THE most significant motive for proper waste management in Zambia and indeed elsewhere is to protect the environment, health and safety of the people.
With fast growing populations and rapid urbanization, yearly waste generation in Zambia is expected to upsurge and craft more defies.
It has been established that people in developing countries like Zambia and especially the urban poor, are more brutally impacted by untenably managed waste.
Our Lusaka City Council is a living example of an authority which has continued to face many challenges in waste manage as people often time dispose waste in unregulated dumps or openly burn waste.
These practices create serious health, safety, and environmental consequences because poorly managed waste serves as a breeding ground for disease trajectories, contributes to global climate change through methane production, and can even promote urban violence in some cases.
It is therefore imperative that those concerned with waste management are exhilarated to do so by building sustainable and livable cities and cities.
Undeniably effective waste management is expensive, often embracing high municipal costs which in Zambia are often unattainable.
We think government and local authorities should come up with capital investments to build or upgrade waste sorting and treatment facilities.
It will also be up to them to close dumps, construct or overhaul landfills, and provide bins, dumpsters, trucks, and transfer stations in sprawling townships.
Zambia should also start to earnestly promote projects that have to do with environmentally sound waste disposal.
This it must do because waste projects also support pliability by lessening waste disposal in waterways and safeguarding infrastructure against flooding which has become a common feature in many parts of Lusaka and others towns in Zambia.
So the inventiveness by our Lafarge Zambia Plc to come up with a pioneering way of managing waste so that the ecosystem is not polluted could not have come at a better time than now.
Lafarge geocycle manager Chabala Chanda says there is need for proper waste management system to manage hazardous waste, which can be a danger to humans and animal species as well as the environment.
He says Lafarge came up with a good waste management system which is able to protect the ecosystems as well as human beings.
He told journalists during a media tour at the company that Lafarge Holcimās waste management business used co-processing as a safe and sustainable solution that could help manage their stakeholders āwastes and meet their environmental goals has been introduced.
Mr Chanda said last year Lafarge Cement group of companies were able to manage about 52 million tonnes of waste worldwide by making sure that there was no waste carelessly dumped that affected the ecosystem.
He explained that co-processing meant they used waste materials that were processed together with raw materials to produce cement.
āIn co-processing there is complete destruction of qualified waste streams leaving no residues to be disposed of,
āGeocycle is contributing to protect water sources it is used to protect the health of the citizens because these chemical once they get in contact with human beings they may be hazardous,ā he said.
Mr Chanda said that using the Geocycle system, offered a solution to human health as well as the environment,
He said for those companies that felt they had materials that were difficult to manage they could get in touch with Lafarge and given disposal solutions.
Mr Chanda said there was need to dispose of waste in a proper manner to avoid its negative impact on environment and people.
While waste management practice appears to be a lost battle in Zambia, there is not shame for our local authorities to try what Lafarge is doing and rid our towns and cities of the dreaded waste.
