Econet Wireless Zimbabwe’s Clean City (Pvt) Limited this week stepped up its cleanliness awareness efforts with the launch of Community Environmental Services (CES).
The launch event saw over 200 CES volunteers converge at Mt Pleasant Hall, before proceeding to lead an awareness and cleaning blitz at Mt Pleasant Shopping Centre and its environs.
Speaking at the launch event, Clean City CEO Mr Lovemore Nyatsine challenged the communities to embrace a cleanliness culture through awareness, ownership and action.
“Waste management has become a major public health and environmental concern in our communities and this calls for all of us to partner with municipalities and local authorities in their efforts to make our suburbs cleaner,” said Mr Nyatsine.
He said the idea behind the launch of CES was to inculcate within communities a culture of cleanliness.
“Our ultimate goal as Clean City, working with all stakeholders, is zero tolerance to litter. We also want to make sure that our society lives in healthy environments. This can only be attained through sustainable behavioural change towards proper waste disposal and management,” Mr Nyatsine said.
The launch of CES comes at a time when Clean City is already working towards transforming Budiriro suburb into a model clean zone following the construction of a Material Recovery Centre (MRC) earlier this year. The MRC is a structure built to receive, sort, process and store recyclable materials which are then be shipped to end-users.
The MRC has already seen more than 5 000 households in Glen View and Budiriro practise waste-source separation at the household level. A weekly waste bin collection schedule has also been established in the area by Clean City, with over 10 000 households receiving bin liners. This is in addition to 7 drainages that have been cleaned in Budiriro, and 20 illegal dumps that have been successfully decommissioned, translating to over 50 tonnes of waste.
Mr Nyatsine recognised City of Harare as the major partner in the work of CES and lauded their efforts in facilitating the processes that ensured that Community Environmental Services, MRC in Budiriro and other Clean City initiatives come to fruition.
He added that Clean City planned to replicate CES’s work across Zimbabwean cities.
