Safaricom is trying to fight the elctronic waste which is clogging our system. Through the Safaricom Foundation, the company has just donated a Sh4 million e-waste grinder to the Computer for Schools Kenya (CFSK) to enhance the organization’s safe e-waste disposal.
The Safaricom Head of Corporate Responsibilities Ms. Sanda Ojiambo said the grinder will enable CFSK’s cope with an increase in e-waste disposal by organisations’ that are continually upgrading their electronics.
The grinder will be able to grind 500 kilos of ABS an hour, equivalent to 4 tons of powder a day. CFSK need another machine to mould the shredded plastics.
CFSK, which got its first e-waste grinding machine in the year 2009, has so far ground over 20 tons of ABS plastics. Plans are underway to purchase an extruder machine for molding the product to manufacture fencing poles and other building materials.
Environmental groups in Kenya say in order to effectively tackle the e-waste problem, Kenya needs to identify and map environmental impact of e-waste, capacity constraints on disposal of e-waste and the collection system and recycling infrastructure of e-waste.
The obsolete equipment disposed off in Kenya include – computers, televisions, mobile phones, batteries and even fridges which are highly toxic and if not handled properly will lead to cases of cancer, respiratory and skin diseases due to poisonous by-products such as lead cadmium and mercury.
I have always argued that we need to control the amount of used computers which we import when we want to tackle waste. You cannot tackle waste when you have all these funny early 2000 computers being dumped in Kenya from US, Europe and Asia
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