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Hararae’s CBD after everyone is home.

Sydney Kawadza Senior Features Writer

Zimbabweans love their food; that is, they love their take away food. This has seen the development of a new culture, a culture for food from restaurants, albeit to devastating effects. The culture, according to Harare City Council’s acting head of waste management Engineer Calvin Chigariro, of “eating and walking”, literally, “eating-on-the-go”.

That is, Eng. Chigariro says, eating and walking.“We do not sit in the restaurants and eat so that we ensure the packaging is properly disposed of and I believe this is where our problems start.”The consequences are overwhelming.In a space of 28 years, Harare has gone from winning accolades to being labelled the dirtiest city in the region.

No-one in Harare would remember, let alone, believe, that in 1988, then Harare Mayor Solomon Tawengwa received an accolade for leading one of the cleanest cities in the world.Down the drain has gone the Sunshine City status to being one which generates twice as much waste as any other city in sub-Saharan Africa.

Not only the authorities but also figures corroborate the notion.Council deals with approximately 1 100 tonnes (approximately a million kilograms) of garbage, which is conveyed to the Pomona Landfill on a daily basis.About 400 000 people find their way into the CBD every day.

Eng. Chigariro said the 1 100 tonnes of garbage generated in Harare, daily, is twice as much as that found in Johannesburg!This, Eng. Chigariro believes, works, totally, against Harare’s endeavour of attaining world class city status by 2025.“Litter has become the bad side of the capital city with residents spending the day virtually jumping over heaps of garbage strewn all over the streets.“Generation of waste is the main challenge we have as it is far exceeding our capacity to collect and convey it to the Pomona Landfill,” he said.

The 1 100 tonnes of garbage, according to Eng. Chigariro, is collected from all over the city – that is, residential, commercial and industrial.This finds its way to the Pomona Landfill reserved for municipal solid waste.Hazardous waste from industry is sent to Golden Quarry Landfill in Westlea.

Eng. Chigariro said the situation called for a two-way process, whereby, the city has to make residents understand the impact of throwing litter everywhere.“There are, basically, two proper ways of disposing litter, that is, doing away with practices that contribute to the generation of waste and avoiding littering at all costs.”He said this was part of observations from a survey conducted early this year where council was trying to quantify the amount of waste generated from households, commercial and industrial.

The mechanical sweeper goes through Speke Avenue on Thursday night.

The survey was also trying to characterise the type of waste that is generated in different places.“The waste generated in Harare is twice that of other African cities and this is mainly attributed to our policies in terms of how we control the packaging of food stuffs.”With the city of Baku in Azerbaijan identified in a Forbes survey identifying the world’s dirtiest cities in 2012, Harare does not feature among the top 25.

From Africa culprits include Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso), Maputo (Mozambique), Luanda (Angola) and Addis Ababa but that does not exonerate Harare.It needs concerted efforts from council, workers and residents to avoid the pending pitfalls facing Harare.

Managing litter, Eng. Chigariro said, entails huge capital investments and operational costs.“The operation itself is capital intensive while requiring huge operational expenses, that is, fuel for the fleet, salaries for the workers as well as the maintenance expenses for the equipment that we use,” he said.

Council has however introduced programmes to try and contain the situation.On top of the cleaning crews, who manually sweep away litter, council bought two mechanical sweepers to cover part of the CBD.These operate during the night, hence the seemingly clean streets in the morning.

According to Mr Donald Sakupwanya, who operates during the “graveyard shift”, which cleans the streets during the night, Harare can overcome the litter scourge.“We received the mechanical sweepers in August 2015 and they operate on a vacuum system with five brooms sweeping the litter while the truck absorbs and sucks dirty from the ground.

“This has helped us reduce the human factor in our operations.”The “graveyard shift” operates from 10pm to 5 am.“During this time we assume that the city would have gone to sleep but we have a lot of challenges during the operation,” he said.Several vehicles are left unattended – kombis, trucks from driving school and some pirate taxis, he said.

“Vendors also leave cardboard boxes, stones and other goods that end up disturbing the cleaning operations,” he said.

The shift covers two quadrants, dividing the city into two zones for the mechanical sweepers.

The two quadrants – the first covering SamoraMachel, Julius Nyerere, Bank Street and Rotten Row – and the second covering SamoraMachel, Julius Nyerere, Kenneth Kaunda and Sam Nujoma Street.

Another graveyard shift crew member Ms Patricia Mukudu said council had three shift for cleaning the city.“The first works from 6am to 2pm, the second, from 2 pm to 8pm and the night shift operating from 10 pm to 5 am in the morning.“The night shift complement the mechanical sweepers and the machines have made the job faster and helps in completing the task quickly.”

She however called for assistance from law enforcement officers for the unattended vehicles on the streets during the night.“There is need for some form of policing, from the ZRP and council police, so that we have free access to the streets,” she said.

Urban development strategist Mr Percy Toriro urged Harare to employ other means of dealing with litter.“Firstly, we can solve the city’s perennial litter challenges by treating litter as a resource and two quick solutions come to mind; statistics say that 70 percent plus of our domestic waste is biodegradable, simply put, it can all be converted to manure.

“With our limited resources to buy fertilizers, fate could make us one of the most environmentally friendly nations on earth by growing organic food with the domestic compost materials while reducing our carbon foot print.”

He said Harare could, using the latest technology, utilise all waste by converting it to electricity.“We could wake up to such a huge demand to waste that every idle car and all waste is being transported to the electricity generators.“So those two quick solutions could revolutionise the way waste affects us and is treated.”He however said it was critical for the city council to avail sufficient bins in the CBD.

“There is a limit to which even a responsible citizen can carry waste before they throw it away if they cannot find a bin,” he said.Mr Toriro also hailed council for investing in the mechanical sweepers.“These machines constitute a useful intervention, but we need a lot more and they must be complimented by people sweeping in tight areas,” he said.

Harare, he argued, was not the dirtiest city around, but had“certainly lost its 1988 place as the cleanest around.”Harare City acting corporate communications manager Mr Michael Chideme said council was embarking on a number of projects to attain world class city status by the year 2025.

“We have also introduced two automated sweepers while two more are coming soon so that we can cover the whole CBD while reducing the manpower in terms of the sweepers employed in the CBD.

“The main thrust is to make sure that our services are comparable to those in Western cities and residents can begin to enjoy the services they expect when they pay rates.“Our residents don’t have to wish to be in New York, Washington or Munich but have to love Harare; they have to wish to be in Harare.”

He said Harare endeavours to make its roads trafficable.“We are also aiming to have adequate street lighting hence the plan is to install 10 000 solar lights in the next two to three years while we will soon introduce of mass transit systems to do away with pirate taxis,” he said.

Mr Chideme said while Harare had the ingredients to attain world class city status, residents had to play their part. According to the Government of Gibraltar’s Thinking Green initiative, fast food are: “any food on the go or the packaging sold with the food substance, or the implements (forks, e.t.c) used to eat it, which is found discarded onto public streets and areas”.

It adds that solutions could be as simple as vendors putting posters up around their outlet to discourage customers from littering, storing waste correctly, providing small recycling/food waste bins and keeping the premises and surrounding area clean.Customers, it says, minimise the amounts of fast food litter returning the packaging (once the food has been consumed) to the carrier bag given and carry to the next available public street bin.

“Empty the contents of the carrier bag into the public bin only if the packaging is heavily soiled and cannot be recycled). Place the carrier bag in the nearest recycling bin if it cannot be reused.“Alternatively, all packaging can be placed in its relevant recycling bin if relatively clean.”

There is however need for Harare to introduce plastic bins clearly marked for recycling material, bottle and organic material.Placing sweet and chocolate wrappings, once contents are consumed, back in the pocket or handbag is also another recommendation from Gibraltar.

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