every year, and they plan to double this amount. The business now provides income for 400 people in an area where jobs, especially for women, have been hard to find. Most importantly, Meena's work has helped reduce forest fires by 70 percent in the past year.

The Binayi Community Forest User Group is part of Nepal's community forestry system. This system started in 1993 when the government decided to give local communities control of certain forests. These community forests are important for protecting forests and using forest resources in a sustainable way. By 2020, nearly 2.58 million hectares of Nepal's forests were managed by local communities. There were 22,266 community forest groups across the country, and they included 2.9 million households. Meena's work is part of a very large system that helps millions of people in rural Nepal and manages almost half of the country's forests.

The forest waste that Meena and her colleagues collect—bark, leaves, and sticks—is exactly the material that causes Nepal's wildfires. Nepal is facing serious climate problems, including melting glaciers, unusual rainfall, floods, landslides, forest fires, and droughts. These problems affect more than 10 million people. Forest fires in the Himalayan region are becoming more common because of climate change, and higher temperatures make fires more likely to spread. By removing this waste from the forest floor, the women have reduced the danger of fires while also protecting the environment.

The organic fertilizer they make helps local farmers stop using chemical fertilizers. This improves the soil and helps crops grow better. One farmer tested three different fertilizers on the same piece of land, and only the Binayi fertilizer produced strong, healthy growth all season long. Another farmer, Anant Prakash Shrestha, saw good results: "After applying it, we observed fewer diseases affecting our food crops. Additionally, we experienced an increase in production capacity, with better growth and development of our crops."

The business started with local action and grew with help from outside organizations. The local government gave money to help start the business. In 2023, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations gave the group 25,000 US dollars. This organization helped the group learn about forest management and how to make good fertilizer. They also helped the women write a business plan, understand the market, and meet quality standards. The women learned how to work with local government and build relationships with other communities. This changed them from volunteers into real business owners.

Research shows that when women have important roles in managing community forests, the forests become healthier. Groups where women lead the management committee have better forest growth than other groups, even when they start with smaller or more damaged forests. This happens because women work harder to protect the forest and follow the rules.

The Binayi business is part of a larger movement of women-led forest businesses in Nepal. Shanta Neupane, from another part of Nepal, saw that women in farming communities worked very hard on their small farms to feed their families. Even though these women were members of forest groups, they had no voice in decisions, owned nothing, and earned no money from their work. Shanta believed that if these women worked together as a group, they could pool their skills and start selling products, which would give them money and more respect in their communities. With help from an international organization, Shanta visited Vietnam, Thailand, and India to learn from other women's groups about business planning, money management, and how to make products more valuable.

To convince the women of her plan, Shanta decided to show them how it could work. In 2015, she started a group called Adhar Ekata Mahila Samuha with help from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

While Meena's group makes fertilizer, other women in Nepal are making different products from forest materials. One group collects sal leaves to make biodegradable bowls and plates. This business is run by 22 women, more than half of whom are from indigenous communities. They combine traditional skills with modern technology to make products for the market. The community forest where they collect leaves covers 488.68 hectares and is managed by 339 households. The forest can supply more than 250 quintals of sal leaves every year, which could make approximately 5.2 million bowls and 1.5 million plates annually.

In another part of western Nepal, 21 women make leaf plates and bowls by sewing sal leaves together with bamboo fibers. In December 2023, the women received a new electric machine that uses heat and pressure to shape the leaves into bowls or plates. First, the women harvest the leaves, clean and dry them, then sew them together by hand before putting them into the machine. The new machine allowed the women to make more than 108,000 plates in the past year—three times more than before. As a result, each woman now earns about 155,640 Nepali rupees (about 1,150 US dollars) per year. Ms. Sita Dangi, the coordinator of the group, explained that before the new machine, they could only make one size of plate and the old machine often broke down. Now they can make different sizes and sell to more customers, including hotels and families.

The group's products are now popular in many places. Ms. Tila Pun, a shareholder of the cooperative, explained: "Our dunatapari are popular during the Teej celebrations, and they are now being used in local eateries, local government offices, weddings, pujas, schools, fairs, hotels, and events organized by various institutions."

The cooperative has been teaching local businesses and organizations to use these natural products instead of single-use plastic. Because of this work, restaurants and eateries in two local areas have stopped using plastic utensils, and the cooperative continues to encourage this change. The local government also uses sal leaf plates at meetings and events.

Making sal leaf plates uses very little energy and leaves a small carbon footprint. The plates are made only from leaves and bamboo fibers, so they are completely biodegradable. Sal trees naturally drop eight to nine leaves every year, and the women collect only these fallen leaves without cutting the trees. This means the forest provides material that would otherwise rot or burn, and now it creates income instead.

About 80 percent of people in rural Nepal depend on forest products for their living. These products give rural people food, medicine, building materials, and income. More than 700 plant species produce these forest products, and about 150 of them are sold internationally.

Research shows that community forestry in Nepal helps people in many ways beyond just earning money. Studies looking at health information from nearly 25,000 households found that community forestry helps children's nutrition the most. It reduces poverty, especially in poorer areas, which means fewer children are malnourished or underweight. If community forestry were expanded across the whole country, it could prevent thousands of cases of child malnutrition every year.

In the areas where the leaf plate business operates, plastic bans are working well. The local government actively promotes sal leaf plates at meetings and events. The women now earn good money—income that goes directly to their families. And in Nawalpur District, at first light, Meena Poudel continues to move through the forest, gathering the material that once threatened to burn the forest down, turning it into something that feeds both the soil and her family.