Applying technology to reap from waste

By Peter Orengo

A few kilometers from the huge Dandora dumpsite, volunteers shovel stinking piles of garbage into one end of a giant concrete oven.

Construction workers, clutching mugs, queue for tea and ‘Githeri’, which is breakfast and lunch for the day. Most of them ignore the acrid smoke, wafting from a cooking stove, owned by Wameria Women Group.

"It might smell bad but it doesn’t make our food taste any different," says Ms Margaret Wamboi, as she serves her customers with steaming tea and Githeri very much loved.

"It taste just like any food cooked using normal Jiko or Gas," she says.

The garbage-burning oven she uses is part of UN-sponsored idea to clean up Kenya’s slums and preserving forests, which are cleared to provide wood and charcoal for cooking.

The pilot project could be a model as the world faces an explosion in urban living and the waste it creates.

The first cooker’s early success has prompted Nakumatt supermarkets to pledge funding for 20 more.

The enormous increase in the quantity and diversity of waste generated by humans and their potentially harmful effects on the environment and public health, have led to an increasing awareness on urgent needs to adopt scientific methods for safe disposal of wastes.

Waste in the world today is also considered lucrative and a money-minting venture that attracts huge returns. But in Kenya, it is a disaster since no local authority has a modern waste management unit.

Nairobi alone generates more than 2,400 tonnes of garbage a day and the city council pays Sh9 million every week to contractors to collect it.

This figure amounts to Sh144 million a year against the Sh125 million factored in the last budget.

By-laws

In 2007, Nairobi City Council passed waste management by-laws that allowed other people and firms to participate in garbage management.

Sources have told The Standard that if the garbage was recycled, it would be worth more than Sh5 billion a month.

Already, several investors have shown interest in employing technology to manage garbage being generated in the country.

Some of the methods suggested include incineration, landfills, source reduction and re-use, recycling, composting, land application and Pulpa.

Related Topics

Dandora dumpsite