Residents in Chitungwiza have raised fears over the continued open burning of waste by city. With climate change on the rise, burning of waste is likely increase environmental impact.
“The town is always in smoke when the municipal workers are burning litter, not only does it impact climate change but there is no difference amongst the people who smoke and those who do not because we are all forcibly breathing toxic gases,” a concerned resident Simbarashe Garagada voiced.
Research has shown that black carbon emissions from open burning of waste have a climate impact equivalent to 2 – 10% of global CO2Eq emissions.
Chitungwiza municipality has been contributing to the pollution considering that Municipal’s workers have been burning waste in broad daylight instead of transferring to designated dumping sites.
Chi-town public relations officer Mr Lovemore Meya said burning of waste is illegal as all garbage should be dropped at designated places.
“We don’t allow burning of waste, however, due to constrained resources, the cleaners resort to other means of disposing waste, although not allowed. Furthermore, we are going to address such an anomaly to ensure that they do the correct thing,” he said.
Global black carbon CO2Eq emissions from burning of waste are 2-8 times larger when compared to methane (CH4) CO2Eq emissions arising from decomposition of equivalent amounts of combustible biodegradable waste at dumpsites.
Meya Council Garbage Collectors can be relied on even though they mail fail to collect garbage due to fuel shortages.
“We follow our schedule religiously, even though we may delay, but we can never go without collection,” Meya said.
Research by Circular has shown that two billion people globally have no waste collection and the waste of over three billion people is either dumped in undesignated sites or subjected to uncontrolled burning.
