Students Devise Innovative Ways to Fight Pollution at Dandora
Students Devise Innovative Ways to Fight Pollution at Dandora
Students Devise Innovative Ways to Fight Pollution at Dandora
Bamboo plants are being planted by students at Dandora Secondary School as a response to the serious air pollution that comes from Kenya’s largest landfill, the Dandora landfill.
The school is situated in Nairobi County’s Embakasi North Constituency and is barely 900 meters from the Dandora Dumpsite, which means that it is heavily impacted by the pollutants released into the atmosphere.
Eutychus Maina, the principal of the school, started the project in 2023 after noticing how many teachers and kids were suffering from respiratory ailments.
In an interview with France 24, Dandora Secondary School student Allan Sila stated, “The dumpsite produces gas in the morning and also in the afternoon,” adding that among the difficulties they face are the odor and smoke that emanate from the dumpsite.
He added that some pupils develop asthma as a result of the smoke produced by burning materials at the dumpsite, which damages their respiratory systems.
The school wants to make sure that bamboo trees cover the 900 meters that separate it from the dumpsite. It also accepts donations from outside sources for this purpose. At now, almost 4,000 different species of trees have been planted.
Bamboo plants guarantee that there is a barrier given, “in terms of the air that is coming through, especially when you look at the fine particles,” according to Aderiana Mbandi, an expert on regional air quality for Africa.
With a population of over 6 million, the Dandora dumpsite is about 30 acres in size and receives 850 tonnes of solid trash every day from Nairobi residents.
With World Bank funding, the Dandora dumpsite was formally inaugurated in 1975. Twenty-six years later, in 2001, it was deemed fully operational. At the landfill, however, dumping keeps happening.
According to a report by Auditor General Nancy Gathungu, in 2016, a German company hired by City Hall to establish a Ksh28 billion power plant at the Dandora dumpsite withdrew because the county lacked a title deed for the area.
But Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja announced on Thursday, May 30, that his government had signed a Ksh50 billion Public-Private Partnership (PPP) agreement with a Chinese company to build Kenya’s first waste-to-energy plant in Dandora.
“Earlier today at City Hall, I met with President Wu Guisheng of China National Electric Engineering Co. and our teams. We will soon start building Kenya’s first waste-to-energy plant in Dandora, which is a 50 billion-dollar PPP that CNEEC was given,” Sakaja announced through his official channels.
The facility is anticipated to generate 45 megawatts of electricity from solid trash, which is thought to be revolutionary and possibly the most environmentally friendly method of managing the rubbish that continuously accumulates at the Dandora dumpsite.
In addition to putting the health of Dandora’s residents in grave danger, a large number of the community’s citizens work at the dumpsite to make ends meet.
A National Environmental Complaints Committee (NECC) report states that Nairobi County contributes 2,400 of Kenya’s 22,000 daily garbage production.
60 to 70 percent of the waste is organic, 20 percent is plastic, 10 percent is paper, 2 percent is metal, and 1 percent is medical waste.
