Yemen – waste management: a quiet revolution

The landfill on Amran Road in Sana‘‘a is full of items deemed to be of no value. Only after a series of searches for recyclable goods is waste dumped into the landfill. Yemen Observer reports that garbage collection is something that is generally noticed by the public only when it is not done well. Streets strewn with bottles, bags, and orange peels are visible evidence of a flawed system. But when our waste is disposed of efficiently and smartly, few think to comment. Recently, there has been a quiet revolution in solid waste collection in Sana‘‘a that surely deserves to be noted and lauded.



Solid waste management is an increasingly common concern among cities in the developing world, and as urban populations grow and city boundaries expand, solid waste collection and disposal becomes an increasingly arduous and expensive task. "Allah created the Earth and all things on it in an accurate, well-balanced system so life would continue, " said Yahya Mohammed al-A‘‘aqel, founder of Sana‘‘a‘‘s largest recycling company, the Yemen Zenat Corp. "Humans have misbehaved and misused these systems by exploiting resources without considering the limits of these resources or looking into the negative effects that result from accumulating garbage.



The result is the disturbance of environmental equilibrium. " Yet many in Sana‘‘a have been working to restore some modicum of equilibrium, with much success. A sophisticated collection system for solid waste has been developed, as well as a multipart recycling system to serve Sana‘‘a‘‘s population of 1.8 million residents. Visitors often note that the old city of Sana‘‘a is nearly spotless. Men in orange and women in blue constantly roam the streets with a broom and dustpan in hand, and residents need only place their household trash in bags on the street for it to be collected twice a week. The cobblestones literally shine.



But about seven years ago, Sana‘‘a resembled some of the more impoverished cities in Yemen-colored plastic bags formed tidal waves in the wind, offal rotted in the gutters of neighborhood streets, and vermin populations exploded under heaps of exposed trash all over the city. But all of that changed in 1999, when municipal legislation was passed establishing the Municipal Cleansing Fund. The new law was instated as a result of a massive increase in solid waste that caused a municipal crisis. A year later, the city began to shed its outer layer of rubbish. The Cleansing Law was written with the understanding that decentralization, cost recovery and allowing municipalities to contract with the private sector would ensure success.



Those three strategies were critical for the success of Yemen‘‘s solid waste management. It allowed the local governments to charge citizens indirectly for the collection of garbage through taxing all products imported to cities. Those indirect taxes are not transferred to the central government-they remain in the control of the municipality. That revenue generation increased the budget allocated for cleansing ten-fold. It also resulted in an increase in employment from 700 to 3,600 within a span of five or six years.



Now, around 1,500 tons of garbage collected from residential areas and industrial sites around Sana‘‘a is dumped into the city‘‘s landfill on Amran Road every day. The 88,000 square meter area was designated by the municipal government to be a dumpsite in the late 1970‘‘s, but it has become a small mountain of solid waste since the Municipal Cleansing Fund was established and a monthly budget of YR 95 million was allocated for solid waste collection and disposal.



"The Cleansing Fund is responsible for the overall beautification of the city, which includes maintaining public gardens, street lamps a