Garbage and Waste

Unlike in Canada and Korea, there does not appear to be any government run garbage collect here in Morogoro (and from what I’ve heard from our friends there, not in Zanzibar either). In my house, we put our garbage in bags outside near the front of the house. I’m not sure exactly what happens to them afterwards, but it is not uncommon to see garbage burning as I walk down the street. There are piles of ashes everywhere to show these spots long after the fires are out.

The garbage that does not get burned up, just finds it’s way to the side of the road. There is a huge litter problem here and there are some places where there are just mounds and mounds of garbage. Also, I frequently see people just dropping their garbage on the ground. To be fair, it’s probably no different from back home, except we just put the garbage somewhere where we can’t see it. Here it’s on display.

For the most part, there doesn’t seem to be recycling either. The only thing that I’ve seen is that the pop bottles (called soda bottles here) are collected when they are empty. In some places you can return a small number of them (I think it’s 3) to get a new pop. Plastic bottles are reused by many families to store bath water, oil and other food items as well – and I’ve also seen children make toy cars out of the small bottles.

Another thing I have not seen here (though I have been told in some places it is done) is composting. I am actually pretty surprised that a lot of the food waste gets burned along with the rest of the trash. It seems like a potential money maker and a good way to help increase soil productivity (which is what I was told about – that some people collect the food waste and sell the dirt afterwards). My only thought would be that a compost pile here would attract a lot of pests (though for a compost pile, that’s not necessarily a bad thing). Perhaps that is something to consider (maybe I should talk to my family about that…) for here.