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Fungai Lupande Mashonaland Central Bureau

The Environment Management Agency (EMA) in Mashonaland Central is moving door to door doing a waste management survey in Bindura, Mazowe and Shamva to have a proper outlook on the uptake of recycling and how people are segregating waste.

The survey will feed into the national survey which will be analysed by professors from the University of Zimbabwe with an aim to also inform waste recycling investment opportunities.

The survey will update the state of the environment report.

Provincial environmental education and publicity officer Mr Maxwell Mupotsa said they are moving door to door in residential areas, pharmacies, hospitals and universities to look at the type and amount of waste.

He said the survey has given insight into how local authorities are faring in refuse collection and how people are managing their waste when councils fail in their duties.

“Some of the questions we are asking are: ‘How frequent is the local authority collecting bins? How many people per household? and How are they segregating their waste?’,” he said.

“We have seen a huge number of people per house in the medium-density suburbs. This has an impact on the amount of waste they produce. The general indications are that plastics and card boxes are produced in universities.”

Mr Mupotsa said they took the opportunity to raise awareness of the cholera outbreak and how best people can segregate waste to avoid the spreading of germs.

He said they are taking local authorities to task and ensuring that they frequently collect refuse so that illegal dumpsites do not continue to accumulate.

“We are teaching communities to colour coding bins at a household level, green for plastics, red for glass yellow for paper. We want to ensure less pollution of the environment in line with Sustainable Goal number 11, which is about making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable,” he said.

“We have been encouraging medical facilities and pharmacies to take their waste to incinerators. However, most of the incinerators are down but they are making use of those working.”