#UN Day - Remaining Enthusiastic in the Fight Against Poor Solid Waste Management
Fig. 1 Solid waste management agent using SnooCODE on his field operations
“Take care of the earth and she will take care of you. There is no planet B.” – famous waste management quote.
One way we can take care of the earth is through adopting effective solid waste management practices, which is why in honour of UN Day 2022, we are inspired to highlight our contribution to achieving Sustainable Development Goal (12), which has targets for waste management.
In 2021, our Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), Zara Abbey, published an article about how she became a waste management enthusiast. The article, which spoke about the Clean Kenya Project, threw much light on SnooCODE’s initiatives to enhance waste management operations in Nairobi.
Today, with support from the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng), under the Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation Small Business Grant scheme 2022/2023, SnooCODE is expanding the Project to Liberia, under the name, “The Clean Liberia Solid Waste Management Project”.
The Project aims to equip waste management services in Monrovia with a system for enhancing waste collection logistics, compliance, and customer service. It will enable efficient solid waste management operations in Liberia through the energy-efficient waste collection, verification, and recycling capabilities that our innovation presents.
Using SnooCODE’s digital signature (verification) system, waste collection administrators will also be able to verify the compliance of their respective waste collectors, thereby increasing accountability and efficiency.
Why Liberia? The decision to expand to Liberia was an easy one to make. First, since we are currently the country’s official National Digital Postal Addressing System (NDPAS), serving all 5.06 million people in the country, it was the natural next stop. Second, our research presented some very interesting findings on the state of sanitation and solid waste management in Liberia, and we just knew we had to contribute our quota to improving the situation.
For example, we found that “the current trend of sanitation in Liberia has been described by the Joint Monitoring Program (JMP) for water delivery and sanitation as a “Deadly Gap”. Reports from JMP showed that just 15 percent of the population had access to adequate sanitation services.
We also discovered that years after the Ebola epidemic, solid-waste management remains a major public health threat in Great Monrovia, particularly during the rainy season when raw sewage triggers outbreaks of cholera and diarrhoea.
Through consultation with local stakeholders, we recognized that the problem could be largely attributed to four significant barriers: Lack of adequate technology to ensure proper management; Low budgetary allocations for effective waste management; Poor implementation of regulations to ensure adequate management; Low public awareness.
To solve these problems, we intend to deploy the following strategies :
1. Ensure that people/ households that need waste management services have access to them by training them on how to use the Customer App;
2. Train waste management services on how to use the free SnooCODE-powered Clean Liberia system to improve their operations and logistics;
3. Engage citizens to use the Customer app to take time- and location- tagged photos. The Collector app also enables time- & location- tagged photos to verify information;
4. Access data from customers & collectors via the Administrator Dashboard. This data can be viewed and analysed, and further action taken as required for a truly clean Liberia.
The Clean Liberia Solid Waste Management Project will commence in Monrovia, and expand to other parts of the country with time.
With a successful project implementation, Liberia will have a fighting chance in its battle against inadequate solid waste management.
#SDGs #SustainableDevelopementGoals #UNDay #Environment #WasteManagement #SolidWasteManagemet #Liberia #Monrovia #SnooCODE