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Almost four years ago President Mnangagwa launched a national anti-litter campaign, and next week we will be seeing the 44th monthly clean up, a regular event meant to focus minds of Zimbabweans as well as get the worst of the litter collected.
The saddest thing is that what most people should be doing between the clean-up events, basically not throwing their rubbish around, is simply not happening and in many cases the back-up that is required, public litter bins and regular collection of garbage, is not happening.
It is a great example that the President himself should put on his overalls and get stuck in, but the campaign was not supposed to be a permanent monthly clean up and instead was supposed to focus attention on the need for Zimbabwe to move to a littler-free society. By going out and actually looking for rubbish was supposed to get people thinking how we could avoid it in the first place.
And when you have picked up some pretty disgusting garbage from the streets and open spaces near your home, you are supposed to be very reluctant to throw your own on the pile, sort of vaccinated against being a litter bug.
This is not impossible. In our own region Namibians are fairly fanatical about binning litter, rather than dropping it on the street or throwing it out of a car window, and their towns, cities and highways show this. There is no litter and any visitor who thinks of even dropping a matchstick gets a sharp reminder that this sort of thing is totally unacceptable.
Singapore went from the standard old-fashioned Asian city where litter was common to one of the cleanest large cities in the world through a combination of rules, enforcement through fining and the provision of all the required bins and other facilities so there were no excuses.
When President Mnangagwa launched the Zimbabwean campaign there was the start of a good response. Many companies saw the point and put up public litter bins along city centre streets and in suburban shopping centres. One favourite was a well designed and neat bin made from a half a 200 litre drum mounted on gimbals attached to a frame.
A few years later most of those have gone. Some were vandalised, but many simply corroded and fell down and have yet to be replaced. The willingness to do something has evaporated. At the same time some city councils, and Harare’s is a prime example, have allowed their garbage collection fleets to rust away as well so garbage is collected very infrequently and irregularly.
In the 10 days to the next monthly drive next week, it might be a good idea if a lot more people and businesses started thinking very hard what they, each and every one, need to do to make the monthly clean up unnecessary sooner rather than later.
Those businesses whose public bins have collapsed can replace. With the basic frames still there the cost cannot be high. Those who have never bothered to provide any sort of public bin can start thinking about what sort they want to provide.
City and town councils can start providing their own bins, especially in public areas like parks and along some streets. They can sell the advertising to recoup some of the costs and can even invite businesses to erect bins with suitable logos emblazoned on the side. And then they can empty these daily and collect all the other garbage on the days they have told householders they will collect.
If the metal public litter bins, which were a significant improvement on what was there once before, largely a sort of metal basket, are too vulnerable to vandalism and corrosion we have enough smart people in Zimbabwe to come up with something better. It is unlikely there has been much research on this, but one person could surely be assigned to look for suitable materials and designs at low cost.
We should not underestimate the need for a lot of public bins. Going back to the success stories of Singapore and Namibia these were the foundation of their anti-litter drives. Anyone who takes a walk anywhere in Singapore will find a litter bin very easily; there is one on every street lightpost, and they even have a little ashtray built in so a smoker can stub out the butt before dropping it in.
In any Namibian town or city almost every shopkeeper has one or more of those large trolley bins just outside the door, and the local council collects the contents every day, usually for free so that the shopkeeper is not charged for providing a public service.
The Namibian Transport Ministry even has high-quality bins at the frequent lay-by stops along the highways and sends a regular garbage truck down each one frequently to empty those bins. Namibians never have an excuse to drop litter.
In some countries all drink containers, whether glass, metal or plastic, have a small extra charge added and the manufacturers have to have facilities to buy these back. Those who drink do not often return but specialised bins or school drives or even just poor people collecting bring most of them in.
We can also legislate over take-away materials. We banned expanded polystyrene on health grounds, but many take-aways simply replaced these with the less risky PET plastics. The bulk is less, admittedly, but those plastic containers can take years to rot. Even the cardboard and paper used by some are unsightly at the road side and take a while to rot, especially when coated in the oil or sauce of the contents.
But basically the lifetime of the containers should not matter, if they are thrown away properly and the bins are there and are emptied regularly. Even motorists who like to eat take-aways or fruit in their cars can recycle one of those very cheap plastic carry bags supermarkets use and keep it in the car as a suitable bin and dump it when they get home in their own bin.
What is required is the triple action. First we get people to throw away their litter properly, even if they have to carry it a bit. Secondly we have the bins for them to throw it away.
And thirdly we ensure those bins are kept in good repair and are emptied whenever they fill.
We need the monthly campaigns, and we need to involve more people. But at the same time we need to take stock when we go out to clean up other people’s mess in our neighbourhoods and work out how we can stop those other people making the mess in the first place.
Online Reporter