'No Better Solution to Garbage Handling Yet'

Cities Alliance Program Manager, Francisco Mariano Juarez Lopez, says waste dumped at the landfills without separating the plastic, paper, and glass, is creating Greenhouse Gas Emissions in the atmosphere. 

He said sorting is key to garbage management, but it loses weight when the organic and inorganic fractions are mixed with no technology or step to treating them when it gets to the landfill.

Monrovia and its are faced with perennial garbage challenges with municipal governments struggling to deal with the situation. Many people are not knowledgeable about waste management. Much of the waste generated is not sorted. 

Lopez added, "You need technicians that can treat and manage the solid waste facilities, a  composting plan, and how we are going to treat specifically the glass, plastic, and paper, should it be recycled to create more papers?"

Cities Alliance is a program that provides long-term, programmatic support to help Liberia realizes developmental objectives in a way that benefits the majority of urban poor.

In 2018, with funding from the  European Union, Cities Alliance launched a project on primary waste collection and innovative waste-to-energy initiatives that is gear towards reducing the amount of organic fraction from solid waste that reaches the landfill.

The project, aimed at “Delivering Climate-Resilient Solid Waste Management Services in Greater Monrovia", Cities Alliance will cooperate with waste management actors in Monrovia and Paynesville that are engaged in waste management. "We are strengthening the existing structures,” Says  Senjovu Andrew, Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist.

He said the CBEs and SMEs do not have the capacity, tools, and equipment to go about collecting waste in Monrovia, and that is why they have launched a micro-loan scheme for them to be empowered.

According to Andrew, the project has four components which include the multiplicity of CBEs that are working in the areas of recycling and composting because most of the waste goes to the landfill without being recycled; the establishment of a micro-loan for CBEs, capacity building for both government workers and other waste management actors.

"When you look at the CBEs, they don't have any source of funding coming from the government, private institutions, or donors. They are private individuals carrying their waste on wheelbarrows or push-push and it becomes very hard for them to collect huge quantities of waste that come from the communities.", He says.

Plastics take many years to decompose.  In addition, toxic substances are released into the soil when plastic bags perish under sunlight, and if they are burned, they also release toxic substances into the air causing ambient air pollution.

Also, chemicals used in the production of plastics are toxic and dangerous to the human body.

According to research, plastics are made of chemicals like lead, cadmium, and mercury which can harm the human body. These toxins can cause cancers, congenital disabilities, immune system problems in childhood development.

To reduce this risk to human health, Cities Alliance has produced a fabric bag that is identical to plastic bags and will be distributed to residents.

“We have bags that we give to community members free of charge. Instead of going to the market to give you 20 plastic, we say no. We can give you this bag and it can be reused for a long period. I want to reduce the pads of plastic that people carry home which ends up in landfills without being sorted.”

For the danger plastic causes, many African Countries have passed laws against the use of plastic.  For instance, in Rwanda, travelers are banned from carrying plastic in that East African Country.  In Kenya, the person who handles plastic there receives not less than US$4,000 or a jail sentence for some years.