Plastic and glass bottles worsen Malawi’s waste management crisis in both urban and rural business hotspots.
However, Development Network for Youth Empowerment executive director Shalid Ishmael says the bottles that Malawians discard anyhow could be used as building blocks for bus shelters, as Kenya is doing.
“It’s about creativity, collaboration and making good use of local resources,” he says. “Malawi has talented young people who can create practical solutions to everyday problems.”
Recently, some youthful Kenyans collected and sorted plastic bottles from the streets to build a public shelter for commuters.
Ishmael says similar youth-led innovations could promote waste recycling, reuse and a healthy environment.
“For Malawi, this could start with school and community competitions for young entrepreneurs to design eco-friendly initiatives with support from local councils and environmental organisations to tackle plastic pollution,” he states.
The Machinga-based youth activist challenges his peers to fix pressing problems in their communities instead of waiting for external solutions.
“Many rural and urban areas need proper bus shelters. Affordable structures from recycled materials could help safeguard commuters come rain or shine,” he states.
Ishmael reckons that such innovations teach young Malawians solutions thinking, teamwork and environmental conservation while creating business opportunities.”
Environmentalist Charles Bakolo says reducing, recycling and reusing waste does not only protect the right to a clean, healthy, sustainable environment for the fast-growing population and future generations.
It is also about creating green jobs for the youth who fashion things people can use.
Not all that people dump anyhow is worthless, Bakolo says.
“Young innovators play a crucial role in solving community problems that have long been sidestepped,” he says. “Just as teamwork and creativity transformed waste into a public shelter that now protects commuters from harsh weather in Kenya, Malawi can turn environmental challenges into opportunities.”
Occupation health and safety expert Kassim Kajosolo urges Malawians to stop sidestepping plastics as a nuisance and collect them as valuable raw materials for trash-to-cash businesses.
“We shouldn’t wait for big factories or foreign investors to fix simple problems like waste management, which fuels preventable diseases and environmental degradation. Communities can start with what they have in their hands, but they need training.”
Locally, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is supporting young entrepreneurs such as Salima-based Jeremiah Mwanza, 28, to create green jobs from the dumps.
The district along Lake Malawi mirrors the country’s waste management crisis that has defied traditional clean-up drives for decades.
Before early birds start tweeting, piles of waste line some streets, blocking drainage and repelling visitors destined for beach resorts.
For Mwanza, turning waste into organic fertliser and other usable items is an opportunity to protect the environment, create jobs and build a cleaner future.
“I could not ignore what I was seeing in my own community,” he says. “Waste was harming our health, our lake and our environment.”
His social enterprise, Apocalypse Waste Management Solutions, transforms municipal waste into organic fertiliser and paving blocks to create green jobs for the youth and improve sanitation for all.
In 2019, a UNDP-funded study by Lilongwe Wildlife Trust revealed that about 72 percent of Malawi’s waste ends up in rivers and open spaces.
“What people see as garbage, we see as a resource,” says Mwanza. “Recycling reduces the waste going to dumpsites and illegal dumping grounds. This prevents water, air, and land pollution. It reduces diseases in our communities.”
This reasoning extends to Cape Maclear in Mangochi along the southern shoreline of Lake Malawi.
The tourist hotspot boasts a building with walls fashioned from bottles collected during underwater and community clean-ups.
Since 2023, youthful divers have been cleaning up the lake and palm-fringed beaches, turning waste from the lakebed into cards, bags, paintings and other usable products.
“You won’t believe the waste volumes down there,” says Felix Sinosi, 31, emerging from the lake with a bagful of waste after a 30-munute dive. “This is only a fraction.”
