How Kenya can convert waste into wealth

Waste management in Kenya calls for proper and sustainable planning to create a paradigm shift in conversion of waste into wealth.

There is unproductive solid waste management in most developing countries.

AfDB says challenges of solid waste management, especially in Africa, are averted and complex and range from poor infrastructure, lack of political goodwill, social and economic resources, poor funding, organisation and limited legal and technological knowledge.

To address this issue, there is need for the government to promote sustainable waste management practices. For instance, wastewater can be reused as a response to water scarcity.

The introduction of the circular economy approach will make waste management affordable to almost all income earners, reduce disposal costs, and generate additional revenues from the sale of recyclable materials and compost.

The increase in Kenya’s urban population has reduced the capability of the county governments in towns and cities to manage the solid waste generated, with less than 40 per cent being collected and disposed of at designated open dumpsites.

The challenges are varied.

Much of the waste is poorly managed in that it is not collected, disposal sites are inadequate and the waste is sometimes contaminated with hazardous materials.

This has major impacts on human health, especially for those living near disposal sites.

The inefficient use of the scarce resources reflected in materials discarded and abandoned as waste represents a huge economic and environmental cost borne by society.

Despite efforts to encourage reuse and recycling, the amount of solid waste dumped remains high and is increasing.

Eco-responsibility is one of the major practices that elevate conversion of waste to wealth, which is a contributing factor in conserving environment sustainably.

It is more of a behavioural way of managing waste whereas at the same time, is one of the policies that a government can put in place to curb the alarming rate of waste generation.

This is a way of turning waste into valuable resources; it aims at maintaining public health and sanitation. Waste can be turned into value added product through recycling to produce usable products such as recyclables, biogas, and compost.

It brings economic benefits through energy saving mechanisms as well as bringing down cost of disposing waste.

Reuse is one of the 3R concepts that can play a critical role in environmental sustainable conservation, if applied practically. It prevents pollution caused by reducing the need to harvest new materials thus saves energy and reduces greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global change.

The 3R concept, if well applied, saves land and money that communities must use to dispose of waste landfills. Also, sitting a landfill has become more difficult and more expensive due to environmental regulations.

Waste is a resource and has considerable economic value. Organic waste, which constitutes a large percentage of waste generated, can be converted into compost. Recyclable waste such as paper, plastic, glass and metal (16 per cent of waste) is used by industries for manufacturing new products.

For these waste-to value products, there exists large underserved markets in Kenya.

The market for compost has enormous potential since tropical soils have less soil fertility, texture and organic matter content. Compost improves soils as it increases its capacity to retain nutrients and water; supply nutrients and help suppress soil-borne diseases; and stabilize soil pH-levels.

It is estimated the current demand for compost is in excess of 100,000 tonnes/year and growing. Production of compost in Kenya stands at less than 10,000 tonnes/year. Meanwhile, Kenya imports around 1,500,000 tonnes/year of chemical fertilizer.

The market for recyclable materials is growing, as many raw materials become more expensive. Kenya has one of the biggest manufacturing sectors in sub-Saharan Africa. There are recycling industries for plastic, paper and metal waste. This leads to a strong demand for recyclable materials, as using them lowers production costs.

However, this demand is largely underserved, as industries face the challenge of sourcing clean inputs. Waste pickers do recovery of recyclable waste from mixed waste leading to high contamination. Recycling industries thus incur high cleaning costs, making the recycling of most materials economically unattractive. Consequently, only 10 per cent of potentially recyclable materials are currently recovered for recycling.

The more the waste is composted and recycled, the less waste needs to be disposed of.

This can reduce costs for waste collection and disposal, time losses at dumpsites and distances too often far-away dumpsites. Selling recyclable materials to recycling industries also generates additional revenue in the waste management value chain. This in turn can help reduce the costs of waste collection.

The sorting of waste that happens tends to take place in an unsystematic and unreliable fashion due to lack of sorting centers. Materials recovered for recycling are majorly retrieved after dumping and likely to be contaminated. Only a small fraction is retrieved as well.

Organic waste represents almost two-thirds of waste generated. However, there are few or no companies involved in recycling this waste. This is majorly attributed to lack of clean organic waste due to mixing during collection.

While there are numerous recycling industries in Nairobi for many inorganic waste fractions, there are certain specific fractions that have no matching recycling industries.

To achieve wealth and sustainability in conserving the environment through waste management, the policies that are in place must be strengthened and adhered to the later.

Kenya waste management regulations of 2006 stipulated by NEMA have legal requirements that have been set out to rationalize waste management within the country.

All the stakeholders handling various types of wastes in Kenya have to adhere to these laws and regulations and county governments is not an exception to comply.

The framework has put in place the whole cycle of solid waste management in handling of various categories of waste. The National Solid Waste Management of 2015 stipulated the objective of attaining a Zero waste principle, it also established a common platform where the stakeholders must act to bring about the reforms in waste management.

It also introduces a new approach which looks at waste as an economic asset that can reduce pollution of the environment by being exploited to brig abundance monetary benefits such as employment.