blog week 4

Waste Management: A rising issue in Africa

Challenges

Waste management is a major challenge in developing countries such as
Kenya. This is a particular problem in rapidly growing urban centres like
Nairobi, the capital of Kenya which produces around 1'900 tonnes of waste
per day. Only 33% of this waste is collected for disposal at Nairobi's
only official dumpsite, Dandora. The rest is littered on hundreds of
illegal dumpsites, next to houses or burned eventually resulting in severe
health and environmental problems.
Watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbzBz2XMSbY

Poor waste management practices, in particular, widespread dumping of
waste in water bodies and uncontrolled dumpsites, aggravates the problems
of generally low sanitation levels across Africa. Urbanization is on the
rise in Africa, and this trend is expected to continue in the future. The
inability of waste management to cope with urban growth in Africa (the
highest in the world) at 3.5 per cent annually is of great concern. This
is particularly urgent in slum areas, which constitute a big part of many
of the cities and towns in Africa.

Current approaches by the various stakeholders in waste management are
unsuccessful. The public sector cannot cope with the problem due to poor
planning and lack of finances. The private sector's existing approaches to
waste management are not able to treat waste as a valuable good. The
potential income from recycling and composting is lost. Consequently,
waste collection and disposal becomes unnecessarily expensive, which only
33% of Nairobi's citizens can afford. The Informal sector is unable to
take advantage of the value of waste. Waste pickers on dumpsites are only
able to recover a small fraction of recyclable waste. This is because
waste on dumpsites is mixed waste, i.e. organic waste not separated from
inorganic waste. Consequently, separated recyclable waste is contaminated
and has little economic value.

Innovation: TakaTaka Solutions.

"TakaTaka" is a Swahili word for Waste.
TakaTaka Solutions is a social enterprise that collects and recycles
waste. It aims to bring about social and environmental change through a
commercially viable business approach, in particular:
• Affordable waste collection services to all income areas
• Recycling and composting of up to 85% of collected waste
• Job creation in the informal sector
• A cleaner and healthier environment
TakaTaka solutions will achieve this by reusing as much waste as possible
using state of the art technology, while minimizing transport costs. It
will collect separated waste from its clients, i.e. organic waste
separated from inorganic waste. It will compost the organic waste to
organic fertilizers, which it will sell to Kenyan farmers. TakaTaka
Solutions will recover the recyclable waste (paper, plastic, glass and
metal) from the inorganic waste. The recyclable waste will be sold to
recycling industries. This will leave only 15% of residual waste for final
disposal.
TakaTaka Solutions will use two adapted business models, one for higher
income areas and one for lower income areas. In higher income areas,
TakaTaka Solutions will collect waste from clients and compost the organic
waste at its Composting Facility, while it recovers recyclable waste at
its Recyclable Waste Separation Facility.
In lower income areas, TakaTaka Solutions will partner with youth groups
who will collect waste who will sell the organic waste and the recovered
recyclable waste to TakaTaka Solutions. For this purpose, TakaTaka
Solutions will own and operate decentralized waste processing facilities,
called "TakaTaka Points". As the TakaTaka Points will be situated within
lower income areas, youth groups incur low transport costs. This enables
them to offer affordable waste collection services to the local community
at USD 1/household/month.

Taka Taka Solutions Won 2011 Dell Social Innovation Competition
Caroline Kiriga: blog submission (2) week: 4