Solid Waste Management and Sustainable Social Transformation

 Thursday, December 06, 2007   

             By Francis W. Nyepon

Liberia has a serious solid waste crisis, with virtually no viable solid waste sector. The country’s approach to waste management has always been arbitrary; often regarded as a nuisance and annoyance by the privileged, but associated with the poor, rural and peri-urban communities. 

Since its founding, Liberia has never had an incinerator or sanitary landfill. Rotten garbage and dangerous wastes contaminates, ground and surface water pollutes the environment; and causes severe public health risk, with negative impact on hygiene, dignity and behavior. The country has always had a serious problem with sanitary environment, waste management, safe water, hygiene, public health and excreta management. For example: using garbage to reclaim swampland ruthlessly affects biodiversity, species and habitat; in addition, burning, open dumping and other methods of waste disposal causes problem such as asthma, other respiratory problems, including providing a effervescent breeding ground for vectors that transmit deadly diseases.

From time immemorial, Liberia has had no comprehensive system to effectively deal with its chronic solid waste challenge. For example, according to a recent United Nations report, municipal workers and scavengers collect less than 20% of the daily refuse generation in the Monrovia Metropolitan Area (MMA). What remains go uncollected and find its way into drains, abandoned buildings, or lies around near byways, public markets and slums, in open dumps, vacant lots and next to riverbanks.

 While municipalities are committed to solving this persistent problem, they lack the resources, manpower, political will and innovation needed to adequately address the problem. Throughout Liberia, especially in the Monrovia Metropolitan Area (MMA), the private sector is locked out of active involvement and participation in the sector. For instance, the Monrovia City Corporation (MCC), the municipal authority responsible for the city’s administration lock out the private sector to ensure sole domination of the sector, from collection and disposal to regulation and enforcement, which could develop and grow the sector including the provision of accountability.  

Poor solid waste management threatens the environment and poses severe public health hazard to the Liberian population. Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) has increased at an alarming rate due to Liberia’s rural-urban migration and rapid population growth caused by 20 years of economic dislocation, conflict and free multi-party democratic elections. Population growth in Monrovia has quadrupled from 250,000 to well over 1.5 million inhabitants during this period along with significant increase in urban sprawl, which have made heavy demands on the environment as more resources are consumed, and large quantities of wastes and sewage are generated.

 According to the UN, over 60 per cent of Monrovia solid waste generation is not collected due to lack of human, financial and material resources. However, many residents argue that the bulk of the city solid waste challenge is due to the lack the political will, vision and innovation. But, unless and until waste management and sanitary environmental services are taken seriously, the problem will remain a severe challenge especially for rural and peri-urban dwellers, with low unemployment, low incomes, poor living conditions, low literacy levels and lack of recreational facilities which de-motivates many from adopting safe hygienic practices.

Today, Sustainable Solid Waste Management (SSWM) and sanitary environment remain the greatest challenge and threat to public health, growth, poverty reduction and social transformation in Liberia. Together, these factors threaten life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They are human rights, which ought to be protected by the law because they stall fundamental liberties and potential human growth. Over 80 percent of Liberians have no organized waste collection service, while less than 10 per cent have municipal water lookup, including municipal sewerage or pour-flush toilets with septic system. 

The majority of Liberians use pit latrines and other unsanitary methods as the only means of excreta management, while children walk barefoot through rotten garbage to makeshift dumpsite that contains hazardous medical waste such as used syringes and bloodied bandages to access a toilet site. For instance, these primitive forms of excreta disposal have created a dangerous unsanitary environment throughout the country, while the lack of efficient facilities continues to contribute to increase diseases, such as gastroenteritis and bilharzias, which cause widespread morbidity. The situation outside Monrovia is more appalling and even distressful because it lowers vitality and productivity while at the same time hampering the government’s IPRS.

It is through this lens that this author view sanitary environment as a baseline platform from which Liberia’s recovery ought to be rooted and strategically leveraged to ignite growth as a prerequisite to social transformation, better living standards and sustainable poverty reduction. For example, Monrovia’s rapid rate of urbanization and population density increase MSW generation to approximately 800 metric tons daily, plus another 200 tons of largely untreated industrial, medical and petrochemical waste due to a lack of pollution control facilities. 

Monrovia’s sewer and piped water system collapsed after 14 years of conflict, and yet to be operational even though a collaborative effort with the World Bank, European Commission, DFID/African Development Bank has been signed to bring a new system on line within a year or two. However, any large sewerage or water infrastructure projects would be too expensive to reach the majority of Liberia’s population base, and it may be impossible to build such a network in the congested, narrow streets of the Metropolitan Monrovia Area. Therefore, this author would suggest that the program emphasis should focus on the provision of adequate waste management, safe drinking water and the construction of effective facilities for excreta disposal as proposed by DUCOR Waste Management, which include options for pour-flush toilets, and residential septic tanks according to needs and priorities.

Due to the lack of regular garbage collection, irregular excreta management and unsafe water supply, most Liberians perform unsafe hygiene practices due to lack of public health education and environmental awareness. Many do not wash their hands before handling food, before eating, after a toilet visit, after household chores such as cleaning and garbage collection. Others do not wash food before eating, especially fruits. Additionally, many men for instance, do not wash their hands after urinating; and they urinate in open spaces (e.g. behind the house, next to cars, near street and alleyways). Furthermore, many of the poor perceive safe hygienic practices as rich people's affair, as authorities reinforce this myth by employing a “One size fits all” approach to social change, which presents a problem because it has no specificity, and does not fit and address local conditions and concern. This lack of adequate resources to provide environmental sanitation and sustainable waste management exposes Liberians to pollution, contamination, deadly disease carrying vectors and public health hazards. For example, having a single toilet for 100 or more students in a school without running water present a challenge; also, the usual distance between household and the toilet site is too long and poses a threat at night to women and girls who might get raped, including children and the elderly. 

To stop the spread of these diseases, effective waste and excreta management practices must be put into use. Innovative policies are needed to replace or refine outdated or non-existent by-laws and policies, which greatly hamper sustainable poverty reduction, growth, and the Government’s Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy (IPRS). For example, the lack of proper environmental sanitation, adequate MSW management, safe water, excreta management, and safe hygiene practices pose enormous challenge to poverty reduction and social transformation; hence growth. There are many makeshift public dumpsites located on the side of roadways and at the fringe of peri-urban communities and slum settlements throughout the Monrovia metropolitan area. Since there are no means for waste containment, trash often spreads into the road, impeding pedestrian and automobile traffic.

Liberia needs a strategic goal to effectively manage its chronic solid waste challenge in order to achieve not less than 80 percent effective management of the volume of municipal solid waste (MSW) generated at all levels of society to ensure environmentally sound management. Strategies, which should be employed to achieve such goal include education and awareness programs, developing collaborative approaches to integrative management of MSW, strengthening existing laws and ensuring compliance, and encouraging enthusiastic local and private sector participation.

The solid waste sector in Liberia needs to be decentralized if it is to have a positive impact on improving living standards of average Liberians. In this way, it would effectively sustain recovery and enhance productivity. This author believes that equitable and environmentally sustainable growth can improve human well being and increase the range of opportunities available to most Liberians, including those who are most disadvantaged or reside in peri-urban communities. This would indeed build capacity, and address issues surrounding the environment, water quality and public health, which would enhance sustainable growth, hygiene, behavior, public health, employment, and economic development. 

For example, DUCOR Waste and Environmental Association, a not-for-profit, non-partisan NGO is building the capacity of the informal sector by providing education, training and careers in environmental health, sanitation, water, excreta and solid waste management services. Additionally, the organization is driving the debate on sanitary waste management as a baseline platform from which poverty can be reduced. By bringing sanitary environmental principles to deal with sustainable poverty reduction, DUCOR is pioneering this approach to deal with sanitary environmental conditions (sanitation, health, safe water, hygiene) as a human right issue.

 Francis Nyepon is managing partner of DUCOR Waste Management in Liberia. He is a policy analyst and vice chair of the Center for Security and Development Studies, and serves on several boards of humanitarian, environmental and human rights organizations in the United States and Liberia. He can be reached at francis.nyepon@Gmail.com