By Joseph Muchiri
Embu, Kenya: Do you hate the eyesore that is garbage sites around your neighbourhood and wonder what can be done?
Well, what used to be moulds of garbage has come with good tidings for residents of Embu town and the prison community.
Besides keeping the town clean, a recycling project has provided an avenue for inmates, prison warders and farmers to manage and recycle waste.
A partnership to collect waste and recycle it involving the Embu County government, Embu GK Prison and an NGO has also led to a cleaner market.
The Japanese Funded NGO, African Children Education Fund (Acef), collects the garbage from the market, and takes to Embu prison where it is recycled into a variety of useful products. After recycling the garbage, the end products include compost manure, plastic fencing posts, charcoal briquettes, baskets and polythene mattresses.
The organisation has provided different waste bins at strategic points within the market. This is through a one-year project titled “Aiding Creation of a Recycling System in a Society Project”.
They have provided separate bins for waste; one for materials that decompose such as banana leaves and another for inorganic waste like polythene paper. The organisation has also provided a lorry and employed five people to collect and transport the garbage.
They collect waste three times a week which amounts to about 35 tonnes of waste which can produce 10 tonnes of organic fertiliser valued at between Sh15,000 to Sh20,000, which is given out to the prison and the farmers. It is hoped the farmers will replicate the recycling of waste into organic fertiliser into their farms even after the end of the project in September.
Fertiliser cheaper
Ms Molly Rwamba, a trainer on organic farming with Acef, says ten years from now waste would have increased tenfold.
“We use the organic waste like banana leaves, maize cobs and peels of fruits to make organic fertiliser. The plastics are molten to make plastic posts while polythene papers are washed and recycled into mattresses,” she said.
It is during the recycling process that prisoners and a group of about 30 farmers who have attended theoretical classes on recycling and organic farming are invited and practically taught how it is done.
Rwamba says organic fertiliser can stay in farm for longer than inorganic one as it is not acidic and is cheaper.
Rwamba said 800 farmers and 700 prisoners have been trained on waste management and they target to train over 1,200 farmers before moving to another county.
