Managing waste amid worsening pollution

Tapiwa Siula is a passionate youthful environmentalist who believes in keeping the environment clean and free from any harm.

The Blantyre resident, who works as a field assistant for Team Adventure, just like fellow environmental enthusiasts, is appalled by the improper waste disposal, especially thin plastics.

Siula says: “We are all well aware that the Mudi River flooded during Cyclone Freddy. But then the river flooded due to a lot of waste that creates blockages”.

Siula says it is, therefore, important to understand how improper waste disposal is proving to be damaging both to the environment and life in its entirety.

She says it is also important that every resident must play their role in managing the environment through, among others, ensuring proper waste disposal stressing that it is not the work of councils only.

Published information on the United Nations Environmental Programme (Unep website shows that hauling waste has been a challenge mainly due to lack of equipment and facilities in councils.

The information also shows that the major cities of Lilongwe and Blantyre produce a total of 988 tons of waste in a day. Lilongwe City produces 553 tonnes of waste and Blantyre produces 435 tonnes.

Out of this tonnage, 72 percent finds itself either in rivers or in open dumpsites. This means only 28 percent of the waste is properly disposed of.

This puts people’s health at risk especially that water bodies are contaminated with chemicals which some residents rely on for use.

Centre for Environmental Policy and Advocacy executive director Herbert Mwalukomo says mindset change is needed.

He says: “We need to take charge of taking care of the environment and that is only possible with mindset change”.

Public health expert Professor Adamson Muula says improper waste disposal is damaging to life citing the recent cholera outbreak as an example of failed waste disposal.

But Muula says residents need to demand waste management services from city councils since they pay for them in form of city rates.

“City councils often push the blame to residents who do not pay city rates. Without realistic city rates, the city council cannot deliver optimal services. This is where we need to have a conversation as to what starts first,” he says.

But three of the country’s four city councils say they are implementing numerous initiatives as regards waste management despite facing numerous challenges such as lack of resources and equipment.

These are Blantyre City Council (BCC), Lilongwe City Council (LCC) and Mzuzu City Council (MCC).

The various initiatives by these councils are being implemented with hope that they will play an integral role in minimising the worsening environmental pollution.

LCC mayor Richard Banda says the council with its partners are working on improving and coming up with innovative and effective ways in managing waste within the city.

He says: “One of the key roles is to recycle the waste produced which in return produces organic manure for farms.

“We are also developing an e-waste [electronic waste] system with support from Waste Advisers and other stakeholders such as Unicef to effect the processes to go through in collecting waste from residences to the dumping sites”.

Banda says while this is being done, the council is also sensitising residents to stop dumping waste in places not designated as such as well as educating them on consequences of such acts.

MCC spokesperson MacDonald Gondwe says they are incorporating residents into its numerous initiatives they are pursuing to manage waste in the city.

Among the initiatives is the establishment of ward waste management committees where residents are periodically reminded to take charge of waste management interventions.

But Gondwe says sometimes the feedback they receive from such forums is contrary to the council’s expectations.

He says: “But we surely believe that as time goes by communities will pick up and start owning the activities”.

But BCC spokesperson Deborah Luka says there has been an improvement in waste collection and management.

She says the council now has seven refuse trucks that are able to go around residential areas to collect waste.

She further says the council is managing to clean markets using skip handlers.

“Clean-up campaigns are also helping us and we are also doing sensitisation using HSA’s [Health Surveillance Assistants], especially in catchment areas, using door-to-door method,” says Luka.

Unep states that economic development and population growth will result in Malawi facing numerous challenges in waste management.

Worst still, Unep states that a majority of people in Malawi are neither aware of how they are contributing to the country’s worsening waste management problem nor how they can solve it.