Effective Waste Management: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

1A country without plastic bags

Shop in a Kigali market and your vegetables go into a paper bag, a woven basket or a cloth bag, never a thin plastic one. Since 2008 Rwanda has banned plastic carry bags, and in 2019 it went further, banning most single-use plastic items. Laws like these act at the top of what is called the waste hierarchy. What is the hierarchy, and why is preventing waste better than recycling it?

Figure 4.1: The waste hierarchy.

2Each level of the hierarchy

• Reduce. Waste that is never made needs no collecting, sorting or landfill space. Buy loose fruit instead of packaged fruit, refuse plastic straws and cups, print only what you need.
• Reuse. Use an item again for the same or another purpose: refill water bottles, turn jam jars into pencil pots, write on both sides of the paper, repair shoes and school bags, pass textbooks and uniforms on.
• Recycle. Turn waste back into raw material for new products. Composting (Lesson 5) is recycling for biodegradable waste.
• Recover. Extract energy from waste that cannot be recycled, for example biogas from dung and food waste (Lesson 5).
• Dispose. Bury only what is left, in a properly engineered landfill (Lesson 3).

3The chemistry of recycling

Recycling saves raw materials and, above all, energy. Aluminium is made from its ore by electrolysis, which uses huge amounts of electricity; melting down old cans uses only about 5% of that energy. Glass is remelted at about $1500{}^{\circ }\mathrm{C}1500\backslash ,^\backslash circ\backslash mathrm\{C\}$ and moulded again. Paper is soaked, pulped and pressed into new sheets, though its fibres get shorter each time. Plastics must first be sorted by type, because different plastics melt at different temperatures and do not mix; the number inside the triangle on a plastic item tells you its type.

Table 4.1: How common materials are recycled

4Rwanda's laws on plastic

Law N° 57 of 2008 of 10 September 2008 prohibited the manufacture, import, use and sale of polythene bags. Law N° 17 of 2019 of 10 August 2019, which came into force when it was published on 23 September 2019, replaced it and widened the ban to single-use plastic items, defined as disposable plastic items "designed to be used once before it is discarded or recycled". Under the 2019 law:

• an importer of plastic carry bags or single-use plastic items is fined ten times their value, and the items are seized;
• a wholesaler is fined 700,000 Frw and a retailer 300,000 Frw, and the items are seized;
• anyone who dumps plastic bag waste or single-use plastic items in an unauthorised place is fined 50,000 Frw and must remove it;
• a repeat offence doubles the fine;
• home-compostable items may be allowed with prior authorisation, and existing factories were given two years to comply.

5E-waste recycling at Bugesera

In December 2017 Rwanda opened a national e-waste dismantling and recycling facility in Bugesera District, Eastern Province, set up through the Ministry of Trade and Industry and the national environment fund, FONERWA (KT Press, 4 December 2017). It is run by Enviroserve Rwanda Green Park, which collects old phones, computers, appliances, batteries and solar products. Staff separate the parts that can be refurbished or recycled; the facility recovers metals such as copper and gold, and refurbished computers have been given to schools. In 2020 it was reported to have created about 300 green jobs, with e-waste collection centres in every district (Eos, 4 September 2020). Reported capacities differ between sources, so check the latest figure with the company.

6Umuganda

On the last Saturday of every month, from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m., Rwandans take part in umuganda, compulsory community work. Many umuganda mornings are spent clearing litter and plastic from drains and streets, cleaning markets and planting trees, which is the waste hierarchy in action at the level of a whole village.