The Westlea dumpsite near the low-income settlement Warren Park, west of Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare. Here electronic waste such as old tvs and microwaves, which contain hazardous substances such as mercury and lead, are dumped with regular waste. Credit: Tatenda Dewa/IPS

By Tatenda Dewa
HARARE, Mar 25 2014 (IPS)

Electronic waste in Zimbabwe is becoming “an emerging environmental crisis that is by and large unheralded,” according to Steady Kangata, the education and publicity manager of the government-run Environmental Management Agency (EMA).

“It can grow out of control if solid action is not taken,” Kangata told IPS.

He said that individuals, backyard or informal businesses, and large companies were “indiscriminately” disposing of electronic items such as old tvs, radios, computers and microwaves, which contain hazardous substances.

“These waste products are harmful because they contain toxic material such as mercury, lead and carcinogens that, if inhaled or ingested, can have far-reaching effects on people’s health.Increased consumerism in this southern African nation has not been matched by appropriate disposal systems and hence e-waste was becoming a real danger.

“Some of the e-waste is flammable and radioactive and contains elements that can affect the reproductive and nervous systems. It accumulates underground and is thus an environmental danger,” explained Kangata.

He said that increased consumerism in this southern African nation has not been matched by appropriate disposal systems and hence e-waste was becoming a real danger.

It’s also the country’s poor who are at risk.

For the last 10 years, Jairos Zimombe from the low-income settlement Warren Park, which lies just west of the capital, Harare, has been unemployed but he has made a modest living retrieving and selling plastic and other forms of garbage from the nearby sprawling Westlea dumpsite.

Here, the Harare municipality regularly burns pharmaceutical and medical waste such as thermometers, used dental products and syringes from local clinics.

But the perennially smoking site also contains a broad assortment of garbage. And every day scores of garbage pickers rummage through the dumpsite in search of scrap metal, used plastic, rubber containers as well as electrical components that they sell at downtown markets.

Kangata pointed out that garbage pickers, like Zimombe, were “constantly exposed to electronic waste, but the tragedy is that most of them are not even aware of the danger of the discarded items.”

Indeed, the 45-year-old Zimombe is adamant that there is no health risk associated with his informal job.

“My only worry with this smoke is that sometimes it makes me cough. Otherwise I don’t see any problem with the items [e-waste] that you are talking about. How come the municipality keeps dumping these things here and does not warn us?” he told IPS.

According to Kangata, local municipalities should properly dispose of e-waste by separating it from ordinary trash.

However, the country’s Environmental Management Act and city by-laws do not specifically state that municipal authorities should do this.

In addition, most local city councils have failed to regularly remove heaps of garbage in residential areas. Phillip Mutoti, mayor of Harare’s dormitory town, Chitungwiza, told IPS that financial constraints were hampering garbage collection. He added, however, that his municipality cleared refuse once a week.

“Most residents and local companies are defaulting on rates payments and we are struggling financially. We have a limited number of refuse trucks though we hope to get more with time,” he said, admitting that the garbage collectors did not separate the waste.

Shamiso Mtisi, head of research at the Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association, told IPS that the country has “no clear and comprehensive position on e-waste.”

“The Environmental Management Act has regulations that provide for the disposal of hazardous waste, but that law does not address the issue of e-waste per se,” Mtisi explained.

In 2012, Zimbabwe ratified the United Nations-initiated Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm conventions that restrict the transboundary transfer and disposal of organic pollutants and other forms of waste. It also regulates the management of harmful chemicals.

And in 1993 Zimbabwe also ratified the Bamako Convention that prohibits the importation into Africa of hazardous waste. These conventions, however, do not address the issue of e-waste.

“As a result, culprits who inappropriately handle e-waste tend to get away with murder as they are lumped together with lesser offenders…and pay low fines if they are brought to book. This legal omission also means that there are no specific systems to handle e-waste,” Mtisi explained.

According to Kangata, the fine for illegally dumping any form of waste ranges from five to 5,000 dollars. Municipal authorities and the EMA set the fines according to the amount of waste dumped and the danger it poses to public health.

However, the Combined Harare Residents’ Association (CHRA) is concerned about the lack of proper systems to manage e-waste and fears that the public is at risk.

“There is need for an urgent collaborative approach between municipalities, residents associations, the EMA as well as other environmental experts to devise a working mechanism to cope with e-waste. Primarily, residents need to be educated on the dangers of and best ways to manage e-waste disposal and this calls for massive public awareness campaigns,” Simba Moyo, CHRA chairperson, told IPS.

Such campaigns could possibly save Zimombe’s health and that of his children. During the school holidays, he brings his two teenage sons to the dumpsite to help him rummage for trash to sell, exposing them to the hazards of the toxic waste.

According to the World Health Organisation’s website: “Children are especially vulnerable to health risks that may result from e-waste exposure and, therefore, need more specific protection.”

But Zimombe is still unconvinced of the dangers, though he admitted that he suffers from lingering headaches, frequent breathing problems, and he sometimes has difficulty sleeping.

Like most garbage pickers and traders who visit dumping sites in the capital, he does not have the money to go for a medical check up, let alone to pay for any treatment he may require.

“I can’t afford the luxury to go for medical check-ups. Poverty is what has forced me to do this kind of job in order to look after my family. For as long as I am walking and can come here, all is well. I will stop when I get seriously ill.”

The garbage strewn across many streets and sidewalks in the Argentine capital reflects the inefficiency of a waste collection and treatment system that, paradoxically, has become increasingly costly for the city’s residents, say civil society groups and opposition parties.

The garbage crisis in Buenos Aires is a result of the saturation of the city’s landfills, due to increased levels of consumption over the last decade, and substandard collection service, with compactor trucks that tend to leave piles of trash and residue in their wake, especially in the city centre.

The generation of solid waste, such as plastics, textiles, glass, metals and food, increased by 24 to 35 percent between 2001 and 2011. The amount of trash sent to landfills from the city of Buenos Aires grew from 1.4 million tonnes to 2.2 million tonnes between 2002 and 2010, despite no significant increase in the number of residents, according to figures from the opposition party Proyecto Sur.

The landfills are located in municipalities in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area such as José León Suárez, González Catán and Punta Lara, all of which fall under the jurisdiction of the province of Buenos Aires, which surrounds the city. Their proximity to these populous municipalities entails a major health risk.

Once the trash is buried in the landfills, it is treated – at least in theory – through various methods including gas collection systems and solvents that separate the soluble substances from liquids.

The administration of these sites is overseen by the Coordinación Ecológica Área Metropolitana Sociedad del Estado, a company formed through an agreement between the city and the province.

Trash collection is carried out by five private companies and a sixth owned by the local government, with each responsible for a specific section of the city, although an upcoming tender foresees the division of the city into seven sections.

In addition to the obvious health concerns, the collapse of the trash collection system also has economic repercussions. Expenditure on street cleaning in the city has risen from 641 million pesos (128 million dollars) to 2.517 billion pesos (503 million dollars) since 2008, the first year in office of conservative Mayor Mauricio Macri, one of the most ardent opponents of centre-leftist Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

With a population of almost 2.9 million inhabitants, the city of Buenos Aires will end up spending 176 dollars per person on urban sanitation when this year’s draft budget is approved.

In 2006, the city of Buenos Aires adopted the so-called Zero Waste Law, which entered into force in May 2007, and includes among other measures a commitment to drastically reduce the amount of waste that ends up in landfills.

According to the timeline established under the law, the city was to decrease the proportion of solid waste buried in these dumpsites by 30 percent as of 2010, 50 percent as of 2012, and 75 percent as of 2017. The ultimate goal was to ensure that 100 percent of recyclable waste was in fact recycled, and kept out of the landfills, by the year 2020.

Under the timeline, the trash buried in landfills was supposed to be reduced to 748,828 tonnes last year. In fact, however, the actual amount was three times this much, with an average of more than 6,000 tonnes a day.

Nevertheless, the minister of environment and public areas of the city of Buenos Aires, Diego Santilla, declared, “No other government has made as much progress as we have in fulfilling the Zero Waste Law.”

Although the city government admits to difficulties in meeting the targets until now, it claims that this will change thanks to agreements reached with the governor of the province of Buenos Aires, Daniel Scioli, who is a member of the same Justicialista (Peronist) Party as Fernández de Kirchner, but represents the centrist faction within the party.

However, civil society organisations and opposition political leaders point to what they see as a lack of will on the part of the Macri government to effectively implement the Zero Waste Law.

Rafael Gentili, a deputy in the local legislature from the centre-leftist Proyecto Sur, told IPS that Macri’s performance has been “abysmal”, given that “he has not complied with any of the requirements established by the law.”

“The city is dirtier today than it was five years ago,” added Gentili.

In addition to the above-mentioned targets for reducing the proportion of waste sent to landfills, the Zero Waste Law also bans the incineration of garbage and calls for the promotion of the separation of waste at source, a crucial point that has been the subject of the loudest demands.

Consuelo Bilbao, who heads up the toxic waste campaign at Greenpeace Argentina, told IPS that there is “a major imbalance between the system for collecting and burying waste and the money allocated to recycling, which is 200 million pesos (40 million dollars).”

The 2001 crisis that devastated the Argentine economy also led to an upsurge in informal waste recycling, as thousands of families took to the streets to collect recyclable solid waste materials such as glass, plastics, metals, paper and cardboard.

The improvement in socioeconomic conditions since 2005 has led to a decrease in the number of people who make a living picking through trash, known in Buenos Aires as “cartoneros” (from “cartón”, the Spanish word for cardboard). Two years ago, the local government implemented a system that “formalised” the work they do.

Buildings with more than 19 floors, shopping centres, public offices and schools are required to separate recyclable waste, which is turned over to cooperatives of cartoneros registered with the authorities.

Bilbao and Gentili concur that this measure has enabled the recovery of 15 percent of the solid waste generated in the city, in addition to continued waste collection and recycling on an informal basis.

But according to Greenpeace and other critics, the local government is dragging its feet when it comes to further progress in the separation of recyclable waste at source – in homes and neighbourhoods – which could increase the proportion of trash recycled to up to 40 percent.

“Macri has no interest in reducing the amount of trash produced. On the contrary, he wants there to be a lot of it to make the business more lucrative,” said Gentili.

The companies contracted by the local government to process garbage and turn it into biogas and fertiliser, he explained, are paid according to the volumes they produce. As such, it is economically advantageous if a large proportion of solid waste continues to go to landfills, instead of being separated at source and recycled.

Gentili also pointed out that some companies, like Grupo Roggio, one of the largest in this sector in Argentina, are involved in both ends of the waste chain – collection and treatment – which represents a conflict of interests.

Bilbao agrees that the policy of the government of Buenos Aires “emphasises waste treatment, and not the prior stages that we consider crucial.”

She also finds it particularly telling that “the treatment plants are paid for their services, while the cartoneros are provided with a subsidy, not a salary, which leaves them at the mercy of market rates for recyclable materials.”

The result, she says, is “total inequality.”

*This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.

386 teams in Warangal recently competed for the ‘best performance’ trophy in collection and disposal of household wastes. Credit: Keya Acharya/IPS

By Keya Acharya
WARANGAL, India, Nov 22 2012 (IPS)

In a country notorious for the inability to deal with the waste it generates, municipal officials in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh are now resorting to making waste management a competitive sport, in their bid to cajole the entire nation to clean up.

The historic city of Warangal recently hosted 386 teams from 57 municipalities across the northern half of Andhra Pradesh – the largest state in south India and the fourth largest in the country – competing for the ‘best performance’ trophy in collection and disposal of household wastes.

“I found this an opportunity to learn; I too wanted to know how to get it done,” said Warangal city’s municipal commissioner, Vivek Yadav. Warangal’s population of 600,000 produces 300 metric tonnes of household waste daily.

Waste segregation and recycling might be ‘old hat’ in most countries, but in India, where cities are growing exponentially, negligence, administrative mismanagement and lack of infrastructure have resulted in open dumping in over 90 percent of cities and towns countrywide.

The Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi estimates that by 2047, waste generation across India’s cities will reach 260 million tonnes per year.

In 2000, in response to a petition filed by Almitra Patel, a Bangalore-based civil engineer from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Supreme Court made it mandatory for the country’s municipalities to take responsibility for the safe disposal of its wastes.

But implementation of the Municipal Solid Waste Management Rules has been poor.

The idea of handling waste management through sport came to environmental activist Uday Singh after watching an Indian Premier League cricket game.

“We wanted to try and harness the spirit of competition and sportsmanship that India displays in cricket, for public health,” Singh said.

The force for the ‘Clean Cities Championships’, however, was Andhra Pradesh Joint Director of Municipal Administration, Khadar Saheb, the man behind India’s first ‘waste-compliant’ city, Suryapet, in 2003.

Intense pre-competition activity saw routes being mapped, household segregation being explained to citizens and training of staff.

Each team thereafter consisted of a guest municipality’s Sanitary Inspector as team leader and two guest staff accompanied by three officials from the host city.

Pushing trolleys door to door between the hours of seven and eleven every morning, each team was given a score based on how it handled the collection process.

Teams unloaded trolleys full of waste at the collection centre in the town’s water tower premises before continuing on their rounds.

Collection staff varied from municipal tractor-drivers and cleaners to garbage-pickers employed by the municipality.

“The aim was to train all municipal staff so that they go back to their constituencies and spread awareness,” Saheb told IPS.

Plastics went to a storage yard for collection by recycling units, wet wastes went to a dumpsite 15 kilometres outside the city, while scraps from the city’s two main markets went directly for vermicomposting.

The competition caught the attention of a large swathe of the city’s residents.

At the sound of the teams’ whistle each morning, housewives came to the doors of their homes located along the ancient, winding lanes of the old city, once part of the fort belonging to the Kakatiya dynasty that ruled most of present-day Andhra Pradesh from the 12^th to 14^th century.

Sixty-one-year-old Sultana Begum and her tenant, 32-year-old Rani, were unsure of exactly how their segregated wastes were being disposed of, but did not hesitate in proclaming the process a “good thing”, a sentiment echoed by various other households throughout Warangal.

But not everyone was excited about the model.

The exclusion of ‘ragpickers’, India’s garbage-sorters who make a living by reselling plastics retrieved from garbage, posed a serious challenge to dissemination of information and training, though Singh, the ‘hub man’ of the operation, says the ragpickers will get inducted into the recycling system in due course.

Others are disgruntled too. Those who wore protective gloves complained they got damp and were uncomfortable; those who didn’t receive any, due to inadequacies in distribution, were aggrieved at being left out.

At the dry collection centre, the city’s Sanitary Inspector kept a critical eye on the sorting and packing of plastics, labelling the process “too risky”.

But Joint Director Saheb and Commissioner Yadav heard the string of complaints with quiet composure and unwavering determination.

“It’s a brave attempt,” said Supreme Court Solid Waste Committee specialist Patel, who had been invited to the event as a guest of honour.

“This message needs to snowball,” she told IPS.

The prize for best team was awarded to the Khammam municipality, while several others received a slew of consolation prizes. “There are no losers in this game,” Singh stressed.

The competition will now be taken to several other cities in Andhra Pradesh.

(END)