THE BOTTLE MAN

 In our society there are different environmental actors who are often not recognized, in today?s article am going to share with you my interview with bottle picker man around my university campus and the important role they play in environmental conservation around campus. At the University of Dar es Salaam a Joint Environmental Management Association (JEMA) is formed to help conserve the environment around campus and nearby areas, the university of Dar es salaam is famous for its rich biodiversity, a wide forest reserve in a big city of Dar es salaam, different animal creature such as monkeys and various important rivers crossing through the campus. This has made environmental conversation to be one of the at most functions of environmentalist within the campus and its surrounding areas.

The Joint Environmental Management Association (JEMA) among its other conversation programs it has an initiative aim at conserving the environment but also create employment to local people. This project has recruited local people to work around campus picking disposed plastic water bottles around campus. When having an interview with some of the bottle pickers I learnt a few important things that I would love to share with you all. First I wanted to know how much they collect a day and it was a shock to learn that they get up to 250 kilograms per day this means there is a big consumption of plastic water bottles which are not properly disposed around campus. This led me to ask where do they take this bottles after they collect them, I learnt that after collecting them a middle men buyer comes to collect them after every two weeks and the middle men takes the bottles to a processing industry were they crash the plastic bottles and send them abroad for further manufacturing and production of various products.

Plastic bottle collection has so far been a good employment for this people, the bottle man tell me its a profitable job, their six bottle men all around our campus and the job has helped them to sustain their families, and due to a large number of students who use plastic water bottles. Each bottle man is sure to collect a reasonable amount of plastics per day. Without knowing this they contribute a lot to the conservation of our environment, they mostly do this work to gain profit but the impact to the environment is very effective, they help as clean our campus get rid of our plastics and most of all encourage the spirit of recycling since the bottles they collect are not going to dump sites but rather they go for further production.

Its  true that use of plastic materials is not environmental friendly but also reducing their usage is still a challenge in most third world countries since plastic packaging is more affordable, however what I learnt from the bottle man is we can simply look for alternatives of making plastics more friendly to the environment just like the bottle picking program. The program has brought a big impact on our environment and we do appreciate their work. In the city of Dar es Salaam bottle picking is a business that is taking trend a lot of young men who are not employed pick bottles for a living, its a business that does not pay much but enables them to sustain their daily needs. Its encouraging how environmental conservation can be a source of employment to young people around Dar es Salaam.