Littering is not our culture, it’s a bad habit

When I was in lower primary, I remember doing something we used to call manual work.

For the pupils in upper primary, manual work entailed sweeping and mopping classrooms, cleaning trenches and latrines among other tasks.

CARPET

For us in lower primary, our main duty was rubbish collection. With our bare hands, we would pick up litter in the expansive school compound every morning.

And every day, there would be a new carpet of banana peels, pieces of papers, plastic bags and leaves as if we did nothing the previous day.

There was a bigger girl, aged between 12 and 15, who supervised us. Many of us did not like it but for five to nine year olds, she was way too big to disobey and so we cleaned our school religiously every other day without question.

One day, I mustered the courage to ask the prefect why we had to collect litter every day. 

I wanted to know why pupils couldn’t take refuse straight to the bins and pits that were around the school.

RUBBISH

Her simple answer was, “if they don’t litter, then what would be your work?”

I was only six, and my conclusion was: that’s how the world worked— you create problems so that others can solve them. I didn’t question her further.

In upper primary, I watched the lower primary pupils pick up litter every day.

By this time, I could easily litter without feeling a tinge of guilt. What was the work of the lower primary pupils anyway?

Slowly, I came to the realisation that picking up rubbish was taken very seriously but the need for us not to litter was not as emphasised.

ADULTS

At home, our mothers never tolerated littering and we knew where every piece of trash belonged.

But somehow, we thought it was okay to litter elsewhere without consequences. Yes, like in school.

The results of this warped thinking are evident in our society today. We litter without blinking. Children and adults alike.

And littering is not a preserve of the uneducated; I see educated people dropping trash anyhow all the time.

And when you see an educated person littering, you wonder whether education ever does anything to make us better. It’s disgusting.

HAZARDS

What many of us forget is leaving litter in inappropriate places poses health hazards.

Shameful diseases and infections— such as the cholera ravaging Nairobi — have been linked to heaps of litter in estates and streets that soak and contaminate water in burst and cracked pipes.

In the same vein, trash such as plastic bags and plastic bottles has seen cities like Nairobi reel under man-made catastrophes.

Floods that soaked homes in the city’s middle-class South C estate in 2016 were mainly caused by plastics that clogged and blocked drainage systems.

Also, litter is generally unsightly and can be a big turn-off for visitors and tourists. In short, litter and littering are gross.

SH500,000

The national and county governments have realised the big problem that is littering and attempted to address it through laws and policies.

But it is disheartening that the numerous pieces of legislation and bylaws passed to arrest this habit have yielded little or nothing. Behavioural litterers have literally mocked them with their small weapon of mass destruction— litter.

In 2011, for instance, the National Environment Management Authority (Nema) ordered matatu operators to install litter bins in their vehicles.

There was a fine of Sh500,000 or two years imprisonment for violators of the directive. Afraid of the steep penalty, matatus observed the policy for a few weeks and then the bins disappeared from public transport vehicles.

THE LAW

In 2016, as part of Nema’s 100-day Rapid Results Initiative on Solid Waste Management, matatu operators were ordered to refit litter bins in their vehicles and bigger bins would be placed at bus stations.

After a few months of forced compliance, this order, like its predecessor, was consigned to the dustbins as litter blighted streets and estates.

A similar fate has befallen the more elaborate Environmental Management and Co-ordination Act, one of the legislations governing solid waste management in Kenya.

Section 87 of that law prohibits littering. At least on paper.

IMPUNITY

In Nairobi, there are also by-laws that prohibit littering, spitting and even blowing the nose without proper cloth or tissue.

But even with such laws people still litter with impunity.

Many argue that they litter due to lack litter bins. These people, including myself, have the best intentions but the system just works against them.

But there is another breed of litterers— those who drop trash anywhere and everywhere, even while standing right in front of a litter bin because ‘it’s our culture.’

These are the characters we should focus our energies on most if the dream of litter-free cities and villages is to be realized in Kenya.

WAY OUT

So where do we go from here?

There are as many ways to solve this but here are my three recommendations:

One, we need to address the root cause of this mess— attitude and perceptions.

To change this society, we should target children to raise a generation that understands littering is not, has never been and will never be okay.

Parents, teachers and religious leaders are instrumental in instilling and institutionalising this habit.

BINS

Two, the national and county governments should install litter bins in all cities, towns and village markets.

The bins should be at most 100 metres apart, especially in cities with big populations such as Nairobi and Mombasa.

Slums and other informal settlements, which lack waste management systems, should not be ignored in this plan.

And while at public litter bins, I know it’s totally possible to have bins that separate trash— paper bins, plastic waste bins and general waste bin.

LAWS

That way, we’ll not only be keeping our environment clean but we’ll also be making it easier to recycle waste paper and plastics.

Lastly, authorities should ensure that laws are not just ink on paper. They should be implemented. 

It’s public knowledge that pain and punishment is what it takes for most of us to behave. Offenders should be punished accordingly.

Littering is uncivilised and Kenyans should be made to understand as much.

To get us started, let’s meet at the litter bin.

Ms Maroma, a 2017 graduate of University of Leicester, is an Environmental Analyst.