Zimbabwe Sunshine Group

The major challenges that our communities are facing und the climate change discoes is poor waste management and lack of innovative waste management plans and technology  have impacted more on the already straggling local Authorities across Africa. so when i win the Elevate prize I will use it to equip our work with new systems and equipment.    

Ronny Mbaisa Founder and director of Sunshine Group

Zimbabwe Sunshine Group is a non-profit making organisation duly registered in Zimbabwe. The organisation offers environmental protection and hygiene services, with a focus on waste management. we gained vast experience in the industry over the years, through the implementation of an Integrated Solid Waste Management project at the Zimbabwe Agricultural Society- Harare Show Grounds. The Harare Show Grounds presents a good model for a small town; due to the fact that it is the biggest examinations center in Zimbabwe that attracts more than 77,000 students annually, 16 functional and very busy restaurants, manufacturers’ distribution outlets, night club, beverage distribution outlets, casino, funny park, offices, gym, banks, farmers market, busy functions venues ranging from stadium to indoor facilities and attracts more than 2million visitors annually. These statistics speaks directly to the amount of waste generated annually, and Zimbabwe Sunshine Group makes sure it gets all the waste separated before final disposal. 

  Objectives

1. To form a recycling company in partnership with the community of Mabvuku.

2. To develop a business centered on sound business practice

3. To ensure that recycling is sustainable in Harare

4. To minimize landfilling

5. To create  green jobs

Effective, Solid Waste management remains a real challenge for developing countries, Zimbabwe being one of them. It is not an overstatement that City of Harare is overwhelmed by the waste management task. The ever increasing rural to urban migration of citizens in search of greener pastures is stressing the existing urban infrastructure and the ability for local councils to cope with effective service delivery in general. Waste collection is indeed one of the major components of waste management that is a huge concern. Improper or poor waste management affects communities in many ways; among others communities are prone to water borne diseases and many other hygiene related ills. 

The burden on the local municipality, has led Zimbabwe Sunshine Group to partner the Environment Management Agency and the Ministry of Environment, Water and Climate Change, whilst closely working in close consultation with the City of Harare in improving service delivery in the area of Municipal Solid Waste Management.

 In light of the many challenges that leads the City of Harare to delay and even fail to collect waste from residents, causing many to resort to illegal dumping and creating an unhealthy environment we launched a door to door waste collection service. 

The proposed venture will involve renovation works of improving our Mabvuku recyclables recovery and sorting centre, door-to-door waste collection in areas highlighted above and establishment of buy back centers in Mutare and Masvingo. This has been the outcome of the investigations and discussions with City of Harare, Mutare and Masvingo town councils and Mabvuku Community.

The business operations consumes a large amount of money on transportation and collection of recyclable materials from around Harare. Improving the waste sorting centre and purchasing of a waste transportation truck will increase collection volumes by 30% at a lower cost than the current operations and allows wider reach. Though this will address the issue of the burden on municipal collection system, this will secure jobs and minimise landfilling. Potentially a sorting operation on Mabvuku Centre could separate more than just the current recycled materials as cost of handling and separation would be much reduced. 

The operational plan was developed after carefully analysing the current operations at Zimbabwe Agricultural Society and Mabvuku Centre respectively and from looking at successful recycling operations countrywide. Two sorting centres are going to be improved for recycling general refuse. The first one is Mabvuku Centre which was established with support from Lafarge Cement Zimbabwe and another one is at Zimbabwe Agricultural Society which caters for separation of all waste generated from the Show Grounds. The required funding will help expand operations at Mabvuku Centre and open buy back centers in Mutare and Masvingo. It is proposed that advanced machinery be placed at the existing sorting centres, where the general refuse will be separated into different streams. These sites will consist of a dumping platform where trucks will dump the general refuse. The refuse will be dumped into a bag breaking area where bags will be broken open to allow contents to move onto a conveyor belt or manual separation platform, where Professional Waste Management Technicians (PWMTs) will remove recyclable items

The second site at ZAS will function as a waste transfer and sorting station. Removal of the recycled material from the general refuse will be done here by waste pickers.