Waste not want not! Dealing with refuse

Oddly enough, aging Senegalese farmer Siam Gueye enjoys strolling along the tracks that meander through the Mbeubeuss rubbish dump, a towering heap of hills of trash about an hour’s drive out of the capital Dakar, that have been tagged a health hazard. “I’m too old to work now, so I come here for walks,” Gueye said, poking his walking stick at the refuse and cans glittering in the sun as fetid smoke wafted from the ground. For 35 years the old man has lived in the toxic shadow of Mbeubeuss, a giant and still-growing 600-hectare site that takes in 1,200 tonnes of household, industrial, chemical and hospital waste per day. According to a 2005 study by Pesticide Action Network (PAN) Africa, the Dakar dump overflows with toxins such as highly polluting chemical PCBs and chlorine. Disfigured city Like other African cities, Dakar has faced massive population growth since its independence in 1960, with the population swelling more than threefold to 2.5 million - a headache for a workable waste management system that can ensure both regular garbage collection and safe disposal. This year, inadequate resources and lack of public awareness about waste management led to a breakdown in garbage collection, leaving city residents with mounds of trash in their front yards, rotting refuse along the beachfront and piles of garbage on empty plots of land. Such problems are common to most West African cities. The African Development Bank has estimated that annually each city produces an average 300,000 tonnes of waste, but that only 40-60 percent is actually collected. In 2005, when unusually heavy rains flooded parts of the city, displacing tens of thousands of people and hampering garbage collection, officials warned of the threat of disease. “For over a year, the garbage wasn’t picked up. You can’t allow this in the rainy season. It can bring mosquitoes and malaria, as well as other sicknesses,” said Fatou-Sakho Diallo, who lives in Dakar’s middle-class Liberté 6 district, where residents tossed trash onto the street when they could no longer bear to have it sitting outside their homes. The United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO), says in its current Waste Management Programme that in urban centres throughout Africa less than half of the solid waste produced is collected, and 95 percent of that amount is not properly disposed of. Typically waste ends up in random dumping sites on the periphery of a city or in empty lots in city centres. Couldn’t keep pace Faced by growing demand for rubbish pick-up and less and less space to dispose of it, the Dakar authorities in 2001 awarded a 25-year contract to an Italian-owned company, AMA-Senegal. It attracted international funds to build a transfer site and a new landfill, and improved conditions for refuse collectors. But continuing urban growth, lack of co-operation from citizens, traffic-clogged streets and the poor condition of the unpaved road to Mbeubeuss proved too much for AMA. By 2005, pick-up had deteriorated badly, said the secretary general of the Dakar garbage collectors’ union, Madani Sy. “Garbage wasn’t being picked up because we didn’t have the proper means, we just didn’t have enough trucks or the right ones,” Sy said. Public anger over AMA’s delays in picking up refuse triggered threats from the government to cancel the contract with the company, and despite pledges from the firm to rectify the situation with new trucks that compact trash, garbage continued to mushroom across town. The trucks never came, said Sy, and some employees walked off the job because they were unpaid.

Horse-driven carts pick up the rubbish for a fee when the city garbage trucks don't come by

Back to the horse-and-buggy garbage-men Faced with the inefficiency of modern-day city waste collection, many residents turned to an older alternative system. Rickety horse-drawn carts driven by entrepreneurial locals picked up the slack of the vacant trucks by riding around wherever there was rubbish and offering to take the garbage away for a fee. “The horse and buggy man comes to the door and makes an estimate of how much it’ll cost to take the garbage. Usually, it’s somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 CFA francs (between US $2 and $4),” Diallo said. Though the horse-drawn carts provided some relief, the impromptu collectors also compounded the city’s refuse problem by leaving their cargo along roadsides or in open fields. Faced with this unsanitary accumulation of trash, the government announced 25 July that it was terminating its contract with AMA-Senegal. “We definitely waited far too long to intervene, we have to take responsibility for that,” Environment Minister Thierno Lo told IRIN. His department now is in charge of garbage collection. “People can see things are moving,” said Lo, whose ministry has given itself a four-month transition period to put in place an agency that will oversee rubbish collection. The Environment Ministry will not only have to ensure regular and efficient waste collection within Dakar, but will also have to deal with the looming ecological disaster at Mbeubeuss. The government of Senegal had pledged to close the site three years ago, but a new site remains unfinished and two deadlines for closure, in 2005 and 2006, have come and gone. Lo told IRIN that AMA had sub-contracted the construction of a new dump site to an Italian construction company, G.I. COS. But this month the firm told the Senegalese authorities that construction of the site had been halted due to unpaid bills. On condition of receiving adequate funding, the site could be built within 40 days, the Italian company said. “As soon as the new site is ready, Mbeubeuss will close,” Lo said.

Rummaging through rubbish to make a living

Scavenging for a living The closure of the giant dump could impact badly however on the lives of people who rely on it for survival, sifting through trash for items to recycle for profit. “I search for anything in aluminium, iron, or bronze, as well as bottles,” said Kalidu Ba, a 38-year-old who has been a scavenger at Mbeubeuss ever since he was 14. Ba has struck deals with truck drivers from private companies to dump their loads in his territory, increasing his odds of finding profitable waste, even if it means digging through what is often chemical waste with his bare hands. But like many of the others who work the dump, he seemed unfazed by the health hazards of the job. “If I could do something else I would,” said Ba, who would not disclose how much he makes but said it was enough to provide for his wife and 11-year-old son. Should Mbeubeuss close, he hopes to move to the new dump, he said. A Canadian organisation is looking at the possibility of training people like Ba to work at the new site, where refuse would be sorted for recycling. “If they offered us jobs we would take them,” Ba said. As to raising public awareness in a country where people openly drop trash in the street, Minister Lo said the key to keeping the city clean would be to drum home the message. His ministry has already placed notices in local newspapers explaining that citizens can face fines or jail time for littering. “It’s very well for people to clean in front of their houses,” said Diallo, referring to the legions of young maids who sweep sand off tiled doorsteps every morning with hand-brooms. “But if you drop your garbage in front of the building across the street, what difference does it make? We all have to play our part.” kd/ccr/ss/vj