Online Reporter
Nomalisa Gumpo and Patience Ndlovu
MAFAKELA Health and Environment Taskforce continues to inspire other community recyclers organisations across the city, as seen by sharing income generating projects at the recent World Environment and Desertification and Drought Day commemorations.
At Chigumira Business Centre in Luveve, where a sorting cage for waste is situated, Environmental Management Agency (EMA) facilitated a discussion among recyclers organisations.
The event brought together community environment clubs including Magwegwe Community Business Organisation (CBO), Queenspark CBO, Mafakela Primary School’s environment club, the Khami district schools inspectors, residents and environmental awareness activists.
Under the theme: “Beat Plastic Pollution” for World Environment Day, communities shared different ways of recycling and re-using plastic.
Speaking at the event, Magwegwe CBO’s representative Ms Sukoluhle Ndlovu said as a CBO, they started as regular vendors. EMA taught them about recycling and they never turned back.
“We decided to start making our own floor polish that we make from fabric softener bottles and sell it for US$2.
“Now, we pay our children’s school fees as well as stock for our stands through recycling and we are on a process to register Gold and Shine as a company,” she said.
Ms Ndlovu said the Bulawayo City Council has showed gratitude to their efforts in keeping the city clean and shared the process of making the floor polish with other CBOs.
Queenspark CBO has two groups including youths and adults.
Ms Mariat Ncube said at the Queenspark hub they don’t have a legal dumping site.
“People dump trash everywhere, so as the CBO we are always alert and ready to attend to such areas,” she said.
She said as a CBO they collect litter and store it at their houses and re-use other materials to make mats, belts and key holders.
“We use bottle rings to make key holders and as a CBO we don’t have a cage as of now, we store our litter in our houses,” she said.
The Mafakela Health and Taskforce CBO leader, Mr Chrispen Ngulube said they drew inspiration from the past water contamination crisis that the community faced, losing a lot of community members.
“We came together as a community to tackle the issue of waste contaminating our water and started with cleaning our business centres and schools.
“With the help of EMA, we expanded and turned to plastic recycling to gain income while also cleaning our environment,
“Most of our membership consists of women, we hope they will copy from other CBOs and do their own projects.
“We hope EMA will soon organise for us to do exchange visits with other communities, to learn other means of generating income from plastic,” said Mr Ngulube.
EMA’s environment education and publicity officer, Miss Kayleen Dube, said the Luveve community stands out in tackling littering menace.
“We always encourage communities to take leadership in terms of environmental stewardship. We appreciate the participation of these different communities, it shows that as a country we can beat plastic pollution,” she said.
Miss Dube said EMA has been conducting training and awareness campaigns across Bulawayo.
“Luveve is one of the communities that really embraced our programme that waste can also be a business,” said Miss Dube.
She said Luveve has become a champion of anti-littering through its community initiative and successfully hosted the World Environment Day and Desertification and Drought Day commemorations, to showcase their involvement in restoring the land and beating plastic pollution.
“They established a community-based organisation that has managed to lead in community clean-up programmes. As a result, we have seen a reduction of some of the illegal dump sites that were a problem.
“These are the initiatives that we want to see across Bulawayo as residents take the lead in environmental health stewardship, to beat the plastic pollution and restore our land,” she said.
EMA revealed they are working closely with schools and communities to impart knowledge on environmental issues.
The overall aim of the event was to raise awareness and make a call for the protection of the environment. The commemorations acted as an affirmation by countries in support of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals on land restoration, desertification and drought resistance.
