In response to the increasing amount of waste associated with the growing population of Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, the Nairobi Metropolitan Services (NMS) has launched an initiative to improve sanitation in the county.
Soon the Kenyan capital Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, could be rid of its waste. The Nairobi Metropolitan Services (NMS) has recently launched a sanitation programme in the county.
The initiative is based on monthly clean-up sessions. These will be held in all 17 sub-counties of Nairobi. Mohammed Badi, the Managing Director of NMS says the aim of the programme is to create a healthy environment where all Nairobians will feel comfortable. With an estimated population of about 5 million people, Nairobi County produces nearly 2,500 tonnes of waste per day.
In order to facilitate the cleaning of Nairobi’s streets, the NMS plans to build waste storage stations in all 17 sub-counties of the capital of this East African country. The waste collected will be sorted and categorized at these facilities.
“We intend to go even further by putting in place measures that would promote the distribution of waste at the household level. The idea is to empower every resident of Nairobi County,” says Mohammed Badi, the NMS’s managing director.
The Nairobi County Sanitation Project comes at a time when Kenya is in the process of abandoning its anti-plastic policy, one of the strictest in the world, which has been in force since 2017. The country started negotiations in July 2020 with the United States of America (USA) for a new free trade agreement, which will make Kenya the plastic waste dump for the USA (500 million tonnes of waste per year). To express their dissatisfaction, environmental NGOs recently launched an internet petition to prevent the success of a project that they believe would further drown Kenya in rubbish.
Inès Magoum
