Let’s deal with waste in an appropriate manner

It goes without saying that dealing with waste should be a priority in any home, community, town and, therefore, country. Improperly disposed of waste comes with many consequences, including pollution of the environment and illnesses.

This is why the government’s “Fort Portal Declaration 2018” campaign codenamed “zero waste” that was launched at the weekend by the State Minister for Local Government, Ms Jennifer Namuyangu, and which this newspaper reported about, is a good step dealing with its waste.

It is curious, however, as to why the campaign was launched in Fort Portal, which boasts of being one of the cleanest towns in the country. One would have thought it best to start with a town whose waste management is wanting so that actual work can be seen and proper bench-marking lessons taken.

It is also curious as to why the project is being spearheaded by a private company, Plawaste Consult Limited, and not by a government organisation. Questions are bound to arise as to how this company was chosen and if there was due diligence done.
However, our focus is on the matter of dealing with waste and its importance to the communities.

Many communities find themselves ill-prepared to deal with waste. In the first place, waste is not separated or categorised, therefore, organic is mixed with inorganic waste. You will find rotten food, peels, paper, medicine bottles and many other things all mixed up.

Secondly, there are no proper places in which to dump different kinds of waste. A few towns or trading centres will have garbage skips. But many of these skips are emptied very few times.

As a result, they fill up with all kinds of rubbish until they are overflowing and residents end up dumping waste on the ground around the skip, causing a terrible stench, not to mention fertile ground for all sorts of dangerous bacteria to grow.

In addition, slum areas do not have enough or even properly constructed latrines to deal with human waste. Those who live there will dump the waste in polythene bags and throw them behind buildings or into streams.

Uganda has only one sanitary engineered landfill, Kiteezi landfill, found in Mpererwe and even then, that landfill receives only 40 per cent of the waste generated in Kampala. It is imperative, therefore, that the “zero-waste” campaign looks at all the chains of dealing with waste in an appropriate manner from providing proper places where people can dump waste, to planning for separation from an early stage, to extinguishing that for which there is no use, in an environmentally friendly manner.