Location - Malawi, Africa

Groups Involved - Stakeholder Groups (for consultations) these include: NGOS, informal waste workers and representatives from municipal authorities. The local community including children from secondary schools were involved so that they can be informed about the importance of recycling and how to effectively dispose of waste. Finally, the scheme was funded by the Scottish Government's International Development Small Grants Programme. WasteAid and Clean-Up Management worked together with waste managers in Malawi to identify the support and capacity building required to effectively store and dispose of waste.

Background Information - The economy, public health and environment in Malawi are increasing in risk from the dangers of poorly managed waste. Malawi’s governance lacks resources, infrastructure and capacity to manage the rising quantities of waste being generated. The poor waste management is leading to the accumulation of waste thus triggering severe social and environmental issues. These problems include heightened flood risk and threats to public health from water-borne or vector-borne diseases. Furthermore, the regularity of burning waste is producing local air pollution thus accelerating climate change. This is also producing public health concerns related to respiratory diseases. There is an expanding network of secondary material buyers and sellers across Malawi, they exchange and sell items using plastic bottles, plastic basins, scrap metal etc. Within rural and -peri- urban communities, waste materials are acknowledged and appreciated to a large extent as they have monetary value. There are a lot of exchanges of materials across Malawi, whilst this maintains a positive relationship with waste resources, the local recycling methods create products with a poor quality.

Aims - The main objective of this study was to determine the barriers faced by community waste managers in Malawi. From this, the project aimed to create a set of recommendations and cost an action plan to help overcome the challenges that the city is facing. This project is aiming to reduce the negative environmental impacts occurring in Malawi such as air pollution by reducing the amount of waste on the streets. Furthermore, the project also aims to assist waste managers in more efficient recycling to increase the quality of products that are currently being produced by recycled products.

Resources Recycled - Organic waste to be recycled efficiently by separating it from other materials, this is used to create compost to help with agriculture.

Social Impacts - Informal waste workers have been receiving knowledge of the health risks associated with waste and access to suitable PPE. Lots of workers have claimed that it was ‘only by God’s grace’ that they have not received any serious injuries yet. Overall, this is help to prevent injuries from waste workers in Malawi and possibly even save lives. In addition, since waste will not be burned it means that the citizens of Malawi are not going to receive respiratory diseases from high levels of pollution, thus saving lives.

Economic Impacts - The higher quality compost that is being created is going to be more suitable for Malawi's agriculture. It may allow Malawi to grow more/higher quality crops which then will result in a higher profitability for farmers.

Environmental Impacts - By encouraging and teaching efficient waste management across Malawi, it is going to reduce levels of air pollution in the city. This therefore can contribute to reducing anthropogenic climate change as less greenhouse gas emissions will be emitted thus reducing the enhanced greenhouse effect.

References - https://wasteaid.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/WasteAid_ICCM_Malawi_Feasibility-Study_EXEC-SUMMARY_Dec20_final.pdf