Turning trash into treasure

Rubbish dumps in Zambia's northern mining town, Ndola, are becoming a vital source of income for the city's unemployed youths. Once the commercial pillar of the country's Copperbelt Region, the city has been dubbed a 'ghost town' since the decline of the copper industry. The ensuing loss of jobs has made it increasingly difficult for the local population. Faced with dwindling employment opportunities, John Mumba from Ndola's sprawling township, Nkwazi, seized the opportunity to earn an income from local garbage disposal sites. Once referred to as 'bamaselebende,' a derogatory term in the local Bemba language for people who pick from rubbish pits, the youths are no longer ashamed of the activity, given the potential income. "Those rubbish pits are gold mines - the plank you throw away is money," Mumba told IRIN. He makes toy bicycles from recycled wire, rags, old plastic bags, cotton wool and twine bags salvaged from the garbage dumps. Ken Chipaila, another resident of Nkwazi, has started a flourishing business making 'bed chains', used to support the mattress, by recycling material from the rubbish pits. Initially, Chipaila used a pliers to produce the interlinked chains and secure them to the bed frame, but he has since constructed a machine which manufactures them at a faster rate to meet the increasing demand. "You can find a lot of materials from rubbish pits - even this chain-maker was made using materials from rubbish pits," he said. "By 11 am we make about 100 bed-chains, which we sell at K2,500 each (about US 50 cents)." The current efforts by the city's youth are part of a pilot project by Ndola City Council and UN-HABITAT that promotes the development of small businesses using recycled waste. Solid waste management has been one of the council's most vexing challenges, with efforts to adequately dispose of the city's garbage hampered by the lack of resources. Ndola City Council director of public health, Patrick Katoti, told IRIN that of the 15 refuse trucks required, just one dilapidated vehicle was operational. He pointed out that the council also needed a bulldozer to compact the garbage at dumpsites, and a front-loader for scooping it up the garbage and loading it onto the refuse truck. Failure to properly dispose of the garbage has led to environmental degradation, pollution of the ground water and seasonal disease outbreaks associated with poor sanitation, such as cholera, dysentery and typhoid. At a local level, the pilot project focuses on developing waste management systems, including waste minimisation, recycling and the development of micro-enterprises linking income generation to environmental protection. One of the ways to ensure that communities living in peri-urban areas are serviced is to place skips at pilot sites, which will then be collected and transferred to the disposal dump. Communities in these pilot areas will be required to pay a nominal user fee.