Nairobi residents raise concerns as roads are turned into littering grounds

This is coming at a time when unscrupulous garbage collectors have turned to roadside littering while giving proper and existing waste management channels a wide berth.

The Juja road stretch – near St. Teresa’s – extending to areas around Mlango Kubwa have been turned into littering spot.

This is so rampant that the garbage is already eating large section of the road – even forcing motorists to share very small sections of the road.

Jogoo Road is looking bad as well – and so are the sections of a service road connecting Outering Road at the Donholm Caltex area.

A giant garbage bin is already overflowing with 100-year-old litter – and it’s not looking good.

The situation is not better inside the estates – where no one is assigned the arduous task of managing litter on the streets.

“I think we need environment police to deal with people who dump garbage anyhow,” said Paul Ogoti, a resident of Donholm.

According to Paul, some of the garbage is dumped by businesses that don't want to spend money on garbage collection, thus use the street kids to help dump the litter anywhere at a small fee.

Nairobi is projected to produce 3,990 tons of garbage every day by 2030. As Nairobi population continues to grow, so does the amount of solid waste.

The population of Nairobi currently stands at approximately five million. And, data shows that each individual is generating about 0.62 kilos of garbage per day.

Many are now blaming members of the general public of littering the Nairobi environment without a care in the world.

“It is clear that as people of Nairobi we have not taken good care of our surrounding. We ourselves litter the city knowing too well it is our home,” notes William Munene, a trader in Mlango Kubwa.

The ‘Environmental Management and Co-ordination Act’ entitles an individual to a clean and healthy environment, but also says that the same individual is responsible to care for the environment.

Residents want county officials to arrest individuals who dump garbage on the roads.