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Managing liquid, solid waste proves to be a mountain too high for most cities

Wednesday July 19 2017
dumpsite

A street choking with garbage for lack of a proper solid waste management system. PHOTO FILE | NMG

By SARA BAKATA

When Naameh, Lebanon’s main landfill, was declared full in 2015, the city of Beirut had a “river of rubbish.” With nowhere to deliver the city’s rubbish, Sukleen, the private company that had been collecting it, simply stopped working.

The city did not have a recycling culture or even a public-space culture, and residents began dumping garbage wherever they could. The problem soon became a national disaster, with whole streets gasping under mounds of garbage.

Similarly, in the Italian city of Naples in the recent past, garbage was strewn on the streets and walkways for months on end as a solution was being sought on collection and dumping sites.

These are two examples of cities struggling with increasing waste and no lasting solutions for its management. They also point to the need for land to be set aside as dumpsites or landfills, which also act as collecting centres for waste recycling.

East Africa is no different. For example, Nairobi’s largest dumpsite, 10 kilometers from the city center at Dandora, is a sprawling 30-acre open site, that was declared full almost a decade ago, but with no new land available within the city or nearby counties, Nairobi lacks a site dedicated to dumping and, therefore, large-scale waste management is non-existent.

Rules and regulations

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For waste management to succeed as an integral part of the economy, the business models used by companies in the sector have to be not just a part of day to day life, but rules and regulations have to be entrenched in law governing this exercise. It is a global best practice.
But wherein lies the solution, one may ask? The few companies dealing with waste apply different business models, with mixed results. Kenya, for instance, lacks a concrete, cohesive and long-term waste management system.
According to Cameron Rush, managing director of Nairobi-based Planning Project Management Ltd, there are over 10 agencies in Kenya that companies in waste management have to work with.

Unless these agencies integrate, it will remain hard for players to register any meaningful outcomes. For example, the open and illegal dumpsites in Nairobi are very basic, yet they handle approximately 35 tonnes of mixed waste annually.

Unless the government agencies find new approaches, including compulsory waste separation and a law on recycling, the dumpsites will fill up quickly and endanger the public.

READ: Plastic wars begin: Kenya accused of suffocating the environment

Mountain garbage

This is what happened in Addis Ababa in May, when a mountain of garbage collapsed, killing scores of scavengers living atop it.

Most African cities would need a complete societal mindset change to get to the level of, say, Germany, which has laws on water and waste recycling at individual building level. These laws are bound to a tax for those who breach it. If it can work elsewhere, it is worth pursuing here too.

Transfer of technology can happen through public-private collaboration. This was the message at the recent Green Economy Cycle waste management workshop sponsored by the German embassy in Nairobi.

According to German deputy ambassador to Kenya Michael Derus, protecting the environment is now an issue affecting economic growth. He said signatories to the Paris Accord pledged to cut emissions from all waste by 2020, and that East African countries need to manage both water and solid waste or risk failure to uphold this promise.

When it comes to waste management, recycling is king. The value being protecting and minimising waste of resources such as water, paper, glass, plastic and wood.

Most of Africa is water depressed even though millions of litres of clean water are lost annually in industrial and domestic operations that can function just as well using recycled water, paper, glass and plastic.

READ: No argument can justify plastic bags

Responsible generators

Kenya Private Sector Association (Kepsa) regulations state that the cost of recycling has to be borne by consumers, producers and handlers of waste.

Despite having over 500 member organisations working through sectoral boards that make recommendations to parliament, very little has been achieved.
Kepsa, however, says that according to the Waste Management Regulations 2006, if you handle waste generated by another person, you too are considered a waste generator.

This means all waste management companies are considered waste generators. Kepsa, therefore, recommends that its members adopt clean processes and energy so that they can be responsible generators and handlers of waste.

Thilo Vogeler of the delegation of German Industry and Commerce in Kenya (AHK), said Kenya and Kepsa are on the right footing since in Germany too, it is mandatory for private sector entities to join a chamber of commerce, through which expert solutions to waste management are channelled.

Vogeler added that recycling, also known as the “circular economy,” is worth €2,536 billion ($2,890bn) and expected to grow to €5,385 billion ($6,137bn) in 2025.

This means business sense trumps all moral obligation to preserve the environment through proper waste management because the circular economy protects resources, supports new energy policies and fights climate change since it controls emissions from waste.

Like Kepsa, AHK also advocates that the entire society bear the cost of recycling.
Karin Boomsma, of Sustainable and Inclusive Business Kenya, calls for solutions and interventions at all levels when addressing waste management.

He suggests the dangling of incentives. This could mean retailers replacing the use of plastic with recyclable bags. This would lower retailers’ costs since they do not have to provide consumers with a fresh bag for each shopping trip.

READ: Makers of plastic bags get reprieve

Littering and noise

For Daniel Paffenholz of Taka Taka Solutions, a professional waste recycling and management company operating in Nairobi since 2011, a public buy-in into all models of waste management is key to success.

This is because, two-thirds of Nairobi residents do not have any form of organised waste disposal because it is too costly. They find it is easier to dump refuse in open places.

Ironically, the same people they serve, since they have no alternative solution to disposal of the waste they generate, are often the first ones to resist an opportunity to host a waste collection centre.
When Taka Taka identified land in Nairobi to set up a recycling center, it faced resistance from neighbourhood associations. This was despite them having complied with all government regulations to ensure there was no foul smell, no littering or noise pollution from their operations.

This leaves them with the option of seeking land in secluded locations away from residential areas, which is not easy either.

Garbage collection services are, therefore, getting more expensive as garbage collection sites such as Taka Taka’s are forced to move away from the city’s limits. Closer locations like Nairobi’s Dandora dumpsite are hard to penetrate.

The other challenge is that most waste in Nairobi is 70 per cent organic, meaning it contaminates the rest. And since the laws requiring separation of waste at source for both industrial and domestic consumers is either non-existent, ignored or otherwise ambivalent, the cost of recycling becomes prohibitive.
This consigns waste into a never-ending cycle for most city authorities.

READ: Garbage crisis: Kenya fails to secure land for new dumpsites

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