Editorial Comment: Litter-free environment begins with you

IF everyone who dropped or threw litter onto the streets of central Harare was fined US$20 a lot of budget deficits would quickly be eliminated, so prevalent is the crime.
As it is the first week of a campaign by the Environmental Management Agency, the City of Harare and the police saw 93 pedestrians and motorists paying the admission of guilt fine and a promise that the campaign will continue, using where possible evidence gathered by the cameras now being installed to curb traffic offences.

The EMA hopes that as the law is enforced more rigorously so people will start thinking and stop dumping their rubbish on the streets, either waiting to pass a suitable bin or taking it home. The main objective of the campaign is not to fine offenders but to stop people offending.

A walk through the city centre late in the evening or early morning before the street sweepers start work highlights the need for a change of culture. Debris is dominated by the take-away containers, those cardboard and expanded polystyrene containers that once contained meals and snacks, plus drink cans and plastic bottles.

But old-fashioned banana skins, orange peel and apple cores are also there, plus empty plastic and paper bags.
Yet it is not that difficult to avoid littering. More bins, usually sponsored by shops in the area, are now present although far more are needed. But even if there is no ready bin, there is nothing to stop a pedestrian munching a snack to take the container back to the office or back home.

Drivers and their passengers also need to start taking litter home; in past days when the litter laws were more tightly enforced and there was more of a litter-free culture, many drivers used to have a bag in the car, usually an old shopping bag, that could hold the litter for future disposal.

On long trips these bags tended to be dumped in the bins at lay-bys or at garages. The observations that those in posher cars are more likely to litter probably reflects the fact that these people are more fanatical about keeping their cars clean, regardless of the mess they cause, and perhaps their greater feeling of isolation from the common environment.

Anyone wondering whether litter-free streets are possible in Africa need only look at Namibia.
People there simply do not litter and anyone dropping so much as a matchstick is assumed to be a tourist and is approached by ordinary people who politely tell the litterer that “we don’t do that there” and is invited to pick up the offending article.

Notices on the highways asking those in cars to “Please keep our desert tidy” might startle the same tourists but seem to be effective. Admittedly you cannot walk for very long along a Namibian urban street before finding a bin, which helps to make it easier to enforce the litter-free culture.

But most Zimbabweans are very house-proud. No one dumps garbage in their own yard and most Zimbabweans would be very upset if they saw a driver throwing littler into the street outside their gate; so it is difficult to understand why so many throw litter outside someone’s shop or into the streets of the city centre.

We all need to take pride in our city, as once almost all of us did. Once most of us expand our culture of keeping our houses clean to keeping our city clean we can quickly make the messy minority, or the tourists, toe the line.

We wish the EMA, the city council and the police success in their campaign. We hope that the city council and EMA will encourage more businesses to put bins outside their shops, and the council itself will make it easier to dump litter tidily at parking garages and bus terminus, so that there are fewer excuses to make a mess.

But in the end we all have stop being filthy, stop making a mess and accept that those who disagree will be fined quite heavily.
It is not that hard.

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