Towards sustainable waste management practices in the face of COVID-19
SOLID waste management is a global health practice that affects every citizen in many ways. This is a community practice which has not received enough attention even before, during or possibly in the aftermaths of COVID-19.
Sustainable waste management is the cornerstone and a fundamental aspect of health delivery services. If solid, liquid and ewaste gadgets cannot be disposed of properly they can have negative impact on human health, the environment and the people’s livelihoods.
Long ago, towns and city councils were alert and particular about public health issues, especially with regard to solid waste, in respect to collecting and dumping it at designated sites.
That was then, when towns and cities were just, but clean and they needed not any national clean-up days and they were just but clean.
Of course, so many factors have come into play like population density, the increase in human settlements and mushrooming of informal settlements.
This, of course, should not be an excuse, as town planners should have taken into account the increase in population with the proper servicing of sewage pipes, upgrading of designated dumpsites with modern technology and an increase in education about the dangers posed by all forms of waste products.
People should not have been left to imagine what they should actually do with solid, liquid and ewaste as hope is not a method.
Now that COVID-19 is in our midst, people don’t know what to do with solid waste piling, sewer pipes bursting and liquid waste visiting their doorsteps.
On top of that, people don’t know what to do with broken down gadgets such as radios, television sets, DVDs, decoders, refrigerators, air-conditioners and many others which produce radioactive gases, otherwise known as e-waste.
E-waste is a silent killer and it continues to have negative impacts and side-effects not only on human health, but also to the environment.
Mining, which is considered an essential sector and even during these days of COVID-19, sustainable and unsustainable mining practices are taking place.
Some mines and industries discharge industrial affluence into the water bodies and no one is monitoring.
As mining employees go about their business, we are not quite sure, how much social distancing is being observed.
Furthermore, do they have the required protective clothing to curb the spread of the coronavirus?
Out there, waste recovery workers are essential in safe-guarding the health of the communities and their personal health as well, through timeous removal of solid waste materials to designated dumpsites.
As they collect the solid waste, they should not expose themselves to danger in attempts to improve the health of others and surrounding areas.
These workers would come into contact with disposed materials like masks, gloves and empty bottles of sanitisers, which can endanger their health. If the personnel in the health delivery systems, working as foot soldiers in the frontline of COVID-19 in foreign hospitals are dying trying to safeguard the health of others, what more of exposed and ill-equipped solid waste collectors?
There are also waste pickers who clean pavements and roads in towns and cities, with only masks and gloves, leaving the rest of the body uncovered.
Also with poverty in our midst, enforcing social distancing has been a problem and it brought about confusion with regards the semantics of the term social distancing or is it physical distancing, one wonders.
Linguistically, the context of situation under pragmatics might have gone wrong in the first place. The term that has been adopted by the whole world, an abstract phrase (social-distancing), maybe a result of applied linguistics having gone wrong in the first place. Surely, we cannot use a questionable phrase to achieve positive results.
With the coronavirus in mind, considering our situation as a country, town and city council waste collectors who used not to be efficient and forthcoming before the outbreak of the coronavirus, may never be trusted to do things expeditiously.
If they have been underperforming and not delivering results for all along, now that things have fallen apart and the centre can no longer hold, can they be trusted to deliver positive results?
If the disposal and handling of critical components such as sanitary wear for women and children proved problematic before the coronavirus, what is the situation now when things are upside down?
Those who used to move around picking up plastic bottles and materials for recycling have been ordered to stay indoors; soon these materials can be an eye-sore.
There are also some beerhalls with toilets clogged with human matter while their flushing systems ceased to work some time ago and are without running water, surely who is attending to these broken down facilities now?
Waste collection problems have been there for quite some time and it is now when the responsible authorities should close these gaps.
The bulk of uncollected solid waste is sometimes dumped at undesignated points during the night and burnt.
Burning is a bad, unsustainable practice for the environment as some materials transmit harmful gases into the atmosphere while smoke affects the adjacent neighbourhoods as well as changing the composition of the atmosphere.
Most towns and cities still charge residents for refuse collection, yet no meaningful waste collections takes place most of the times. Civic education with regards to waste management should be introduced so that citizens stay knowledgeable about the health dangers posed by uncollected waste, especially solid and ewaste.
Managing waste is both a human right and an environmentally ethical issue, fundamental enough to enhance human livelihoods and resilience. This would ensure long-term health and safety benefits for communities, especially in developing countries which lack capacity in waste recovery and management systems.
● Peter Makwanya is a climate change communicator. He writes in his personal capacity and can be contacted on: petrovmoyt@gmail.com