Municipal Solid Wastes Management: The Monrovia approach

You could walk a meter or two in every community in Monrovia and probably come across street peddlers offering some snacks or fries. Honestly, it takes vivacious boldness to avoid the attempts .if you fell to those savoring and eatable aroma of delicious meals especially if you were to be served or offered to take away, they are carefully wrapped in papers, plastics or some sort of deposable (not necessarily degradable} materials.

Most times, our attention to details is placed on the food than what becomes of the deposed materials. Hence, as it turns out with what and how we treat our wastes in our homes and communities.

For a city like Monrovia, the largest city in Liberia with a population of 930,522 persons according to World Population Review or in some other reports placed the population over a million persons, solid wastes generation and disposal have become a nightmare for the people and local authorities. Before we introduce the Monrovia approach, let’s provide some insight.

Truly, what is Municipal Solid Wastes? Generally, it refers to the garbage such as the newspapers, plastics, clothes, bottles, food scraps, paints, batteries, old furniture even cut grasses from your yards and so on, coming from our communities and homes.

On a larger scale, Municipal Solid Waste most often concerns us if it poses a direct public hazardous threat to our individual person or collective persons otherwise it is just another trash to be rid of without concerning ourselves with what’s next. 

It’s reported, at least an individual generates 4.40 pounds of wastes every day in society like the US but 1.51 pounds is processed thru composting or recycled according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. However, much can’t be said of a developing country like Liberia. We have no mechanism in place to track how much of wastes an individual generates or disposes of in a day, nevertheless United Nations has informed that in the sub-Sahara region, organic wastes (food wastes) accounts for 37 percent, imagine how much food people living under almost 2.50 cent a day waste while plastics and paper account for 22 percent combined. Metal and glass provide 8 percent respectively and other related wastes, 13 percent.

Moreover, we do know that World Bank standards of daily waste generation should be 0.74 kilograms per person per day and this was in 2016 with an increase of 70 percent on the total world waste generation by 2050.

With the revealing stats and approaches on how the US tracks and manages its MSW, it gives you a clearer picture on how far we are on Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) management particularly in Monrovia.

Conversely, according to the most recent tonnage data by World Bank, the waste collection rate in the city of Monrovia was approximately 800 tons of domestic solid waste per day, representing nearly 45 percent of the total waste generated in the city. Therefore, you can safely calculate that Monrovians generate approximately 24,800 tons every month from domestic solid waste (DSW) respectively.

Obviously, this has created a daunting task for the Monrovia City Corporation (MCC). Unlike the US and other countries where recycling and composting (a form of waste disposal where organic wastes decompose naturally under oxygen-rich condition and is used as fertilizers) are used by residents to reduce MSW or DSW, Residents in Monrovia aren’t sophisticated enough to apply those remediation methods, therefore, garbage site or dump piles remains the one of the only public options. In some parts, the traditional method of burning (infuse greenhouse gases GHG) or burying (discharge of leachate in groundwater and surface water runoffs) wastes which is more harmful to the environment are still practiced.

Over the years, the MCC has raised awareness on some fronts on how residents dispose of domestic solid waste (DSW). MCC has in effect, practices two methods of waste collection; the Primary Waste Collection which involves door-to-door waste collection and communal storage in public dumpters or skip buckets in other areas thru its implementing partners and the Secondary Waste Collection services, which involve a long haul from skip buckets to transfer stations and final disposal at a sanitary landfill.

There are seemingly challenges in handling the wastes as the residents’ ill-informed knowledge of waste disposal have left to the poor practice of mixed wastes. This in itself poses more complications to the waste management and environment.

Municipal Solid Wastes as well as domestic solid wastes inflicts serious health and atmospheric challenges to our environment. From the common stench (air pollution associated with respiratory problems), to the vectors (rodents, bats, cockroaches, mosquitos), water borne diseases (diarrhea, cholera) and carbon emission (global warming), are all adverse effects of MSW.

Albeit, there isn’t any clear available information on how much of the MSW is properly disposed of from in and around the collection points in Monrovia, though the 800 tons per day may be a result of taking stock at the only landfill, however, there are two transfer stations (Stockton and Fiamah) and one hundred and twenty communal disposal locations spread across the greater Monrovia area, and one sanitary landfill in whein town. Though the whein town landfill will soon be replaced by a new landfill in Cheesemanburg as the landfill will reach its maximum capacity in two year (World Bank, 2019, Liberia, Gov Constraints to service Delivery, Solid Waste Management).

A city with such size and daily waste generation to one landfill just as much tells you how much work is done at any given day.

Clearly, the Monrovia City Corporation (MCC) has its own constraints just as the residents’ inability to understand the threat associated with wastes in any form. Notwithstanding, like the MCC, the Environmental Protection Agency of Liberia, the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare thru its division of Environment and Occupational health, the Ministry of Mines and Energy and the Ministry of Public Works are all principle stakeholders in the maintenance of public health and environmental protection.

What becomes of our human activities (solid wastes) and its adverse effects on the environment especially in Monrovia is depended on the responses from those aligned institutions in the LACK OR PROVISION of proper systematic and informative actions.