According to the municipality, it will be built at the Hulene Municipal Waste Dump with the aim of recycling and reusing material that would otherwise go to waste.
All the rubbish that is collected in Maputo City goes to the Hulene dump. Some of the material could be reused or recycled to ease the burden of waste management in the municipality.
The municipality has announced a plan to change this later this year.
“At the moment, an operation is taking place to make space at the front of the Hulene rubbish tip. There will be a platform between the wall on Julius Nyerere Avenue. We have a plan and a project has already been drawn up to build a platform with shade. We’re going to call it the Transitory Centre and, even with the opening of the landfill in KaTembe, it will continue to operate, to prevent what is usable from having to cross the bridge or the tollbooth and then return to the city to be reused or recycled. So there’s this intention that, in principle, will be active this year.”
Silva Magaia was speaking this Saturday during the central ceremonies in Maputo City for World Cleanup Day, celebrated in more than 150 countries under the slogan “A day without plastic”.
This Friday and Saturday, environmentalists, activists and thousands of volunteers across the country joined together in a clean-up campaign for a day without plastic.
For two days of environmental activism, Mozambique stopped to literally say no to plastic rubbish in the sea. This type of waste is a danger to human health because it is consumed by sea animals, which are then eaten by humans.
In 2022, for example, scientists in the Netherlands and the UK found microplastics – small plastics – in the lungs of surgical patients and in the blood of anonymous donors.
This is why this year’s World Clean Up Day was celebrated under the slogan “A day without plastic”, with the aim of raising awareness among citizens about the environmental impacts of disposing of this material correctly.
The date is celebrated in more than 150 countries every third Saturday in September.
In Mozambique, the central ceremonies took place in Maputo City, where more than 13 groups collected all kinds of solid waste over an area of around 10 kilometres in the fishermen’s neighbourhood, a mission that should be undertaken by all citizens, according to the Mayor of Maputo.
“By associating ourselves with ‘a day without plastic’, I urge all residents of all municipal districts to abandon the use of plastic containers, to step up the cleaning of public places and to take on solid waste management as a collective responsibility in the name of planetary and public health,” said Eneas Comiche.
The day was not only about getting your hands dirty, but also about awareness and reflecting on human actions on the environment.
“I think this awareness will be consolidated, but we still have a lot to do. I think environmental education should start at home and then be followed up at school, but it should be cultivated from an early age,” said José Carlos, one of the volunteers.
It is estimated that more than 2 million volunteers took part in the event across the country, according to the environmentalist and coordinator in Mozambique of the “Let’s Do It” movement, which organises the World Clean Up Day campaign.
“We achieved a historic milestone. I already know that it was Mozambique’s biggest participation in World Clean Up Day, if we add together the work that was done yesterday in schools and public spaces with the work done today in neighbourhoods, towns and public spaces. But I also believe that we need to work harder on raising awareness, so that tomorrow we don’t have to do a clean-up that involves so much mobilisation and results in so many bags of rubbish and tractors.”
Data from World Cleanup Day 2022 shows that Mozambique came third in terms of the number of participants, second in terms of participants versus the national population and first on the African continent.
O País
