SELF-CLEANING CITIES
‘Banibela vinyalala vanga, bwana,’ he said, reporting that debilitating crime to the police, rage all over him. Evidently, he was ready to kill for his property. ‘Nili nama suspects, boss. Wina azafelapo apa.’
In nature, there is no such thing as waste. Nothing is lost. Everything is reused. Everything is a resource for everything else.
In nature, nothing is useless. All things have value. Everything matters.
In nature, value doesn’t hinge on scarcity. That is a flawed human construct. In nature, all things have innate value.
Yes dear reader, your faeces, urine and farts all have value. They all constitute an integral pool of universal energy. They all are only varied manifestations of matter. And they all are convertible.
Did you know that the nature and quality of a fart can be measured and be used to tell the health or lack thereof of your gut? You laugh. Go on, laugh. Yes, a fartometre will soon be invented as a diagnostic tool. But then, I digress.
You see, man’s management of waste should mirror nature’s own way. Nature re-uses everything.
It follows then that the understanding or principle that everything is a resource for everything else ought to be the basis of the emergence of all sustainable waste management methods and factories. Earth recycles all things.
Waste, and how it’s managed, is a determinant of health. Health, you see, springs from cleanliness.
In this article, note that the words waste, refuse, rubbish and garbage are used interchangeably.
Waste, dear reader, is a saleable commodity. That today in Zambia generators of waste are made to pay for its collection is wrong.
It is the garbage collectors that should pay the ones from whom they collect it. Owners of garbage should sell their garbage, generate income from it.
This way, a healthy and unbroken cycle of re-use would be created, and through high demand for garbage/waste, self-cleaning cities would emerge. Citizens then would not have to be forced to keep their surroundings clean and healthy. In pursuit of money, all communities would then be without waste.
Demanding payment from owners of garbage/waste for its collection, and eventual processing or dumping, is a form of fraud. For why should a vendor be made to pay to have his goods sold?
In life, dear reader, when one’s behaviour is exemplary, it is wise that others should emulate it. Inspired by this tenet, in the years preceding 2021, I advised President Edgar Chagwa Lungu to learn from the ways of the Swedes in managing waste.
And perhaps as a consequence of this tip, it explains why Mr David Mabumba, Zambia’s then Minister of Energy eventually went to Sweden. He went to investigate and study the Swedes’ waste-to-energy cultural practices.
But then your guess, dear reader, is as good as mine about the outputs of that working visit of his. Besides getting Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s autograph and shopping, I speculate, one wonders what else the minister came back with.
‘This is how a number of countries are doing it and I can assure you that we shall do it as Zambia. I want before the end of this year, to identify at least one big partner to start a waste management plant from which we can generate energy,’ Mr David Mabumba said after his visit to Sweden. That was in January 2018.
Now this is April 2025, nearly a decade later. Still, Zambia does not yet have a sustainable solution for waste management.
Filth, like lies, keeps piling up everywhere every day, almost as if Zambia was in the business of building deception and garbage mountains. The Council, as if high on a psychoactive substance or devoid of brains, clearly stuck within its box, blames it all on lack of fuel for its garbage trucks.
Besides it not being eco-friendly and it being pollution itself, the Council remains unaware that dumping waste is retrogressive and is antithetical to economic vibrancy.
Sweden has no waste of its own. Imagine that. No garbage anywhere. Not even in its government offices. Sweden is clean. Feel free, dear reader, if you pick the joke, to laugh again. Yes, some places have garbage, perhaps empty tins, in key public portfolios.
As a tradable commodity, waste is in high demand in Sweden. And as a consequence, Sweden imports waste from countries such as the United Kingdom and Norway.
Importing vinyalala, just picture that.
It is estimated that, annually, Sweden imports about two million tonnes of waste. This waste is used to make a varied number of profitable products.
Sweden uses this waste to fuel its waste-to-energy plants and to meet its heating and electricity demands. There is no shortage of ZESCO in Sweden.
The recycling and waste management practices of Sweden are said to be so highly efficient that, yes, there now is a shortage of domestic waste in the country. Talk about keeping the environment clean and healthy.
It is said that Sweden generated €1.7 billion (Euros) in 2020 from recycling waste. The highest revenue was €1.98 billion which was recorded in 2016.
Meanwhile, Zambia, a beggar-State, is shedding tears after being ‘slapped on both cheeks’ as Hakainde Hichilema said about USAID and its withdrawal.
Dear reader, note that out of 193 countries of the world, Sweden is ranked 5th on the Human Development Index. With Switzerland and Norway at number one and two respectively, Zambia is languishing near the bottom at number 153. This is where Mr Hakainde Hichilema and I are, near the bottom.
To cast it differently, some annoying and parasitic authorities, the World Bank Group, say that Zambia is the sixth poorest country in the world. But when I spoke to our copper, emeralds, nickel, cobalt, gold and manganese, they all seemed shocked.
You see, at the household level, garbage/waste can be sorted. Mr President, this practice should start in Zambia forthwith. Let’s pilot it . Both kwa-Mandevu and ku-Parklands. See the balance?
Over 20 years ago I was living in Japan. And garbage sorting for me was routine.
Paper on its own, metallic objects on their own, plastic objects on their own, organic waste on its own, just like that, and on and on it should go.
Further, waste can be classified as operative or production waste, household waste, biomass waste and/or agricultural waste.
This suggested way of managing our waste may not be our culture today but culture being in a state of flux, it should be in Zambia’s future. That today we have filthy cities, that we are stuck with our waste, is only a reliable reflection of our poor quality as a people.
You see, poor grade people produce poor grade cities. You can tell the level of enlightenment of a people or lack thereof by their character. That Zambians are still of primitive stock and require a cultural upgrade is an argument beyond contest.
In pursuit of a self-cleaning capital city, in 2018, the bull’s eye in my crosshairs, I further suggested to the then mayor of the city of Lusaka Mr Miles Sampa that the city should pilot in some wards a change in the economic framework of waste management. My suggestion was that collectors should start paying owners of garbage for their sorted waste.
My argument was that it was a win-win business model and management fixture for all concerned in the waste management chain.
For example, the collector buys the metallic or plastic cans or bottles, he then sells to the can or bottle-making recycling plant, which then sells its bottles or cans to the bottlers of various drinks or liquids, who then pass on their cost to the end-user, the generator of the waste in the first place.
I illustrated that, along the chain, as a viable economic policy, jobs would then be created and everyone would generate income, and the government would then pick up tax at each stage of the commercial cycle. The tax base would indeed then broaden.
But then, as is usual in these backwater parts, nothing happened. However, I am aware that God being God, He didn’t say just how many times we should knock before the door opens.
Even at the risk of bruising my knuckles, I will keep knocking, like I am doing again just now. You see, I even still retain templates showing how waste can be used to generate electricity. Perhaps I should now knock quicker and harder, or just slap someone into a state of wakefulness. But then the thought of hell causes me to keep my hands to myself.
You see, dear reader, there is no shortage of electricity in nature. What the challenge is, which can be overcome, is ignorance.
In addition, there is no energy crisis in the Universe. There is only an adaptation challenge, our inability to read the environment correctly and respond appropriately to it.
Dear reader, what makes life worth living is the pursuit of light, the search for knowledge. God wants us refined, pure, devoid of darkness, so that we can accurately reflect Him.
Though He gave man the capacity for its acquisition in full, what God did was to hide knowledge in plain sight. Everywhere one looks there is knowledge.
He wants us to seek and find it, and when found, to use it as intended. This then is the purpose of man. And God runs a reward scheme for the seekers. The more we know the closer we get to the beings we were meant to be.
Founded on the Waste-to-Energy principle, why Zambia has not yet invested in district-based off-grid power stations to generate electricity, and at the same time create jobs, generate more revenue, and also keep communities clean and healthy, is a phenomenon that boggles the mind. Perhaps if apes were in charge, they might have done better.
For example, according to ALEA, a Vienna-based company, a 5 Megawatt (MW) plant would require 18, 500 tonnes of waste per year. This would generate 8, 000 MWh of electricity enough to power 3, 600 households. A 10MW plant would require 37, 000 tonnes of waste per year and would generate 17, 000MWh enough electricity for about 24, 000 households. And a 20MW plant would require 75, 000 tonnes of waste and would generate 35, 000 MWh enough electricity for over 50, 000 households.
Now, out of the 116 districts that we have, wouldn’t a pilot of these plants in five carefully selected districts be wise or the required national developmental step?
This then, dear reader, is a modern and eco-friendly way of managing people. Such a game-changing approach to waste management would ensure disease-free cities, a clean and healthy environment, job creation, income generation for all, energy sufficiency and prosperous economies for concerned locations.
Representing a healthy supply side of the market, note that Lusaka city alone generates about one million tonnes of waste annually.
Dear reader, there is an irrefutable linkage between disease and waste management, between culture and human prosperity. The understanding of these linkages and judicious utilisation of knowledge thus attained is what is called civilisation, and it is what explains human development and wellbeing.
Dumping waste is dumping wealth. Dump sites are anachronistic, an obsolete and uninformed way of living.
All underdevelopment is traceable to backwardness. Fortunately, backwardness isn’t a permanent state of being.
With innate curiosity, the deliberate pursuit of light and time, backwardness goes away. Irritatingly, the face of backwardness looks like that of Zambia today.
We may be savages today, but in accordance with human evolution, nature dictates that savages we shall not remain. The refinement of man is God’s own project. Absolute enlightenment is the endpoint of all human exertion and endeavours. Time is on our side.
That today you are what you are, and you are where you are, dear reader, is a function of both nature and nurture. Assuming that your nature is impeccable, without flaws, it is then in your hands, dear reader, to nurture yourself and your offspring well, in accordance with original symmetry, the dictates of the purpose of your design.
You see, monkeys are doing very well at being monkeys. People, on the other hand, seem to have issues with being people.
Though it is rare amongst animals, deviant behaviour is strangely all too common amongst people. The case for being different is a convincing one but the claim by man to superiority over animals only betrays our existential arrogance.
You see, dear reader, those that refer to us as banthu bakuda do not refer to the colour of our skin, they refer to the darkness in our minds. We are a people still in the dark.
What is consoling though is that we are phototropic beings, we seek light. Our light-seeking nature is the reason that our redemption is inevitable.
So, then as I conclude, and to put it in a tongue-twisting way, note that anyone who tells you that rubbish is rubbish is rubbish. He or she is only a being devoid of light.
I look forward to the day when Zambia will have garbage thieves, garbage tax, the day when our perception of waste will change, the day when faeces and urine will be viewed as money, the day when Zambians will see all things as energy, view all things as convertible entities.
Dear reader, if you can think it, then it is. Knowledge is omnipresent. And all knowledge is discoverable.
And life, really is what you make it.
Godspeed!
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