Namibia - Waste Management Research

During a period of 5 weeks between mid October and mid November i had the privelidge to join the local autorities project between the municipalities of Lempaala and Kangasala in Finland and Ondangwa and Keetmanshoop in Namibia.

Namibia found to be beautiful, quiet, untouched country. Simple in many ways. Namibia is also very young country after got independent at 1990 and it seems that they are still trying finding their way as a country.

The project has few fields of research and one of them is waste management and a team of 3 students: Minna from University of Tampere, Pheps from Polytechnic of Namibia and i from TAMK. I will write my thesis based on the field work.

We spent 2 weeks in Keetmanshoop and 2 weeks in Ondangwa interviewing municipality workers, Enterprises managers and Local residents to hear about the current practicies of recycling and treating solid waste in their towns.

In Ondangwa we found a plastic factory which collects plastic bags, recycle them to make irrigation and water plastic pipes. In a town about 60km away from Ondangwa we found a Plastic factory collecting Polypropylene (PP) and forms plastic basins and buckets. These were a very refreshing and interesting sights since other companies just collects the waste and transport it outside to South Africa.

The main problem comes to my mind is the lack of innovation and the careless of act unless any sort of financial benefit is there. We found recycling centers and factories though some strugle for any cent they could save or get.

Many things has to be done, though we tried to explain to everyone we met that it will never happened while people in Namibia get their help from Other countries. It can only happened while the people of Namibia will do it by themselves.