Government should learn from this waste crisis

| Wednesday May 26, 2010 00:00

It is on the day that you fail to empty your trashcan that is full of last night's leftovers and onion peels that its omnipresence becomes real. That is at house level. 

It is when you continue to empty your trash into your main rubbish bin every day, and it is not collected, and you realise your neighbour's trash is not collected that you conclude there is a waste management problem.

When you pass by one of the city's rivers and you see a point where thousands of litres of sewage are pouring into the river - as has been the case along the Ngotwane River at 'The Village', you surmise that there is a waste crisis.

As a developing country, Botswana is not immune to the maladies that come with waste management. Even developed countries have to grapple with waste management issues.

Take the case of the Italian port City of Naples. With its landfills full to capacity and litter all over its streets as hundreds of thousands of trash remained uncollected, the city was forced to transport its waste by train to Hamburg, Germany! 

Fearing a disease outbreak, the city had a little earlier on closed its schools. Desperate residents set fire to trash that had remained uncollected and now attracted flies, maggots and cockroaches.

The city transported - by train - its trash to another city, in another country. Why?  Hamburg did not have any of the problems that Naples was dealing with.

Obviously, the city of Hamburg had a better waste management system, and has employed waste management technologies such as waste recycling.

The Ministry of Environment has in the last five years of its existence built 10 landfills around the country, an impressive feat by all means!

But as everyone will soon realise, the landfills, as has happened in Naples, and in many other countries, will soon reach full capacity.

A few weeks ago, the Mayor of the City of Gaborone, Gloria Masole, briefing the press on the state of waste in the city, said the city was unable to cope with waste collection due a host of reasons including inadequacy of waste collector trucks and lack of funds.  I shall come to these issues later.

PriorityWe all treat waste as such - WASTE.  In our homes we hardly plan for it. We throw it in our rubbish bins and forget about it. Some wrongly dig holes in their backyards, bury the waste and forget about it.

We do not waste-plan ahead of our medical insurance or our grocery. Sadly, the same scenario, the same attitude plays itself out at national level. With such attitudes waste management could never stands a change against other sectors of development.  Within the confines of their meeting rooms cabinet would probably shush the relevant minister or permanent secretary or experts in waste management: 'You must appreciate that we have to give priority to health and education. You know water is a scarce resource in this country. Surely we can always deal with these issues in the future.  Wouldn't you say so Mr. PS?'  Meanwhile the country is experiencing runaway development, especially in its cities.

To deal with the immediate waste issues the government figured the existing landfills were adequate. The sewage network in the affluent parts of Botswana's towns was adequate.

To deal with the immediate sewage in the poorer areas of the towns, government helped build pit-latrines through the Self Help Housing Agency (SHAA). In many villages residents were encouraged to build pit-latrines to deal with their daily sewage needs. 

We would learn with time just how much disservice we have done the environment and ourselves.  Take the Ramotswa case, for example, where the area's underground water remains undrinkable because of pollution from the pit-latrines.

While the government got to realise its mistake there came talk about sustainable environment.

An otherwise old concept known even by old American Indians: Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. Man does not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand of it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself,' as Chief Seattle said, we were slow in embracing it. 

All around us runabout development was taking place in the meantime.  Development, which would itself become, or generate waste. 

Like the bleating black sheep of the flock, waste has now started bothering us. We have become fully alive to its impact on the environment and on our health. We see waste at our doorstep and we are sorely worried!

What we are seeing in Gaborone should be a wake-up call for government.  It is a call to give waste management priority.  It is due to failure by government to give waste management priority that today sewage lines are breaking and no matter how often the councils try to maintain the pipes - as they tell us ever so often that they do, the pipes keep bursting. They are old and were never meant for the amount of development and population that they are currently servicing. Indeed there have been other good developments by government such as the more modern Gamodubu landfill - a far cry from the dumpsite that troubled Gaborone residents for a long time.

Around the country, construction of sewerage facilities is either ongoing or complete. These are welcome developments.

We can only hope that their planning has been done in such a way that they can mitigate against the waste that is produced by infrastructure that precedes them by almost 50 years.

The Mayor of Gaborone discussed the issue of funding.  Giving priority to waste management means that government will need to adequately finance local authorities and indeed the department.

Lately, government through the Department of Waste Management, has embarked on a project to remove pit-latrines in the cities and towns.  This is by any means a good effort.

It needs to be treated as a priority area and must be adequately financed. The people whose pit latrines are being demolished will, needless to say, be connected to the city -wide sewage network. 

We can only hope that the planning has been adequately financed such that it is planned according to experts specifications - not according to specifications of a group of men and women who have no inkling about the subject.

Otherwise we will in time, find ourselves having to face problems similar to what we are experiencing now.

Whilst at it, government needs to look for alternative and modern waste management systems such as expanded recycling, coupled with innovative trash-collection schemes and modern, clean incinerators that can reduce the volume of waste produced, while simultaneously reducing Green House Gas emissions and providing heat for homes and businesses as the recycled waste is turned into useful energy. 

These efforts should be accompanied by adequate resourcing in terms of expert and support personnel. Otherwise we may find ourselves having to transport waste to other countries by rail!