Site Visits!

The last four days have been busy and informative. My counterparts have continued to bring me to visit waste producers, processors, and collectors to consult on their operations, challenges, and goals.

Monday morning we visited a recycling processing business that purchases hard plastics, grinds the material, and melts and molds it to produce kitchen goods such as bowls and containers, as well as toys. The material collected is sorted by color in order to make various colored products. This is a new company and still has some issues. They plan to expand the business to manufacture irrigation pipes, sewage pipes, and crates. This company is located in an industrial warehouse area where each company rents its space. The space next door had rice husks scattered around on the ground. When we commented on this, they informed us that this space had machines to produce charcoal out of rice husks! We were very excited to hear this, considering the challenge of the rice husk byproduct, so we called the number posted to set up an appointment.

before

after

Next we visited the city landfill. The city has a new, modern landfill which was financed by the World Bank Tanzania Strategic Cities Project (TSCP). They have historically been dumping the waste in the open and burning it to keep it contained. The day we arrived they were just beginning to use the new landfill. The landfill has complex equipment including a compactor, excavator, etc., and the staff members have all been trained in the operations. In this region engineered landfills are rare so it was good to see one here that is beginning operations. Challenges still exist, such as the high operating cost for the equipment.

We then went back to the business where the charcoal was being produced from rice husks, which was very interesting. The machines grind the rice husks into a powder which is then compacted and heated to create charcoal briquettes to be used in stoves instead of traditional charcoal. They are producing briquettes and selling them locally, however, the capacity the machines is very small compared to the quantity of rice husks in the area. It could be difficult to expand this production since the machines are expensive and the demand for the product is not currently very high. However, it was exciting to see the potential. The two machines they had were donated by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). As a side note, when I was in Peace Corps, I met some JICA volunteers; they have a volunteer program that is somewhat similar to the Peace Corps.  

On Tuesday I got to try groundnuts for the first time and I also purchased some delicious fresh cashews! We visited a village in a beautiful setting in the mountains. I kept telling them that I wanted to move there. We met with the community based organization (CBO) that does the trash collection and discussed their challenges and plans for growth. We spoke with businesses and households to hear their views on the waste management situation. Afterwards, we left the village and visited a school, a mechanic business, and a large restaurant. We found that many people were not familiar with the concepts of recycling and composting. There is hope to start separating recyclables and organics at the household and business level but this is very challenging when the concepts are not common.

Wednesday we visited another community group which is only a few months old and is still working on expanding its services. The officer of the group was a smart and dedicated young man. We also met with a hotel and a wholesale bakery that the group provides collection for. The bakery had a good deal of food waste that is being burnt and/or landfilled. We spoke with them about other options. And of course we purchases some baked goods before we left.

Today was very busy. I wanted to learn more about the liquid waste treatment and wanted to get an idea of the waste produced at the three large industries in the city which are the brewery, the Pepsi bottling plant, and the Coca-Cola bottling plant.  We started off the morning by meeting the Director of the Urban Water Supply and Sewage Authority who was very welcoming. It was very interesting to visit the settling ponds for the wastewater treatment. The steps of the process and the terms used similar to as in the U.S. but the process was much more simple and a tiny fraction of the cost. I was mainly interested in what happens to the sludge. In the U.S. this is often used as fertilizer or to produce energy. I learned that at least for the sludge that comes from the brewery, farmers come take it for compost, which was encouraging to hear.

Later in the day we visited the brewery, Tanzania Breweries Limited. The facility here is one of four in the country and produces the most common beers in Tanzania. We had a meeting with management to learn about their liquid and solid waste but we did not have time for a brewery tour, unfortunately. I saw a few key opportunities for growth: the potential to recycle the waste produced by the 400 employees, and finding a beneficial use for the spent yeast.

We also visited the Pepsi bottling plant and met with the manager. This facility is also a large employer. The brewery and the Pepsi and Coca-Cola facilities here use returnable bottles which are washed and refilled for sale. Any broken or chipped bottles are sent back to the company that provides their bottles, in order to be recycled. These three facilities have an estimated 800 employees combined and could be good partners for an educational campaign.

Today also included visits to three wards, which was very informative.  They are at various stages of forming CBOs to provide waste collection. I have been looking closely at this model of having the communities conducting the trash collection. It is a model used in other cities but since it is relatively new here, there is room to grow and improve.

Tomorrow I get to meet the Mayor and some of the City Councilmembers.