I live in Nairobi, one of the fastest growing cities in
Africa. Nairobi has witnessed continual growth over the last 30 or so years.
And it is still growing. One of its biggest concerns lies in waste management
or more aptly put “how do we handle the garbage we churn?”
While the problem in Nairobi is not as dire as what you
witness with Mexico City and its Poniente Landfill, or Lagos and it’s Lagos
Dump, or the expanse of Delhi city,
I believe Nairobi would be in a similar dire strain if it
had experienced the same explosive population growths that Lagos and the Indian
cities have experienced due to rural-urban migration.
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| Lagos dump Courtesy George Esiri_Reuters |
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| Bordo Poniente Landfill, Mexico Courtesy Yuri Cortez_Getty Images |
There is a dividing line in the city, between the more
affluent neighborhoods, which essentially pay private collection firms to take
away their garbage to the only landfill in Nairobi, Dandora Dumping Site and poor neighborhoods that have not organized
adequately to constantly collect their refuse and send it off. The common
approach in these poor neighborhoods is for garbage to be dumped by the
residents in unsavory highly pungent heaps beside roads and in open areas in
close proximity to their houses.
Nairobi generates 15,000 tons of recoverable waste daily, of
which only 850 tons ends
at this landfill. With most of the waste unaccounted for, I perceive it ends up
in the heaps I mentioned earlier or seeps into the soil and water systems. It
is also imperative to note that this landfill was declared full more than a
decade ago; despite this, it still continues to accept garbage unregulated.
The systemic lack of proper governance despite the presence
of legal responsibility on the part of the Nairobi city county makes this
situation even more appalling.
While the conventional definition of municipal solid waste
does not include industrial, agricultural, medical and radioactive waste or
sewage sludge, the average citizen in a poor neighborhood living near the
landfill interacts with all these types of waste due to lack of regulation and
adherence to legislation.
A century ago a “place of cool water”, Enkarre Nairobi, was settled. Nairobi River is now a dense-slow-moving
sewage sludge traversing slums, medical institutions and factories that dump
effluence into the river with general disregard.
There must be a solution to this problem, and I believe the citizenry
in all other African countries desire the same.
I do appreciate that African cities are growing, and consumerism is
rising exponentially, and while we have not reached the levels of waste experienced
in North America and their Pacific trash
vortex (estimated to be the size of Somalia/Texas).
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| Pacific Trash Vortex Courtesy of GreenPeace |
There is a lot that can be learned from them in developing or
innovating means of avoiding an environmental catastrophe. The Dandora Landfill generates thousands of
health complications annually, including amputations, respiratory infections,
cancer, and birth complications. The Landfill generates methane, which contributes
to global warming, pollutes the soil and water systems.
As we stand, the world is advancing in realizing that there
has to be a cultural shift in how we perceive waste. The waste hierarchy, a pyramid expressing the most
favored to the least favored manner of handling waste is
a European Union sponsored waste framework directive which has taken years to
perfect.
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| Courtesy of North West Region Waste Management Group: -Waste Hierarchy - Based on current wastage percentage |
There are countries like Sweden who recycle more than 99% of
their waste and send only 1% of their waste to landfills. And they are doing it
profitably
to a point where Sweden is now importing waste from other countries and
converting it into marketable products like energy.
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| Sourced from Usitall presentation |
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| Sourced from Usitall Presentation Sweden is doing far much better than Europe in how much of its resource goes to landfills |
I perceive that we are way behind in Africa in terms of our
collective appreciation of the waste hierarchy, where currently we see waste as
something that needs to be thrown away. How we need to change is by looking at
it as a valuable resource that can bring financial benefit. Lagos has seen this sense.
Our lack of working systems could potentially be our
strongest standpoint. While the Western world has mulled over different
solutions and invested billions in landfills over decades we don't have any
preconceived inhibitions on embracing the latest technologies. That may help us covert waste to energy and
other marketable products that can be resold to the citizenry and industry.
By changing public perceptions, we can essentially turn the
waste hierarchy on its head and so do more of what is preferred and dispose far
much less in landfills in a more environmentally friendly manner.
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| Courtesy of North West Region Waste Management Group: - An inverted more effective waste hierarchy system with least waste disposed |
To a large extent this will help us to save our environment
for future generations.
Part of this mindset requires political willpower, where
adequate legislation is enacted and enforced, similar to what has happened in
Sweden, where counties/municipalities bear the responsibility of collecting waste
and in choosing how to handle this responsibility either by outsourcing or
performing it internally.
To empower this legislation a levy or tax should be implemented
to model certain behavior from institutions that produce waste be it factories,
health, agricultural estates or homesteads. The system should work in such a manner that
there is incentive to reduce, reuse and recycle waste by these institutions. A
lot can be learnt from the European Union and
Sweden.
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| Sweden Waste Statistics |
This public service
activity of collecting waste from households and industry should be done in
such a way that waste is separated and sorted, which essentially makes the next
step far much easier and cheaper to accomplish. Households and industries should
either get tax-breaks or be paid for this work, mainly because at the end of
the day, the waste will produce a marketable product that is sold.
There should also be widespread and consistent awareness on how
to sort and separate waste so that it can be effectively collected.
The next step involves processing
activities consists of disassembly and sorting waste into specific waste
flows.
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| Swedish Approach |
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| Swedish Approach |
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| Kenyan Approach |
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| Kenyan Approach |
The current situation, at Dandora landfill, is such that waste
is sorted and separated at the landfill in unsanitary conditions with little or
no protection. Despite this risk, the people working there see this as a source
of income, and see any excursion to change the situation as an attack on the poor.
In the future adequate sensitization and economic empowerment of the
populations that live around the landfill in the slums of Dandora, Korogocho and Babadogo, needs to be
conducted.
There are technologies that can perform this processing far
more effectively with limited human intervention, but then again the question
that begs to be answered is more to do with political willpower and the public
sentiments around labor and its utilization in a developing country.
The final marketing
activities bring out the results of the processing
activities to the market economy in terms of energy or recycled material. I
foresee energy companies like Kenya Power, taking over the landfill and
converting biogas into energy that can power homesteads and industries. I also believe the next landfill that is
erected in Nairobi should function in a manner comparable to the best in the
world, which only hold 1% of the waste being churned in the city.
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