Where did the Covid-19 waste in Dar es Salaam go?

Dar es Salaam. By the year 2025, the amount of waste generated from Dar es Salaam could triple to 12,000 tons per day says the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), yet the Covid-19 pandemic may have come with an additional burden to the waste management plans in Tanzania and globally.

A glut of carelessly disposed of single-use facemasks in the city’s busy streets, speaks volumes about the added challenge, as environmental experts in collaboration with government authorities, say they are laying the ground work for early interventions to evert a possible crisis.

On Wednesday this week in Dar es Salaam, hazardous and non-hazardous waste management and recycling players are expected to team up in search for a solution to growing city waste concerns, in general, inspired by the slogan: New-normal to Zero Waste in Landfills.

The Covid-19 waste concerns are set to be addressed in the context of emerging and re- emerging waste management preparedness; in events such as viral pandemic, spills and radio actives, according to deatils obtained from organisers: Tindwa Medical & Health Services (TMHS), Jielimishe Kwanza-Training & Consultancy Company and Human Dignity & Environmental Care Agency (HUDEFO).

Where are the dumped face masks?

But in Dar es Salaam (with a population of over 5 million people), where regional authorities enforced the mandatory wearing of face masks in April as the country recorded over 140 cases of Covid-19, the big question being asked is: Where did all the wasted masks go?

A tour of the streets in the city reveals scattered face masks, bottles of hand sanitizer and other plastic waste that are still visible in trenches along the Sam Nujoma road, further into Mwenge market in Kinondoni District and in many other parts.

While serving as tell-tale signs of how Tanzanians meticulously battled against novel coronavirus, the repulsive waste of the plastics and masks is a major concern for Ms Grace Sam (30), a mobile money agent at Mwenge Suburb.

“Quite often, I have seen city authorities cleaning up face masks and plastic bottles in the streets but until today, they are still scattered in many places. I think there is need for increased public awareness about environmental cleanliness and how to dispose of this waste,’’ says Grace, narrating a scenario that is echoed by most residents across Dar es Salaam.

The dumped face masks are the most evident in the city, as part of the bigger burden of solid waste produced and easily dumped illegally alongside roads and streets, such as the plastic straws, plastic bottles and cups as well as tins and cans, food packaging materials and foil papers.

However, it is estimated that as much as 80 -90 per cent of solid waste generated in urban areas is not collected and most of the domestic waste, which accounts for about 60 per cent of the total solid waste generated daily is disposed by burning or burying illegally.

Growing problem

According to the Waste and Environment Manager of TMHS, Ms Maimuna Salum, the management of hazardous waste in Dar es Salaam and across other urban areas in Tanzania is a growing challenge that requires the joint efforts of environmental experts, policymakers and industry players to tackle.

Being part of the TMHS experts whose company was tasked to handle the Covid-19 waste, Ms Salum says that it was possible to account for and track the waste that was dumped in officially known places in Dar es Salaam, such as quarantine areas at the University of Dar es Salaam Hostels, known as the Magufuli Hostels.

In the quarantine areas, she says, the disposal of the waste involved a series of steps, including: packaging the waste in red and yellow bags, spraying waste bags with chlorine for decontamination, spraying transportation trucks with chlorine before loading the contaminated waste and after offloading waste trucks. She says the trucks were decontaminated with chlorine and disposed through high temperature incineration.

As an environmental management scientist, she says that Covid-19 waste which people have been discarding in open areas and streets, requires wider and multi-stakeholder interventions, further calling for introduction of policy guidelines related to pandemics.

She says, “The main challenge we have faced when dealing with the waste is that, as a country, we don’t have standard guidelines for responding to emerging and re-emerging needs as far as waste management is concerned.”

Going forward, she says, “I think we need standard guidelines that will specify what we have to adhere to in case we are faced with such viral pandemics.”

Since Covid-19 was first reported in China in December last year, several tons of face masks and other forms of Personal Protective Equipment (PPEs) have been dumped into the environment after use.

Surgical masks, which the most widely used protective gear against the novel virus, are single-use, meaning they are disposed of frequently, drawing the attention of conservationists.

Ms Salum believes that if not collected and disposed of appropriately, the dumped masks and other waste could clog drainage systems and lead to flooding during rainy seasons while several tones are likely to end up in the rivers and the ocean or lakes.

Considering that production of surgical masks includes the use of plastics that are non-biodegradable and likely to remain in the environment for a very long time, this remains a huge concern for Tanzania, a country that has been waging war against the use of plastics. For the waste that was could end up in the ocean, there are heightened concerns over disruption of marine life as the World Economic Forum (WEF) estimates that by 2050 “there will be more plastics in the ocean than fish.”

It is estimated that every year, some 13 million metric tonnes of plastics enter the oceans. Currently, around 150 million metric tonnes of plastics circulate in the marine environments.

The World Wildlife Fund says that plastic pollution is projected to double in the next 10 years, and the coronavirus pandemic has made a bad situation worse than fish”.