BY: Tendai Rupapa Senior Reporter
WASTE recycling is a low-hanging fruit benefiting scores of families, earning them a decent living and helping keep the environment clean.
In view of this, the country’s environmental patron First Lady Auxillia Mnangagwa yesterday visited Blue Lagoon in Avondale West where she joined hands with women from around the community, Harare City Council and the Environmental Management Agency (EMA) to pick plastic containers, bottles, cans and papers.
She also participated in sorting and separating the litter.
The First Lady expressed zeal to work with the women and help them in their efforts to keep the environment clean.
“I will keep on coming here for our own discussions and finding ways to keep our environment clean. Instead of just sitting at home doing nothing, you just pass through here to leave whatever you would have discarded from the house.
“I believe you are now able to separate bottles, cans, egg trays and plastics. This is a way of earning money madzimai. Some may think this is nauseating, but look how smart this is. To us women, nothing is difficult so we must be organised into groups to come here and work as this is well-paying.
“I want to come back here with the final products that will be made from these things we have picked. Instead of staying indoors, this is cheap money and will help keep the environment clean,” she said.
Cleaning the city, the First Lady said, was not for janitors alone, but everyone can take part.
“I implore all ladies countrywide to come together and ensure we sort out the waste to earn this clean money,” she said.
She asked the women to form a committee to pick waste for the sustenance of their families.
The litter was then taken to companies that are into waste recycling like Muruwe and Petrecozim where it was sold.
This will help women earn large sums of money depending on the quantity they had delivered.
While at the companies, the First Lady and her entourage were taken around and shown how litter is processed until they get the final product.
At Muruwe (Pvt) Ltd, a waste management company, the First Lady met a 75-year-old widow from Rugare, Gogo Anna Zebro who had come to drop her load.
First Lady Auxillia Mnangagwa talks to Gogo Annah Zebro who was dropping plasticsr for recycling while Muruwe marketing and sales executive Mr Denis Orphanides looks on in Workington, Harare yesterday
She has been in the recycling business for the past 21 years and this, she said, enabled her to send her children to school and meet the costs for domestic provisions following the death of her husband in 2006.
“My husband passed on in 2006 leaving behind nine children. All these nine children are now parents with their own children. I cannot be seen knocking on the doors of my daughters-in-law seeking assistance. I told them to let me work because I am still strong. The year they will see me seated, they will know that the game is over. I wake up to pick waste daily,” she said with an air of achievement…
Source: The Herald Zimbabwe