Open Letter to GKMA Leaders over ‘gold hidden in garbage’

With a Waste debate slowly being buried in the news pages, I pray we don’t sweep under the carpet this very important opportunity. We should continue to talk about until something good comes out of our garbage!

Dear Mayors and your political class. Town Clerks and your fellow civil servants, why don’t you see Waste for what it is – the gold hidden in the heaps.

What is so difficult about getting actual business projects to convert these wastes into wealth?

I am writing this letter from Kirangira village, in Ggulu ward, Mukono Central Division. We are one of the least polluted villages in this municipalities. In fact, I am proud to report that this village, still with lots of green spaces, has also won several awards for being the cleanest and sanitation complaint villages out of Mukono Municipality’s 79 LCs.

The truth of the matter is – we don’t win these recognitions because we have a proper garbage disposal system. No. actually, it is because we still have garden where homesteads dumb their waste.

How I wish my neighbours and I have better collection and disposal system for our garbage. Like a small company in Ghana partnered with a waste management company in the Netherlands to build wealth from the huge volumes of plastic waste generated in Ghana.

The area was called Cyclus – located in Elmina, a coastal town south of Accra, the country’s capital – collects, processes and recycles waste from households, hotels, restaurants and industries. The end product is supplied to different manufacturers who use it to make jeans, carpets, tennis balls and several other stuff that find their way back to our markets as new products.

In 2021 when Mukono Municipal Council introduced the Polluter Pay Policy, it was a tough moment in the council as most councilors, including yours truly rejected the move. Our argument was – our residents needed to be introduced to this concept.

We imagined that the contractor and council would go for a mode where small collectors would work hand in hand with the main contractor to collect garbage the lowest cost possible. then, people would get familiarized with this concept with time. Unfortunately, the top leadership didn’t head to the call and private collectors were given monopolies to operate uninterrupted, I remember well, for a period of more than five years. And to make matters worse, these contractors don’t bring any fees into the Council’s coffers!

Well, people have got used to pay for their garbage. However, a big chunk of residents prefer to give boda cyclists their garbage which end up into drainages or roadsides, to the annoyance of other city dwellers.

Whereas some people may produce more waste than others, however, the bottom-line is ‘everybody produces it every day in forms of leftover food, dirty water or garbage. Waste remains a part of our lives for as long as we exist.

Imagine, the global recycling market is worth approximately $2.2 trillion (according to a 2022 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development report) and is expected to continue to grow in the coming years.

Right now, every industry, or business, should find solutions to the “green” problem in their area of operation.

It could be in building a circulating plant, producing organic fertilizer, burning waste into Electricity and ash after burning trash are recycled to produce bricks! Yes, we can – President Barack Obama would say.

As this industry will thrive as incomes and spending power of the average Mukono resident continues to rise, and more goods be consumed leading to even more waste.

The amount of garbage generated in Mukono area or ever Greater Kampala is expected to rise and even double in the coming years as Uganda’s economy becomes more prosperous and the size and population of its cities explode.

We are not looking back. We should work towards getting prosperity out of garbage. It is all about the will of our leaders to inspire different players to take interest in the waste industry.

Take for instance these examples:

Garbage keeps growing as our population sizes increases. Just the other day, we saw from our National Census that we are about to hit 50 million!

Uganda has one of the fastest growing populations in the world. On top of that, we are experiencing a rapid economic development and urbanization. Now, we all know that for this growth to be sustainable in a world that has become obsessed with environmental friendliness, intensive waste management is bound to play a huge role in the future.

Thanks to President Museveni, there is also rising levels of disposable income of individuals, companies and others.

As people get better paying jobs or start own value chain, we expect that all things produced within our borders should not be wasted.

In fact, as Ugandans continue to prosper and find better-paying jobs, most people will earn more money with a little extra to spend.

This is exactly the same principle that led to the collapse of the waste landfill in Kiteezi. If we are to improve waste management in Mukono. The solutions are on your village and so on.

The writer is the Deputy RDC Mukono

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