| Teaser Text | The Congo meets Manchester. Ken Pearson, principal waste manager at Wardell Armstrong LLP, picks up the story
W
aste material dumped into unregulated sites, old mine workings and rivers. Rubbish set on fire or left to pile up on street corners. This is Lubumbashi today – the second largest city in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), formerly known as Zaire and one of Africa’s largest countries.
Set in the Katanga region, a land area twice the size of the UK, Lubumbashi has a population of 1.5m people. There are no organised waste collections, apart from the few people and some businesses who can afford to pay. So how do you move from a situation like this to an integrated waste collection and disposal strategy?
Poor waste practices in the DRC are at a critical level – and fast becoming a humanitarian crisis. The adverse impact on public health is high, with drains blocked up by rubbish causing flooding and swamp areas spreading diseases. |
