Vulnerability and Improper Waste Management
Vulnerability and Improper waste management have become a modern-day dilemma that needs tactics to tackle its total elimination.
Vulnerability and improper waste management disrupt coastal, riverine, and slum communities facing numerous environmental challenges. However, tons and tons of waste are produced daily from these communities who have less or no capacity to trash waste.
Therefore, they either burn, trash in the sea, or live alongside it due to helplessness and lack of government intervention.
On the one hand, a large portion of waste material travel across the land into the ocean getting stuck in the ribs, lungs and digestive systems of sea birds or many aquatic species which eventually migrate, suffocate or die as a result of pollution caused by improper waste management mechanisms.
On the other hand, children and women face various forms of infectious diseases — airborne, and waterborne, making their lives more challenging amidst poverty, lack of proper health care systems.
Already, the pandemic is increasing the vulnerability of people worldwide, creating a massive gap in accessing adequate food supplies to derive a square meal, at the same time, heightened injustices in existence.
The ever-increasing challenges of the pandemic are doubling the increase in the health challenges of people facing waste management problems.
Hence, efficiently dealing with waste management should be a top priority to every single person, in any given environment to avoid more death than the world is experiencing today.
Nevertheless, Climate Change is upon us, with the rapid shift in the earth’s climate system, the issue of improper waste management will further strain healthy living.
Despite the complexities of the current climate system, it has given a rare hope for the world yet again with the coming together of people for one cause.
Today, marks the World Cleanup Day celebrated globally to promote a healthier and more sustainable environment against all forms of diseases known to plague humans to promote a safer environment for other living species too.
On that day, the bottom-up civic movement was born as a global mandate to eliminate improper waste management, in turn, promote an inclusive environment.
The movement which started in the small northern European country of Estonia, in 2008, gathered 50,000 people together to unite to clean up an entire nation in five hours.
The humanitarian act, spreading like wildfire captured the imaginations of people, who were inspired to follow the initiative with the same ambitious ‘one country, one-day’ formula.
Eleven years later, the simple idea has grown into a global movement with millions of volunteers and charismatic leaders coming out to clean different places, streets and homes.
The simple act of cleaning has now become a force that binds together people and groups that would otherwise never dream of working towards the same goal.
Since then, World Cleanup Day has evolved into another world-changing idea, and “sparking a unique unity of purpose”.
To celebrate the occasion, Revamp Rave Network held a live chat on Instagram, moderated by Caroline Yusuf — a Climate Actor and Mrs Ogechi Nwonye-Bernard — Co-founder of Green Axis.
The programme “The Impact of Improper Waste Management on Vulnerable Children and Women” successfully shared the knowledge of proper waste disposal, the importance of recycling waste, how to protect oneself from improper waste management in the environment.
In relieving the nation of extreme vulnerability among women and children, drainage systems have to be functional, waste disposed of needs to be picked up on time by the waste management agency, our roads must be well constructed to aid quick pick up.
If these and many more are put in place, infectious diseases would be minimal.
Hence, proper waste management mechanisms need to leverage innovation to achieve the aim of creating a sustainable environment.
Happy World Cleanup Day!
To learn more on the World Cleanup Day, see the below link.
