EMA urges people to pledge towards zero waste

THE Environmental Management Agency (EMA) is using the ongoing Zimbabwe International Trade Fair to encourage people to their pledge contribution towards zero waste as the country domesticates international conventions.

Zimbabwe is a signatory to a number of international conventions and embraces the signing of the Global Zero Waste Declaration by the First Lady of Zimbabwe Dr Auxillia Mnangagwa who is also the Environment patron in the country.

At the EMA stand, there are exhibitions by some young people showing materials such as brooms and others made from waste material.

EMA environmental education and publicity manager Ms Amkela Sidange said the environmental agency decided to domesticate the ZITF theme to its own circumstances and is therefore exhibiting under the theme: @Eco Innovation, The Catalyst for Industrialisation and Trade.

“We are quite excited as the Environmental Management Agency to be joining the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair of 2024 which is running under the theme: “Innovation: The Catalyst for industrialisation and trade.

“Our motivation being that innovation as it were is not enough if we are to look at sustainability hence our motivation to actually prefix eco, as a catalyst which is a kind of innovation that adopts the tenets of sustainability where we should have innovation that is environmentally safe, sound and socially acceptable and by so doing we know there is sustainability. We are looking at what is obtained in the different spheres,” she said.

Exhibiting at EMA stand is Wezesha, a group of young people from Bulawayo who use waste material to make brooms, and adopted the name Wezesha, a Swahili name meaning empower yourself.

Ms Sidange said they were pressing on the waste aspect to try and show that it’s possible to have a zero waste environment where everything goes back into production.

“We are showing artefacts that are from waste to show how through waste different players have industrialised innovation. There is organic fertiliser from biodegradable waste which does not contaminate the environment and has less pollutants while producing nutritious food and also decarbonising the atmosphere.

“We are really encouraging people to adopt this organic fertiliser. We have players that are recovering waste

matter to produce material that is penetrating the local and international market like the young entrepreneurs making brooms from waste. We are also highlighting the aspect of funding in environmental management as we appreciate the different funding streams.

“We are impressed on how we can leverage on these funding and domestic some conventions as we try to amplify the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification whose thrust is to ensure we reduce land degradation and how communities can benefit from the environment in a sustainable manner,” said Ms Sidange.

“We are trying to amplify the global zero waste movement which as Zimbabwe we recently adopted following the signing of the Global Zero Waste Declaration by the First Lady of Zimbabwe who is also the Environment patron. This is the time to say out loud on how we can achieve zero waste and people who visit our stand should pledge on how they will contribute to zero waste through recovery of scrap material which is then re-purposed.”

Innovations are there to show how communities can sustainably benefit from the environment and natural resources.

Ms Sidange said organisations and business can go paperless and use QR codes to circulate soft copies of their material.