The Sunday Mail
ZIMBABWEANS can do better when it comes to properly disposing of their garbage. The idea of just throwing litter almost anywhere, and sneaking out with a bag and dumping it in any open space, if not collected, is not helpful at all.
Basically, people expect others to clean up after them, not really caring who will do this, so long as they are not bothered. It is unlikely that anyone wants to live in an environment filled with trash, which explains why they do not litter their own house or garden, and get upset if someone dumps waste outside their gate, but basically, they expect someone else to do the clean-up.
It needs a culture change. President Mnangagwa tried, and tried very hard, to initiate this in 2018, starting with public clean-ups on the first Friday of every month. The campaign had multiple purposes.
First, it was to clean up each area, get rid of the litter and the dumped garbage. No single person could clean up a neighbourhood, but if everyone cleaned up areas around their own home or workplace, all the litter would be gone. At the same time, doing this together made it easier, and everyone could look at the litter-free environment and see just how better it was and just how pleasant it was to walk through.
There was also hope of a culture change. Seeing the litter-free environment would, we all hoped, encourage people to keep it that way by not throwing their own litter around. There was a burst of enthusiasm among a fair number of businesses to erect litter bins in the city centre and in and around shopping centres, often with their advertising, to make it easier for people to dispose of their rubbish properly, instead of just dropping it on the street.
The grossly unpleasant task of picking up other people’s litter, and it is exceptionally unpleasant, should have helped generate the culture change, first, by making people think before they dropped garbage and secondly, by making them persuade others not to do so and even asking them to pick it up.
This would not help much with one major source of litter, throwing it out of a car window, leaving it in someone else’s neighbourhood. People do this as they do not want their own car or the kombi they were in to have litter all over the place. So, there was a big group who still expected someone else to get rid of the waste.
And there is the attitude that if a street or carpark or terminus is already covered with litter, then a little more — my empty bottle or my empty takeaway box — will not make much difference. So, we are back at square one. The enthusiasm for monthly clean-ups declined as too many felt it was getting nowhere. Within a few days, the clean area was coated with litter again. Even a lot of those litter bins started rusting away or breaking free of their supports. Again, we were back to square one.
Cabinet discussed this last week, with proposals from the Ministry of Environment, Climate and Wildlife on the table. A major one was to have all local authorities put anti-litter by-laws in place, which some already have, and then start enforcing them.
These by-laws would need some additions, starting with compulsory erection of litter bins and with take-away shops taking the lead and not just outside their own premises, but also taking up a fair percentage of the street bins since they are the prime source of a lot of the garbage. Admittedly, the council would have to send a truck around, perhaps more than once a day, to empty the bins and that leads to the second problem.
Another problem with anti-litter by-laws is enforcement. A couple of times in the past, in colonial times and in the first post-independence decades, when urban councils actually worked, enforcement was difficult because the police had other priorities and municipal police have no authority to stop and fine litterbugs.
The second decision by Cabinet was to make cleaning up outside premises compulsory, whether this was once a month or once a week, or whether it was just to be a continuous programme was not detailed, but the concept was to make everyone responsible for their public space outside their home and workplace.
The third decision was to start the collection and recycling of PET bottles and of plastic. PET, polythene and PVC — the most common plastic litter — are all thermoplastics, which means they can be mangled mechanically and remelted to be the raw material for plastic manufacturers.
This does require setting up the collection system and the industrial plant, since this is only viable when a recycler is using thousands of tonnes at a time, but a new industry is always useful, especially one that reduces imports, creates jobs and reduces the garbage loads.
A litter-free culture is possible. Neighbouring Namibia has one. People just do not throw litter. Tourists are asked by passers-by to pick up even a cigarette butt if they drop it. They tell the visitors: “We do not do that here.”
Namibian drivers keep a bag in their car, and dump it or empty it at home or when they buy fuel, since service stations have big bins, or even at the regularly emptied bins at lay-bys on highways.
Every shop has a bin outside, and garbage is collected frequently.
Singapore created the culture soon after its independence with bins everywhere. They even have ashtrays. Fines like US$100 are imposed if you drop anything.
Hotels warn tourists about this, so there is no imported litter. It worked and these days, there are very few fines collected. Litter-free generations have grown up and the culture is simply not dropping garbage.
Our Environment and Local Government ministries, with police input, need to come up with workable regulations that establish both the infrastructure of bins and frequent collection, and the enforcement of anti-littering by-laws.
Some financing can come from a small levy on every plastic bottle, every plastic bag, every cardboard box and other packaging material. Not much but between them, it should produce the sums required and easy to collect at source.
We should strive to be a litter-free country that protects its environment religiously.
