Africa’s solid waste is growing as population booms, posing a climate threat.
No one would envy a life of scavenging in Kenya’s biggest landfill, but Daniel Kiarie says he would never leave it.
Birds circle overhead and dogs scuffle as the 35-year-old moves through the filth of Nairobi, intent on useful finds. Ground-up garbage, from used hospital needles to battered toys, crunches under his feet. Thirty pungent acres stretch out before him at the center of the city’s poorest slums.
“This is like any other job,” Kiarie said. “I would not leave it for a cozy office.” In blue overalls, he oversees a hill of plastics he has salvaged to sell to recycling companies. “And I am not mad.”
As the world meets again to tackle the growing threat of climate change, Africa expects to suffer the most from rising temperatures. And it is least equipped to fight back.
How the continent will tackle the solid waste produced by its more than 1.2 billion residents, many of them eager consumers in growing economies, is a major question for environmentalists and governments alike.
Most African countries lack the resources needed to process the growing amount of solid waste, said Maria Leonor Sales, a consultant with the African Development Bank. Nearly 20 of the world’s 50 biggest dumpsites are on the continent, according to Waste Atlas.
On top of that, Africa is now a dumping ground for waste from other, often developed, countries, U. N. Environment pointed out in a report earlier this year.
