A way with waste
Most people pick their path through roadside rubbish with a certain degree of distaste. Some may feel city authorities should do a better job of clearing away the waste. Few would have the foresight to see that the unwanted vegetable waste that piles up around market places and even in people's back yards has the potential to enrich impoverished soil. Nor would many recognize that, in the waste at their feet, lies the opportunity to create wealth. Recycling rubbish may not be to everyone's taste but, as one scheme in Nairobi has shown, urban gardeners and vegetable producers need and value the soil restoring properties of the end product. Recycling also helps to clean the environment, and provide income and employment. To do the job well, however, and produce a safe compost of acceptable quality, good management and resolve in the face of scepticism and disbelief are essential. This is the story of a man who believes passionately in recycling. He recognized a demand, saw a means of meeting it and set about putting the two together - a true entrepreneur.
Andrew
Macharia spent his working life driving a lorry for a Kenyan brewery.
When he retired, he grew vegetables on his piece of land near Mount Kenya
and he made compost for his own use. His friends, family and neighbours
were so impressed with the results that they also wanted compost and were
prepared to pay for it. He quickly found he needed more raw organic material
than he could acquire from his own land or nearby. He remembered the huge
quantities of organic waste that littered the roadsides of Nairobi and
wondered whether here was an opportunity just waiting to be exploited.
He set up a community organization- Nairobi City Garbage Recyclers - in
the poor, eastern estates area of Nairobi and, with some difficulty, persuaded
the city authorities to make available a small plot of land on which to
collect waste from the surrounding area and turn it into garden compost.
The city authorities had stopped waste collection services some five years
previously in order to save the considerable costs of fuel and labour.
Since then people have had nowhere to put their rubbish and it accumulates
in unhealthy and unsightly heaps. After some incredulity that anyone could
possibly want what they considered worthless, people gradually started
taking their rubbish to the recycling plot.
There a team of young, previously unemployed youths, sort the organic from the inorganic waste, turning the former into compost. It is then put into bags and sold to urban farmers, and to the city authorities for municipal tree planting, for example. It is also being sold to farmers in rural areas thereby helping to return the nutrients that usually make only a one-way journey into town.
Quality control
Unlike a factory product, compost made from household and market waste
cannot, by its nature, be totally standardized. This has to be accepted
by the buyer and is, of course, reflected in the price. Nairobi City Garbage
Recyclers has, however, been working with the University of Nairobi's
Department of Agriculture to ensure that the compost does meet certain
standards including those of safety and nutrient content. The composting
method takes the soil temperature to 80°C at which most pathogens,
and eggs of enteric worms for example, are killed. Analysis of compost
samples reveals satisfactory levels of nitrogen and phosphorus, the two
nutrients that are most likely to be deficient in urban soils. Many urban
soils are also very low in carbon and recycled organic waste helps to
restore carbon to the soil. Heavy metals are a common problem with recycled
materials but batteries, the main source are removed before composting
together with all plastics, metals and other inorganic materials, and
so present no problems in the finished product.
Twice the use
Huge quantities of cardboard are also collected on the site and this,
with charcoal dust, is compressed into fuel briquettes that are sold very
cheaply to people in the poor neighbourhood. These burn more cleanly and
more efficiently than charcoal alone and, as Andrew Macharia points out,
why not get a second use out of the cardboard and save cutting more firewood
from the bush? Thin plastic sheeting, which seems to form such a high
proportion of today's waste, is washed, cut into small pieces and stuffed
into sacking for sale, at a very low price, as pillows and mattresses
to those who would otherwise be unable to afford any form of bedding.
The scheme has proved so successful that it is being taken up elsewhere and a training room has been built on the recycling plot to train others in the basic principles. And, as testament to the quality of the compost, a variety of vegetables and fruit are grown on the plot which also houses rabbits - efficient recyclers in their own right. There has been much international interest in the enterprise and Andrew Macharia has travelled widely to further the cause of recycling which brings so many benefits to so many people. It should be a lesson to us all.
