FNF Zimbabwe Conducts Waste Management Training Workshop for its Staff and Partners

In commemoration of World Environment Day (5 June 2018) and as an in-house strategy towards mitigation of climate change,  Easy Garbage Start-Up conducted a training workshop for FNF Zimbabwe staff and partners on local and home based waste management strategies. 

Challenges on waste management facing the City of Harare.

• Zimbabwe’s waste management systems have deteriorated, with insignificant upgrades over the past 20 years. 
• Systems have not been developed to meet the growing population. Harare has close to 2 million people and produces 15 000 tones of waste a week and more than two million tones of waste in a year. 40% of the waste is recyclable yet an insignificant quantity is recycled. Our Pomona dump site is now full. The Local Council is struggling to operationalise a new identified dump site.
• Waste is collected arbitrarily, due to inadequate vehicles for ferrying waste, yet each household produces 2.5kg of waste a day.
• Waste management is not a government priority and citizens have not been cultured to segregate waste.
• Local government has failed to educate communities on local and home waste management systems. 

The training adopted a ‘reduce, reuse and recycle’ model. 

What we will do differently to manage and minimise waste.

• Not taking a plastic bag at the till shop and instead bring a carrier bag from home.
• Use plastic water bottles multiple times.
• Avoid using large quantities of bond papers and paper clips instead scan/ email documents and work towards a paperless office. Also reuse printed bond papers for notes. and printing documents for filing.
• Use staple pins as notice board pins.
• Reduce quantity of leftover foods.
• Develop a composite as dump site for organic material.

What we will do with Partners and Others

• Work with ZNCC towards programmes on Business and Climate Change. The ZNCC is an alumni of the IAF Blue Economy programme hence he is quite passionate on waste management programme s for business. 
• Work with Harare City Council on developing an effective waste management system.